ABSTRACT
The introduction of bronze in northern Europe in the late third millennium and the subsequent development of bronze technology in the beginning of the second millennium raises a basic question: Was bronze channelled into already existing social and economic networks, primarily replacing existing tools and status symbols made of flint, stone and other materials-or did it lead to the formation of more elaborate social and economic hierarchies? We are thus dealing with the implications of technological change. Earlier scholars, like Gordon Childe, regarded the introduction of bronze as one of the most decisive steps in the evolution of European society, allowing an upper class of metallurgists and chiefs to separate themselves from daily subsistence production, while trade in bronze transmitted new cultural information from the Near East to northern Europe (Childe 1957; also Coles 1982a).
