Later Balkan prehistory

In the 1960s and '70s German scholarship played an important role in shaping and propagating an approach to the later prehistory of the Balkans that focused on chronology, cultural history and diffusion of culture, and lay greater emphasis on pottery than on other types of finds. This chapter argues for a two-pronged reorientation of research on later Balkan prehistory, one that would combine a dynamic concept of culture with an explicitly transcultural approach. The need for a transcultural perspective is highlighted by a brief discussion of case examples: the emergence of farming economy in the Aegean at the turn of the 8th and 7th millennia BCE; the upswing of Balkan copper metallurgy from the late 6th millennium BCE onwards; and the impact of innovations linked to the Secondary Products Revolution on societies in Western Asia and Europe in the 4th millennium BCE.