BRONZE AGE IN EUROPE

The archaeologist author together with Christiane Eluère takes us back beyond the borders of history. Achilles, Odysseus and other heroes of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey fought with shields and swords of bronze. What was the world like in those mythic days when the rival Greek cities of Troy and Mycenae battled for supremacy, and far to the West unknown engineers raised the megaliths of Stonehenge? We read about Achilles, armed for battle raging at the Trojans. 'First he placed along his legs the fair greaves linked with silver fastenings to hold the greaves at the ankles. Afterward he girt about his chest the corselet, and across his shoulders slung the sword with the nails of silver, a bronze sword, and caught up in the great shield, huge and heavy nets, and from it the light glimmered far, as far from the Moon... Next he pulled out from its standing place the spear of his father...' But what do we know of even earlier times when the settled peoples of Europe first replaced their crude stone tools with those made of refined metal, and crafted ornaments of beaten copper and gold? Chapters cover The Metallurgical Centres like the Gold of Varna in Bulgaria with 2,200 ornaments dating from as early as the 5th millennium, The Chalcolithic Period in the Iberian Peninsula which was the result of Eastern influences. Bronze (an alloy of copper and tin) appeared between 3000 and 1500BC in the Eastern Mediterranean and in Northern Europe. Pictured are remains and art in Crete, vessels, arms and armour, cultural centres, mother goddesses and horned figures, chariots, wheels and birds depicted in small Sardinian bronzes; the Mycenaean religion, funeral rites and an appendix on documents, with illustrations including the remarkable remains of Otzi, the ancient man, as preserved today. 160pp, paperback packed with colour illus. and glossy pages in this Thames & Hudson publication.