Organising Bronze Age societies involved prehistoric European groups in dynamic and contested material processes. With varying outcomes, forces of top-down domination balanced with bottom-up household and community self-organising independence. We draw together here evidence from the thematic chapters into a set of new conclusions and research questions about European Bronze Age societies. We examine how consumption and production interacted locally, and later we consider how foreign connections affected local societies. We look especially to how social groups used material culture to forge institutions with different roles and identities. Finally we draw up the larger picture of Bronze Age political economies and social development. Fundamental to our synthesis has been our confederacy of microregional studies, organised with common interests and methods, to consider contrasting trajectories of long-term social change within the common themes of European late prehistory.

Local production and patterns of consumption

To begin with, technology sets absolute barriers to economic expansion. Degrees of specialisation and division of labour, however, allowed for a more elaborate production that can be expanded beyond the needs of immediate consumers. In short, a more complex economic system arose in the Bronze Age in which demand and consumption patterns were widely shared but could not be fully satisfied locally. This led to the formation of a complex interplay among local, regional, and international economies. We begin by delineating local technologies and their economies, which created the basic conditions.