In most of what has been presented in this book so far, the discussion has revolved around patterns of material culture and their relationship to various categories of human activity. This chapter, by contrast, is concerned with social inference; in other words, it seeks to elicit an interpretation of social aspects of the Bronze Age from the material culture. By ‘social’ aspects I mean the way society was structured, how power relations worked, how individuals operated within and reproduced the accepted norms of behaviour in their relations with others and with their residence or kin group, and how they expressed their identity in terms of gender, age and status. In the context of European Bronze Age archaeology, the sources of evidence for social organisation are few and capable of different interpretations. Despite the fact that material forms such as artefacts and sites cannot have occurred in a social vacuum, the reconstruction of a social past is inevitably based on the observer's subjective and experiential understanding of potential modes and means of organisation. In spite of the difficulties, it is therefore necessary to consider the implications involved in the creation of the material data, in terms of the articulation of society as a living entity. Since the archaeological record consists of artefacts, it is the role of artefacts that forms the basis of the discussion that follows.

The reconstruction of a social past, for the Bronze Age as for other periods, has gone through a number of phases.