The book explores settlement and burial patterns across the southeastern corner of the Balkan Peninsula during the second millennium BC and offers a new, detailed cross-border examination of the local pottery data. The volume offers a comprehensive analysis based on the existing cultural-historical framework and calls into question established constructs such as the ‘Plovdiv-Zimnicea’ culture. The work offers a chronologically structured analysis of pottery sequences and is methodologically innovative in the way it applies a rare combination of settlement-scale analysis using advanced spatial-statistical methods alongside artefact-scale typological and stylistic study on local ceramics also subjected to spatial-statistical mapping. As a result, the research highlights clusters of attributes and cycles of micro-regional interaction. On that basis it also addresses the formation, development and decline of the Late Bronze Age tradition(s) in Thrace and examines the degree to which this trajectory was influenced by wider patterns of regional development.

AUTHOR
Denitsa Nenova has a PhD in Archaeology from University College London and is currently working on a number of archaeological projects in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Balkans. Her main professional interests and research areas include European Bronze Age, Landscape Archaeology, Survey Methodology, Remote Sensing and Computer Applications in Archaeology.

REVIEWS
‘Denitsa Nenova’s work covers a significant gap in Thracian archaeology. This is a synthetic study of the Late Bronze Age in Thrace that explores several aspects of the regional material culture. The study is theoretically well embedded and may become a reference point in regional archaeology.’ Dr. Stefanos Gimatzidis, Austrian Archaeological Institute

‘The aggregation of data that crosses political and geographic boundaries in SE Europe is new and highly valuable.’ Dr. Adela Sobotkova, Macquarie University