Kristian Kristiansen is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Gothenburg, Denmark and was previously Director of the Danish Archaeological Heritage Administration in the Ministry of the Environment. He has written widely on theoretical archaeology and the archaeology of Northern Europe. Michael Rowlands is professor of Anthropology at University College London, UK. He is a leading figure in the development of theoretical archaeology.

• Introduction PART I Conceptualising social transformation 1 Objectivity and subjectivity in archaeology 2 Materialism and multilinear evolution 3 Conceptualising the European Bronze and Early Iron Ages 4 The formation of tribal systems in northern Europe, 4000–500 BC 5 From stone to bronze: the evolution of social complexity in northern Europe, 2300–1200 BC 6 Kinship, alliance and exchange in the European Bronze Age 7 The consumption of wealth in Bronze Age Denmark: a study in the dynamic of economic processes in tribal societies PART II Centre periphery relations 8 Centre and periphery: a review of a concept 9 Chiefdoms, states and systems of social evolution 10 Centre and periphery in Bronze Age Scandinavia 11 The emergence of the European world system in the Bronze Age: divergence, convergence and social evolution during the first and second millennia BC in Europe PART III Contact and colonialism The archaeology of colonialism 13 The internal structure and regional context of Early Iron Age society in south-western Germany 14 The archaeology of colonialism and constituting the African peasantry 15 Ritual killing and historical transformation in a West African kingdom 16 The embodiment of sacred power in the Cameroon Grassfields