The Atlantic Bronze Age is a cultural complex of the Bronze Age

Bronze Age

The Bronze Age is a period characterized by the use of copper and its alloy bronze as the chief hard materials in the manufacture of some implements and weapons. Chronologically, it stands between the Stone Age and Iron Age...

 period of approximately 1300–700 BC that includes different cultures in Portugal

Portugal

Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...

, Andalusia

Andalusia

Andalusia is the most populous and the second largest in area of the autonomous communities of Spain. The Andalusian autonomous community is officially recognised as a nationality of Spain. The territory is divided into eight provinces: Huelva, Seville, Cádiz, Córdoba, Málaga, Jaén, Granada and...

, Galicia, Armorica

Armorica

Armorica or Aremorica is the name given in ancient times to the part of Gaul that includes the Brittany peninsula and the territory between the Seine and Loire rivers, extending inland to an indeterminate point and down the Atlantic coast...

 and the British Isles

British Isles

The British Isles are a group of islands off the northwest coast of continental Europe that include the islands of Great Britain and Ireland and over six thousand smaller isles. There are two sovereign states located on the islands: the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and...

.

Trade

The Atlantic Bronze Age is marked by economic and cultural exchange, which lead to the high degree of cultural similarity exhibited by the coastal communities from Galicia to Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

, including the frequent use of stones as chevaux-de-frise, the establishment of cliff castles, or the domestic architecture sometimes characterized by the round houses. Commercial contacts extend from Denmark

Denmark

Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...

 to the Mediterranean. The period was defined by a number of distinct regional centres of metal production, unified by a regular maritime exchange of some of their products. The major centres were southern England and Ireland, north-western France, and north-western Iberia. The items related to this culture are frequently found forming hoards, deposited in ritual areas. Among the more noted items belonging to this cultural complex we can count the socketed and double ring bronze axes, sometimes buried forming large hoards in Brittany and Galicia; a variety of bronze swords, usually found deposited in lakes, rivers or rocky outcrops;
and the élites' feasting gear: articulated spits, cauldrons, and flesh-hooks, found from central Portugal to Scotland.

The origins of the Celts were attributed to this Age in 2008 by Professor John Koch and supported by Sir Barry Cunliffe

Barry Cunliffe

Sir Barrington Windsor Cunliffe, CBE, known professionally as Barry Cunliffe is a former Professor of European Archaeology at the University of Oxford, a position held from 1972 to 2007...

 but this stands in contrast to the more generally accepted view that Celtic origins lie with the Hallstatt culture

Hallstatt culture

The Hallstatt culture was the predominant Central European culture from the 8th to 6th centuries BC , developing out of the Urnfield culture of the 12th century BC and followed in much of Central Europe by the La Tène culture.By the 6th century BC, the Hallstatt culture extended for some...

.

Atlantic Bronze Age

See also

• Atlantic Europe
  Atlantic Europe
  Atlantic Europe is a geographical and anthropological term for the western portion of Europe which borders the Atlantic Ocean. The term may refer to the idea of Atlantic Europe as a cultural unit and/or as an biogeographical region....
  
  
• Bronze Age Britain
  Bronze Age Britain
  Bronze Age Britain refers to the period of British history that spanned from c. 2,500 until c. 800 BC. Lasting for approximately 1700 years, it was preceded by the era of Neolithic Britain and was in turn followed by the era of Iron Age Britain...
  
  
• Bronze Age Europe
  Bronze Age Europe
  The European Bronze Age is characterized by bronze artifacts and the use of bronze implements. The regional Bronze Age succeeds the Neolithic, it starts with the Aegean Bronze Age 3200 BC...
  
  
• Castro Culture
  Castro culture
  Castro culture is the archaeological term for naming the Celtic archaeological culture of the northwestern regions of the Iberian Peninsula from the end of the Bronze Age until it was subsumed in local Roman culture...
  
  
• Cogotas
• Early history of Ireland
  Early history of Ireland
  The early medieval history of Ireland, often called Early Christian Ireland, spans the 5th to 8th centuries, from the gradual emergence out of the protohistoric period to the beginning of the Viking Age...
  
  
• Haplogroup R1b (Y-DNA) subclade R1b1b2 (R-M269)
• Haplogroup I (Y-DNA) subclade I-M26
• Haplogroup E (Y-DNA) subclade E1b1b1a (formerly E3b1a2)
• Megaliths
• Prehistoric Iberia
  Prehistoric Iberia
  The prehistory of the Iberian peninsula begins with the arrival of the first hominins 1.2 million years ago and ends with the Punic Wars, when the territory enters the domains of written history...
  
  
• Vasconic substratum theory

External links

• Spaniards search for legendary Tartessos in a marsh
• Divers unearth Bronze Age hoard off the coast of Devon
• Moor Sands finds, including a remarkably well preserved and complete sword which has parallels with material from the Seine basin of northern France
• 3000 year old shipwreck shows European trade was thriving in Bronze Age