Archaeologia Baltica

This paper discusses Bronze Age exchange contacts in Latvia. Changes in the directions of contacts and the nature of the exchange are investigated, looking back at the Neolithic for comparison, and at developments in the Early and Late Bronze Age, focussing on the routes by which bronze arrived and the mechanisms by which objects spread. In the Late Neolithic, directional commercial trade is observable, something that is no longer characteristic of the Early Bronze Age, but which appears again in the Late Bronze Age, when bronze-working centres, which had an important role in the regulation of social relations, developed along the River Daugava. During all of these periods, a prestige chain remained in existence.