This book aims at synthesizing the available archaeological evidence for the Bell Beaker phenomenon, a large archaeological culture which extends from Ireland to Poland and from southern Scandinavia to northern Maghreb, mostly during the second part of the 3rd millennium BC. An up-to-date general framework for the Bell Beaker phenomenon is welcome as the last single-authored synthesis on the topic is now 25 years old. The core of the work consists of chapters which respectively offer synthetic regional accounts of the Bell Beaker material expressions. These chapters first deal with north-western and central Europe (Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland), second with western Europe (France, Italy, Iberian Peninsula) and last with the British Isles. For the sake of comparison, which remains the ultimate goal of this research, all chapters are organized along the same lines and start with an examination of the various local substrata.

Marc Vander Linden