Encompassing the ‘Golden Age’ of European prehistory and the palatial civilisations of the Mediterranean, this module will provide skills to critically evaluate Bronze and Early Iron Age social worlds. In this epoch, wholesale transformations of daily life, warfare, religion, the economy and political power can be found across the continent and neighbouring lands. The wide circulation of metals marked a decisive change in how wealth was procured, stored and utilised. In many places, changes in religious and mortuary practices transform the very cosmological foundation of peoples’ lives and their understanding of their world. Using material culture, the built environment and social landscapes, we will explore regional traditions and preferences in a range of activities that characterised different societies. The evolving role of travel and cultural transmissions will be considered in relation to the development of both shared and regionally distinct social practices. The module broadly divides into analysis of these key issues using temperate European datasets and Mediterranean societies in their “Age of Empires” (including Egypt of the Pharaohs, the Hittites, the Minoans and Mycenaeans, and Troy). Though distinct in many regards, these two wider cultural zones intersect in particular places and ways, which we will explore and address with reference to possible directions of influence and the significant effects these had on the trajectories of societies.