Heide Nørgaard has produced a work of exceptional quality, scholarly value, and beauty. While it is somewhat difficult to conceive of this last descriptor when considering the majority of archaeological volumes on crafting and technology, this volume is indeed spectacular not only in its scholarship but in its vivid presentation of Bronze Age metalwork. While others have discussed the subject and development of Nordic Bronze Age technology-as-craft (most notably e.g., Helle Vandkilde's Reference Vandkilde1996From Stone to Bronze), few have presented the subject matter with such attention to detail and aesthetics. Uniquely, Nørgaard's work brings us to a rare glimpse of the very hands at work in the Nordic Bronze Age workshop and the crafter's art. Not only will this volume be of interest to Bronze Age archaeologists in general, but to anyone interested in the study of technological innovation, crafting, apprenticeship, and learning, as well as those concerned with material culture evolution and trajectories of cultural transmission.

The book is laid out in four parts. Part One introduces the material culture of the Early Nordic Bronze Age (c. 1500–1100 bc), particularly a suite of objects generally theorized as making up a set of ornaments typically worn by elite women of the period (Bergerbrant, Reference Bergerbrant2007). Part Two presents the archaeological analysis of a sample of objects within that material culture typology, with a focus on four artefact types. Part Three develops theoretical considerations of those investigations, with particular emphasis on pathways of knowledge and crafters’ interactions at various scales, from individual crafters to workshops to networks of interacting workshops to the inter-regional transmission of ideas. Part Four looks at the broader implications of the work's findings towards more nuanced understandings of Nordic Bronze Age social and technological organization.

The three chapters of Part One do well to introduce a complex history of subject matters which have long been deliberated in Bronze Age archaeology circles: namely, artefact types, crafting techniques, and stylistic variability. Part One, Chapter 1 introduces the reader to the general material culture and cultural historical perspective on Nordic Bronze Age metal artefacts, noting the find locations of the artefacts to be discussed, their temporal placement in European Bronze Age typologies and chronology, including radiocarbon dates, and a brief outline of the regional variability of bronze artefacts in the study region. In Chapter 2, Nørgaard provides a discussion of the regional distribution and variability of artefacts in her study, namely Early Nordic styles of neck-collars, belt-plates/discs, tutuli, and pins from southern Scandinavia. Chapter 3 provides an overview of metallurgical traditions of the period, delivering a contextual overview of Bronze Age metal craft, including a brief discussion on settlements, workshops, and tools of the trade.

Part Two spans eight chapters focused on the technological bases of Bronze Age casting and crafting techniques. These take the reader on a journey through the stylistic and technical aspects of Nordic Bronze Age design. Throughout, Nørgaard includes exceptional photographic documentation of the materials in question, providing a clear visual understanding of the phenomena at hand, plainly showing the techniques, motifs, and features being discussed at a level of detail rarely achieved. Methodologically, the chapters look at the fingerprints of different manufacturing techniques, such as stamping and manual notching, which produce notable variability in the design quality of the individual objects. The section concludes with an introduction to and discussion of the actual metallurgical techniques evident from the objects, including operational sequences for smelting, casting, and hammering (Chapter 7), and the development of a model for identifying individual crafters and workshops from various design elements, features, and flaws on individual artefacts (Chapter 8).

Part Three outlines a theoretical basis for the study of Nordic Bronze Age metallurgical traditions and their artistic expression, presenting novel operational sequences which take the reader through the life-history of a Nordic Bronze Age metal object. Nørgaard presents the manufacturing processes step-by-step, from materials to methods, from the making of a mold (e.g. for use in the ‘lost-wax’ manufacturing technique common to the period) to pouring the liquid metal and fabricating decorative themes, through to the polishing of the finished product. In each step, the metalworker is considered to be an active agent whose knowledge, technical skill, technological and design tradition, and individual artistic expression might be observed from the artifacts which they produced. Here, the author also introduces the series of design and decorative elements common on many objects of the period. These include such elements as impressed spirals and ribbon motifs, dotted-, parallel-, and punched lines and rib-waves, which were all combined to produce intricate and visually striking decorations on some of the most iconic Nordic Bronze Age objects. But here, Nørgaard goes a step further, presenting regional use of specific design elements and combinations, developing an insightful observation of regional developments. Taken together, these illuminate similarities and variability over time and across the region, allowing the author to speculate as to how crafters and workshops interacted, shared ideas and technologies (in a few cases perhaps even specific molds and stamps), copied each other and innovated, and ultimately drove the diffusion of technical know-how and stylistic motifs.

The four chapters in Part Four bring together Nørgaard's thesis that crafters and Bronze crafting workshops interacted within dynamic and wide-spread interconnected communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, Reference Lave and Wenger1991), to the extent of exchanging not only ideas and techniques but even individual tools over long distances. At the same time, in some grave assemblages, traces of the same tools can be seen on different objects, suggesting that individuals or workshops also produced numerous types of objects using the same tools (literally). While this kind of manufacturing dynamic is often taken for granted by archaeologists when looking at various crafting traditions, here the author is able to back up this observation with empirical evidence.

Finally, the volume concludes with a catalogue describing the objects referred to in the text and a handy table of their morphological characteristics.

Overall, Heide Nørgaard's work offers some quite productive insights into the study of Bronze Age metalwork which go well beyond merely the objects or crafting traditions as such, providing an original and bold look at how individual artists, workshops, and networks of exchange, and the objects that they manufactured, developed. Perhaps not incidentally, this work offers a superb contribution to a field of study (archaeological metals, metalworking, and craft production) which is currently at an analytical crossroads as novel archaeometric (e.g. isotopic) methods are beginning to allow archaeologists a much better understanding of how metals and metal objects where moving around during this pivotal period of late European prehistory (e.g. Ling et al., Reference Ling, Hjärthner-Holdar, Grandin, Stos-Gale, Kristiansen and Melheim2019; Melheim et al., Reference Melheim, Grandin, Persson, Billström, Stos-Gale and Ling2018). This brings the movements of materials and ideas into wider-ranging perspective for this period, as recent studies of individual human mobility in the Nordic Bronze Age (e.g. Frei et al., Reference Frei, Mannering, Kristiansen, Allentoft, Wilson and Skals2015; Reiter & Frei, Reference Reiter and Frei2018) illuminate considerable opportunities for people and ideas to be traversing rather great distances.