I'm working on doing some writing set in the Baltic States / Poland / Lithuanian area set in the bronze age. I'm looking for information on what village life was like:
1.How were the villages governed?
2.What food crops were grown?
3.What trades were practiced (Carpentry, bronze smithing, etc)
4.What did the villages look like?
5.Who were the town/villages VIPs?
6.How were children raised/educated?
7.Was there an active priesthood?
Any information you have would be helpful, especially pictures (well, artists' renderings), books to read, essays, etc.
Asking again for a bit of a bump. Thanks!
I think it is interesting to consider the great many ways that a life could be lived in that time. On the one hand there was widespread trade that has been called small-world form of globalism (E. H. Cline, 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed) and on the other hand, many bronze age cities were designed to be inherently defensible (Central European lake houses, Mesopotamian and Indus roof-access settlements, other various stone dome or beehive-type settlements).
On the other hand, we have an archeological record for the development and spread of both plants and animals used in food production. That is an aspect which can be measured and applied to different locations.
I think you would get better results if you divided your questions up for this sub and used the search function in different subs like I expect you have already.