New and exciting discoveries on either side of the English Channel in recent years have begun to show that people living in the coastal zones of Belgium, southern Britain, northern France and the Netherlands shared a common material culture during the Bronze Age, between three and four thousand years ago. They used similar styles of pottery and metalwork, lived in the same kind of houses and buried their dead in the same kind of tombs, often quite different to those used by their neighbours further inland. The sea did not appear to be a barrier to these people but rather a highway, connecting communities in a unique cultural identity; the 'People of La Manche'.


Symbolic of these maritime Bronze Age Connections is the iconic Dover Bronze Age boat, one of Europe's greatest prehistoric discoveries and testament to the skill and technical sophistication of our Bronze Age ancestors. This monograph presents papers from a conference held in Dover in 2006 organised by the Dover Bronze Age Boat Trust, which brought together scholars from many different countries to explore and celebrate these ancient seaborne contacts. Twelve wide-ranging chapters explore themes of travel, exchange, production, magic and ritual that throw new light on our understanding of the seafaring peoples of the second millennium BC.