Balkan metallurgy in a Eurasian context

As outlined in Chapter 2, three key lines of enquiry shaped The Rise of Metallurgy in Eurasia project and underpinned the research questions. Firstly, there are competing views about whether metallurgy in Eurasia had a single origin or arose in multiple places. There are also different perspectives regarding the ways in which pre-existing technical knowledge influenced and inspired the emergence of this new technology. Further discourse relates to the manner in which this early metallurgy was organised across the chaîne opératoire of metal production and use and developed across a range of metals and alloys. Each of these three themes are fundamental to early metallurgy across the world (see papers in Roberts and Thornton 2014). These are areas of investigation with a deep history of scholarship and a wide range of competing explanatory models