 and introduction into transformation processes and what we, as session organizers, thought about transformation. Transformation processes can describe transition and change in very different ways. If you look at findings, we can see a constant change in artifact types of ceramic ornamentation, for example. These may be subject to fashion. However, there can also be adaption to technology changes like tools or change in eating habits according to drinking vessels or storage containers. On the other hand, in-house structures, construction and size can reflect socials change in a community. But these transformations are mostly part of our chronological structure and phase classification. This means that the transformation is already given at the transition from one phase to the next by our definition. So why we want to talk about this subject? If you look at the change in burial rituals and settlement structures, they indicates larger and far-reaching changes, which not only have influences in the social structure and beliefs on a small scale, but also beyond the region. These transformations are not anymore connected with artifacts. They show changes in a wider scale concerning population and societies. And I think this is an interesting part to look especially at these transformations to understand more about cultural development. But if we want to examine transformation processes, we need to clarify at which level we look at them. Do we have an area in the micro-region to look at time of an epoch of a phase or even at a single event? Or is it a social one about population or a group or even an individual who is part of this transformation? And then there are various interpretations. What are these transformations could be called? We have innovation or whom, among others, crisis or adaption. This could be possible interpretations. The following slides deal with the significance of transformation processes in central Europe. Why it is important or why we found it important to think beyond individual phases and to focus on the periods of change and breaks. And that's because the Bronze Age doesn't begin at one night at two o'clock in the morning. There's neither simultaneous nor area-wide spread of, if you are in the Bronze Age, for example, of bronze. We see here different cultural units from the early Bronze Age in central Europe to the end of the Nordic Bronze Age. And you can see it looks like between here we have a bigger transformation as a change of cultural groups within our definition. And here, the change doesn't look as big, but this region area is a vine far beyond this starting region. An example for such a transitional phase is the transformation from the early Bronze Age to the middle Bronze Age in central Europe. An example which I present quite often already is Prashenbo in Greater Poland, where we have a fortified settlement between 2100 and 1600 BC, which ended at 1600. And we could see that this end was due to environmental over exploitation, but also to pollution. And maybe there were also other factors behind this end. But what was fascinating when we started to research this gap and where these people might could move over the next settlement in the middle Bronze Age starts, then we found there was nothing else for 2100 years, not only in the nearest surrounding, but also from central and Germany to Greater Poland. And we have the luck and keel to compare all these things with the botanical information we got. And so it was possible to look at the pollen profiles. You see the matter here. And in the pollen profiles, we also can see the human impact. So the question was, are the people vanished, or we just didn't find them in the archaeological material. But with this pollen data, we can look at human impact, like are there cereals, are there pastureland, are there tree cutting, and so on. And when we sum these curves from this area between Berlin and Poznan, then we can see that at the same time when Woschewo collapsed, we have the lowest human impact in the whole of this area. So the people obviously weren't there. And when we look at the same area with the density map of settlements from the early Bronze Age, you see the Odra River and the Wata River, you see where we are. You see, we have a quite dense settlement area. And during the Middle Bronze Age, it isn't any more so dense. And the settlements move from the Odra River system to the Wata River system. And most of the settlement dates in the later periods of the Middle Bronze Age. So around 1500, there is here nearly nothing. And this can also be seen in Brunnenburg. There's the same picture between the early and the start of the Middle Bronze Age. To conclude these things about Woschewo or about Central Europe, you can say now that we have the collapse of the united sculpture. The united sculpture produces this nice disc. And this disc come into the ground around 1600 BC, too. The united sculpture was the first massive metalworking culture in the North. And this collapsed. And this was also an economic factor in the whole region. Then we can see a population decline. And we have a 200 years gap. But however, this gap does not be limited to Central Europe alone. This was from conference proceedings, where we unified from several areas from Greece, Northern Italy, Slovakia, Greater Poland, Lower Saxony, and so on. And what you can see is that around 1500, a lot of things changed everywhere. So this is so we see gaps. And it's very interesting for us to interpret and understand these gaps, these transformation from the early Bronze Age to the Middle Bronze Age. But as we said in the beginning, there are different scales of transformation. But how can we scale the transformation? There's the second part of my presentation. This is an example from Denmark and Schleswig-Holstein, which are the grave goods of Bronze in the graves, only graves, and the artifact combination in a correspondence analysis. And this is a chronological order from the early period 4 to the period 5. Period 6 was excluded because there's no connection between period 5 and period 6 in the archaeological material. A little theory, sorry about that. But artifacts and artifact combinations are fine combinations. They normally occur in the Gaussian distribution. They start and they end at some point. And not every artifact or combination started at the same point. So they're slightly later. This is the lifespan of an artifact. And this fine combination we somehow define as a face. And this is nothing else, but it's also visible in the correspondence analysis. You can use the Gaussian distribution or you can use this slightly different distribution with a shorter production period and a longer lifespan. But in fact, we can also do draw here several curves. And then these curves are, per definition, at one point, our faces. This is what Monterius did and this is what we did still today. Supposing we have a continuous succession of new types and the continuous ending of old artifacts in the grave, then we will have a constant change. So this could be early period. This could be a data period. But we have a constant change. There's no change and no harsh transition visible. However, if we have a gap between the artifact sequence, we have a point where a new type spectrum appears. And we have only a few overlapping forms here. This you can call a transformation. At one point here, there are no older artifacts in the graves anymore. So at this point, we have the transformation, which is in opposite to change a different transition. And if we have this occurrence where there's really no overlapping of one fine combination and another fine combination, then we can talk of a break. If you look in our correspondence analysis, so these are the periods. And then we can see different separation between the periods. This is a very small gap. It looks like a constant change. Here's nearly no gap. Even if this is period 4, this is period 5 material after the definitive mission of the Nordic bond stage. Here, we have a much wider gap. And there are a few overlapping artifacts. So maybe we can talk here from a transformation period. And if we come to period 6, where we have no overlapping, then we have a break, and we have totally new types. And then we have to look at this phase. What happened there? If you look at a rougher scale to the Nordic and central European bonds age, we can see we have this gap around 1,600 there, too, at least in central Europe. I talk already about that. But around 1,300 with the start of the earnfield and start of the burial rite also here happened something. Also in the north, the barrels are given up and the earngrades start. But the sediments go through here, the sediments go through and the Nordic bonds age seems to be changing, but not losing its cultural unit. If we go further to Europe, what we can do with C14 dates, and this new, quite new approach, you can make some kind of creation of C14 dates. And we can do this because we have huge databases now with C14 dates. So when we look at the settlements in these areas and I separated after these grouping of C14 dates, then we can see around 1,500. Everything is the change. You might say the C14 dates are according to the budget of the archaeologists made. So maybe they are not true, but we can use the grave dates as a correction curve. And you have this gap around 1,600 here too. But there are much more wiggles, much more smaller wiggles we have. And these are the wiggles of the younger barrels age and they are also of interest for transformation. So this is the part of my presentation. And I think in today's time of worldwide changes, I think it has become important not to concentrate so much on individual epocs or regions, but to take a closer look at the cultural areas of friction and changes. The example of Bushevel showed that after the collapse of a metal producing economic power, such as the unit of sculpture, which lasted for several centuries, we follow a phase of emptiness and reorientation. And I think we got, with our archaeological material, a huge data set where we can model transformation processes and changes in the past. And we can look for answers for the future. And that is what the politics want us to do, because they should finance us. That's the one part. But I think we have these thousands of years data. We can look for answers for our future and nowadays problems. And with that, I'm on the end. Thank you for your attention.