Early Bronze Age amber finds in Slovakia

The area of present-day Slovakia has for decades been presented as one of the key elements of a larger cultural-geographical region, i.e. the Carpathian Basin. The abundance of spectacular sources related to the Early Bronze Age, in the form of fortified settlements, gold and amber finds, determined the specific perception of local communities as active participants in the long-distance exchange between the Baltic and the Mediterranean. However, the research on the presence of amber in the Early Bronze Age has not been summarized in recent years. This paper gathers information scattered in the literature and points out the important local features of amber use by Early Bronze Age communities in the area of present-day Slovakia. They prove that amber functioned in specific contexts. First of all, it was an element of the funerary ritual that associated this raw material with a specific sex and age of the deceased and products made of other raw materials. However, the rules and ways of using amber were not identical within individual communities that are traditionally considered in terms of archaeological cultures. There were significant differences between the eastern and western parts of Slovakia, which in the first half of the 2nd mill. BC were associated with different settlement and cultural traditions.