THE FLOW project opposes the traditional approaches, which were primarily based on the stylistic and typological analyses of the so-called “imports”. Those were interpreted as foreign objects that appeared due to the exchange and trade of commodities and raw materials, as well the transmission of ideas and people. THE FLOW project sets a multidisciplinary research framework to examine such objects systematically by using cutting-edge archaeological science methods and focusing on provenance, spatiotemporal distribution, and Network Analyses. This research program is designed to study the origin and potential circulation mechanisms of targeted Copper and Bronze Age artifacts from a diachronic perspective (from the mid-5th to the end of the 2nd mill. BC) in line with fine archaeological contexts. Granted access to original data from several well-known sites in the study area will allow for revisiting traditional archaeological frameworks concerning long-distance connections and proposing new models of interactions between past populations from Southeast and Central Europe, from the perspective of the central Balkans. The expected results, besides creating an open-access database regarding the provenance of many samples, will offer new insights on the nature and direction of connections, which influenced the shaping of societal transformations in the late prehistory of the Balkans.
