This paper presents 45 radiocarbon dates demonstrating International Bell Beaker cultural contact and interaction with the Island of Mallorca, c. 2500 cal BC to 1300 cal BC. The radiocarbon documentation is accompanied by supporting artefactual and architectural evidence that demonstrates long-range seaborne exchange and a high degree of social complexity outside the Iberian Peninsula. The evidence has been collected over a thirty-four year period from a number of sites which include cave, rock shelter, open-air settlement and ritual contexts. These demonstrate social, religious and economic activities which show an unusually rich variation and complexity, giving indications of social differentiation and local technological skills, such as water-and animalmanagement, architectural construction, as well as lithic, ceramic, metallurgical and other production, over some twelve hundred years.ß

For investigating the formation of frontier zones, study of changes in small communities that constituted the majority of earlier populations provides a different perspective from a focus on major centers. A network model applied to settlement and cemetery sites on Rome's Danube River frontier in Bavaria, Germany, shows that many communities, through participation in regional and long-distance circulation systems, played significant roles in creating the dynamic and culturally heterogeneous character of that landscape. This approach offers a model applicable to analysis of the formation and functioning of frontier regions in all cultural contexts.

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After Rome had conquered much of temperate Europe, the administration directed the establishment of industries important to the maintenance of military and economic control of the new provinces. These included stone quarries, pottery manufactures, and metal industries. Recent research shows that much production was not as centralized as has been believed; diverse industrial sites throughout the provincial landscapes indicate a variety of arrangements for supplying the needs of the empire. In many instances, Roman production systems relied upon indigenous traditions of manufacturing. The provincial economies depended also upon materials collected and processed beyond the imperial frontiers. Analysis of Roman imports in Germany, Scandinavia, and eastern Europe, and of the contexts in which they occur, suggesta that goods produced outside of the empire played a major role in the imperial economy. These commercial links, over which Roman authorities had no effective control, contributed to substantial changes in economics and in social and political configurations in societies beyond the Roman frontier.