From typology and biography to multiplicity: Bracers as ‘process objects’

In this article we put forward an alternative account of the famous wristguards, or bracers, ofthe European Early Bronze Age. Combining new materialism with empirical microwearanalysis  we study 15 examples from Britain in detail and suggest a different way ofconceptualising these objects. Rather than demanding they have a singular function we treatthese objects as ‘multiplicities’, and as always in process. This, in turn, has significantimplications for the important archaeological concepts of typology and object biography, andour understandings of material culture more widely.