To mark the occasion of the Ringlemere gold cup being placed on display alongside the Dover Bronze Age Boat in Dover museum, the Dover Bronze Age Boat Trust is organising a two day conference in October 2006 with the theme 'Bronze Age Connections: Cultural Contact in Prehistoric Europe'.  The symposium hopes to bring together a wide range of scholars from many different specialisms to explore the economic, social and symbolic nature of cultural contact along the NW European seaboard in prehistory and the practical means by which cross-channel relations could be maintained.  
     The following is a list of speakers and provisional titles:
     Session 1; Prehistoric navigation in NW Europe - Peter Clark (Canterbury Archaeological Trust): 'Navigating in Prehistory'; David Fontijn (University of Leiden): 'Sacrificial economies On the articulation of trade and ritual in the circulation of bronzes across the North Sea'; David Perkins (Trust for Thanet Archaeology): 'Crossing the channel in the Bronze Age'.
     Session 2; The production and distribution of bronze and other goods - Simon Timberlake (Early Mines Research Group): 'Bronze Age copper production and distribution'; Peter Northover (Oxford University): 'Ingots, objects and scrap'; Chris Butler (Freelance Archaeologist): 'The demise of the flint tool industry'; Patrice Brun, Françoise Pennors and Benedicte Quilliec (University of Nanterre): 'Social structure and economic exchange in the north of France from 1350 to 800 BC'; Alex Gibson (Bradford University): 'Transmanche ceramics; passage of pots, potters or styles?'.
     Session 3; The politics of power: the economic basis of a ruling elite - Stuart Needham (British Museum): 'Ringlemere and the beginning of the
Channel Bronze Age'; Joanna Brück (University College Dublin): 'A critique of the Prestige Goods‚ model'; Marc Talon (Institut National de Recherches Archéologiques Préventives) and Jean Bourgeois (University of Ghent): 'From Picardy to Flanders: Transmanche connections in the Bronze Age'; Andrew Fitzpatrick (Wessex Archaeology): 'Changing types of exchange' Barry Cunliffe (Oxford University): 'Looking Forward: Maritime Contacts in the mid First Millennium and Later'.
     Session 4; The symbolism of travel and the voyage in Prehistory - Mary W Helms (University of North Carolina): 'The Master(y) of Hard Materials: Materiality, Technology and Ideology of the Dover Boat'; Robert van de Noort (Exeter University): 'Just across the water: exploring the ritual of travel in prehistoric Europe'; Peter Clark (Canterbury Archaeological Trust): 'Onus probandi and the value of experimental reconstruction'.
     Venue: Dover Harbour Board Cruise Terminal, Dover, Kent, UK. Date: Saturday 21st October 2006ˆSunday 22nd October 2006. For more information please contact: bronzeageboat@btopenworld.com
     
Source. BritArch Mailing List (22 December 2005)