Thirteen papers, from the EEA Sixth Annual Meeting held in Lisbon in 2000, aim to explain the role that metal and metalworking played in past societies and to integrate `analytical data with theoretical, contextual and ethno-archaeological studies'. Divided into four sections, contributions examine the development of metallurgy in the Chalcolithic and early Bronze Age Levant and Europe; evidence for metalworking in Wales, central Europe and Portugal; ornate metalworking in Iron Age Norway, medieval Russia and modern Portugal and Cairo and, finally, the social and cultural function of metalworking and metal objects.