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.