Tumulus culture in the context of "Urnfield culture"

The European Bronze Age is characterized by bronze artifacts and the use of bronze implements. The regional Bronze Age succeeds the Neolithic and Copper Age and is followed by the Iron Age. It starts with the Aegean Bronze Age in 3200 BC and spans the entire 2nd millennium BC (including the Únětice culture, Ottomány culture, British Bronze Age, Argaric culture, Nordic Bronze Age, Tumulus culture, Nuragic culture, Terramare culture, Urnfield culture and Lusatian culture), lasting until c. 800 BC in central Europe.

Arsenical bronze was produced in some areas from the 4th millennium BC onwards, prior to the introduction of tin bronze. Tin bronze foil had already been produced in southeastern Europe on a small scale in the Chalcolithic era, with examples from Pločnik in Serbia dated to c. 4650 BC, as well as 14 other artefacts from Bulgaria and Serbia dated to before 4000 BC, showing that early tin bronze developed independently in Europe 1500 years before the first tin bronze alloys in the Near East. This bronze production lasted for c. 500 years in the Balkans but disappeared at the end of the 5th millennium, coinciding with the "collapse of large cultural complexes in north-eastern Bulgaria and Thrace in the late fifth millennium BC". Tin bronzes using cassiterite tin were subsequently reintroduced to the area some 1500 years later.

The Mad'arovce culture was an archaeological culture of the Early Bronze Age (c. 1750–1500 BC) located in western Slovakia. It formed part of the broader Mad'arovce-Věteřov-Böheimkirchen cultural complex, also found in Austria and Moravia, which had links with Mycenaean Greece. There was a gradual evolution from the preceding Únětice and Hatvan cultures to the Mad'arovce culture from c. 2000 BC to 1750 BC, and it was succeeded by the Tumulus culture after 1500 BC. The Mad'arovce culture is sometimes considered to be a sub-group in the final Únětice tradition. Important sites include the fortified settlements of Fidvár and Nitriansky Hrádok which are described as belonging to a 'Únětice-Maďarovce' archaeological horizon.