It is now over 26 years since the CTHS symposium at Clermont-Ferrand on the Cultural, Technical, Economic and Social Foundations of societies at the beginning of the Bronze Age. The APRAB colloquium planned in Rennes in 2018 proposes the re-examination of this period in the light of recent scholarship and discoveries. Recent years has seen the substantial growth of developer-led archaeology and the increasing use of new methodological approaches (aDNA, Isotopes, Bayesian modeling, LiDAR etc.) which enable new perspectives on the period (about data and problems such as questions of mobility or landscapes). This symposium aims to review the current state of knowledge relating to Atlantic Early Bronze Age societies. Each presentation will be a synthesis of new data and new perspectives.The chronological period encompasses the mid 3rd – mid 2nd millennium BC. This broad range offers the twin advantages of addressing the question of the origins of the Bronze Age (and the role of the Beaker phenomenon) and re-assessing the different overlapping chronological frameworks. In the light of recent scholarship, the questions surrounding the Wessex culture, Armorican Tumulus culture and their respective peripheries will be discussed.These include: how should these phenomena be defined archaeologically, spatially and temporarily? What do we mean when we interpret these as "princely" societies or the emergence of elites? What parallels are there with other contemporary archaeological cultures in Europe (e.g. El Argar, Rhone,Hilversum or Únětice cultures...)?