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The focus of this paper is on the connections between socioeconomic relations and collective identities in the Late Iron Age communities from the Southeastern Adriatic and its hinterland. The aim is to draw attention to different perceptions of collective identity in the distant past, in contrast to the traditional view that typically focuses on ethnicity as the main expression of identity in the Late Iron Age Southeastern Adriatic. This interpretation is based on a constructivist approach to culture and on a re-evaluation of archaeological records that are significantly marked with imported artefacts, which remarkably highlight socioeconomic interactions from the past.By correlating archaeological data and previously proposed theoretical concepts, it will be concluded that the conceptions of collective identities in this particular social context in the past were considerably embedded in socioeconomic relations. Such conceptions, partly understood through various social practices including the consumption of material culture, were significantly articulated through socioeconomic interactions (e.g., warfare, habitation, goods exchange) rather than through notions of ethnic distinctions between individuals and groups in the past.

The transition from Late Iron Age to early state societies in the riverine lowlands of the Mun Valley and northern Cambodia took place rapidly in the fifth and sixth centuries CE. Defining the former involves archaeological excavation, whereas the latter is best known from surviving temple structures and inscriptions in addition to the results of archaeological fieldwork. Several common threads link the two phases of cultural development. From the late fifth century BCE, Iron Age communities participated in the growing maritime exchange network linking Southeast Asia with China and India, bringing exotic ideas and goods into the hinterland. Iron itself had a major impact on agriculture and warfare. Salt, a vital commodity that is abundantly available in the Mun Valley, was exploited on an industrial scale. By the fifth century CE, an agricultural revolution involving permanent, probably irrigated, rice fields and ploughing underwrote a rapid rise of social elites. These leaders in society, named in the early historic inscriptions, maintained and elaborated prehistoric innovations.

Among the bronze items dating to Latvia's Late Bronze Age (1100–500 BC) and the Pre-Roman Iron Age (500–1 BC) there are rings with open ends that resemble bracelets or necklaces by size. The number of bronze rings and their fragments is not large – 57 units, but that of fragments of casting moulds is much higher – 856. The article deals with the data of both these rings and the respective castings. The main focus is on the problem of the function of these rings: whether they were ingots or jewellery. The author argues that, although bronze rings were used as jewellery, it was probably not their only or even their main function. Bronze rings were used for more convenient storing and transporting of metal, but also as a value equivalent in exchange operations.