Three-age system
The three-age system is the periodization of human prehistory (with some overlap into the historical periods in a few regions) into three time-periods: the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age,[1][2] although the concept may also refer to other tripartite divisions of historic time periods. In history, archaeology and physical anthropology, the three-age system is a methodological concept adopted during the 19th century according to which artefacts and events of late prehistory and early history could be broadly ordered into a recognizable chronology. C. J. Thomsen initially developed this categorization in the period 1816 to 1825, as a result of classifying the collection of an archaeological exhibition chronologically – there resulted broad sequences with artefacts made successively of stone, bronze, and iron.
For other uses of Three Ages, see Three Ages (disambiguation).
The system appealed to British researchers working in the "science" of ethnology – they adopted it to establish race sequences for Britain's past based on cranial types. Although the craniological ethnology that formed its first scholarly context does not have modern scientific value, the relative chronology of the Stone Age, the Bronze Age and the Iron Age remains in use in a general public context,[3][4] and the three-ages concept underpins prehistoric chronology for Europe, the Mediterranean world and the Near East.[5]
The structure reflects the cultural and historical background of Mediterranean Europe and the Middle East. It soon underwent further subdivisions, including the 1865 partitioning of the Stone Age into Palaeolithic and Neolithic periods by John Lubbock.[6] The schema, however, has little or no utility for establishing chronological frameworks in sub-Saharan Africa, much of Asia, the Americas, and some other areas; and has little importance in contemporary archaeological or anthropological discussion for these regions.[7]
Stone Age subdivisions[edit]
The savagery and civilization of Sir John Lubbock[edit]
It was to be a full generation before British archaeology caught up with the Danish. When it did, the leading figure was another multi-talented man of independent means: John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury. After reviewing the Three-age System from Lucretius to Thomsen, Lubbock improved it and took it to another level, that of cultural anthropology. Thomsen had been concerned with techniques of archaeological classification. Lubbock found correlations with the customs of savages and civilization.
In his 1865 book, Prehistoric Times, Lubbock divided the Stone Age in Europe, and possibly nearer Asia and Africa, into the Palaeolithic and the Neolithic:[38]
End of the Iron Age[edit]
The three-age system is a way of dividing prehistory, and the Iron Age is therefore considered to end in a particular culture with either the start of its protohistory, when it begins to be written about by outsiders, or when its own historiography begins. Although iron is still the major hard material in use in modern civilization, and steel is a vital and indispensable modern industry, as far as archaeologists are concerned the Iron Age has therefore now ended for all cultures in the world.
The date when it is taken to end varies greatly between cultures, and in many parts of the world there was no Iron Age at all, for example in Pre-Columbian America and the prehistory of Australia. For these and other regions the three-age system is little used. By a convention among archaeologists, in the Ancient Near East the Iron Age is taken to end with the start of the Achaemenid Empire in the 6th century BC, as the history of that is told by the Greek historian Herodotus. This remains the case despite a good deal of earlier local written material having become known since the convention was established. In Western Europe, the Iron Age is ended by the Roman conquest. In South Asia the start of the Maurya Empire about 320 BC is usually taken as the endpoint; although we have a considerable quantity of earlier written texts from India, they give us relatively little in the way of a conventional record of political history. For Egypt, China and Greece "Iron Age" is not a very useful concept, and relatively little used as a period term. In the first two prehistory has ended, and periodization by historical ruling dynasties has already begun, in the Bronze Age, which these cultures do have. In Greece, the Iron Age begins during the Greek Dark Ages, and coincides with the cessation of a historical record for some centuries. For Scandinavia and other parts of northern Europe that the Romans did not reach, the Iron Age continues until the start of the Viking Age in about 800 AD.
Other -liths and -lithics[edit]
The term Megalithic does not refer to a period of time, but merely describes the use of large stones by ancient peoples from any period. An eolith is a stone that might have been formed by natural process but occurs in contexts that suggest modification by early humans or other primates for percussion.