three-age system

The three-age system is the periodization of human pre-history (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; 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.

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 holds no 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, and the three-ages concept underpins prehistoric chronology for Europe, the Mediterranean world and the Near East.

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, Mesolithic and Neolithic periods by John Lubbock. 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.

Origin

The concept of dividing pre-historical ages into systems based on metals extends far back in European history, probably originated by Lucretius in the first century BC. But the present archaeological system of the three main ages – stone, bronze and iron – originates with the 19th century Danish archaeologist Christian Jürgensen Thomsen, who placed the system on a more scientific basis by typological and chronological studies, at first, of tools and other artifacts present in the Museum of Northern Antiquities in Copenhagen (later the National Museum of Denmark). He later used artifacts and the excavation reports published or sent to him by Danish archaeologists who were doing controlled excavations. His position as curator of the museum gave him enough visibility to become highly influential on Danish archaeology. A well-known and well-liked figure, he explained his system in person to visitors at the museum, many of them professional archaeologists.

The Metallic Ages of Hesiod

In his poem, '' Works and Days'', the ancient Greek poet Hesiod possibly between 750 and 650 BC, defined five successive Ages of Man: Golden, Silver, Bronze, Heroic and Iron. Only the Bronze Age and the Iron Age are based on the use of metal:

... then Zeus the father created the third generation of mortals, the age of bronze ... They were terrible and strong, and the ghastly action of Ares was theirs, and violence. ... The weapons of these men were bronze, of bronze their houses, and they worked as bronzesmiths. There was not yet any black iron.

Hesiod knew from the traditional poetry, such as the ''Iliad'', and the heirloom bronze artifacts that abounded in Greek society, that before the use of iron to make tools and weapons, bronze had been the preferred material and iron was not smelted at all. He did not continue the manufacturing metaphor, but mixed his metaphors, switching over to the market value of each metal. Iron was cheaper than bronze, so there must have been a golden and a silver age. He portrays a sequence of metallic ages, but it is a degradation rather than a progression. Each age has less of a moral value than the preceding. Of his own age he says: "And I wish that I were not any part of the fifth generation of men, but had died before it came, or had been born afterward."

The Progress of Lucretius

The moral metaphor of the ages of metals continued. Lucretius, however, replaced moral degradation with the concept of progress, which he conceived to be like the growth of an individual human being. The concept is evolutionary:

For the nature of the world as a whole is altered by age. Everything must pass through successive phases. Nothing remains forever what it was. Everything is on the move. Everything is transformed by nature and forced into new paths ... The Earth passes through successive phases, so that it can no longer bear what it could, and it can now what it could not before.

The Romans believed that the species of animals and humans, were spontaneously generated from the materials of the Earth, because of which the Latin word ''mater'', "mother", descends to English-speakers as matter and material. In Lucretius the Earth is a mother, Venus, to whom the poem is dedicated in the first few lines. She brought forth humankind by spontaneous generation. Having been given birth as a species, humans must grow to maturity by analogy with the individual. The different phases of their collective life are marked by the accumulation of customs to form material civilization:

The earliest weapons were hands, nails and teeth. Next came stones and branches wrenched from trees, and fire and flame as soon as these were discovered. Then men learnt to use tough iron and copper. With copper they tilled the soil. With copper they whipped up the clashing waves of war, ... Then by slow degrees the iron sword came to the fore; the bronze sickle fell into disrepute; the ploughman began to cleave the earth with iron, ...

Lucretius envisioned a pre-technological human that was "far tougher than the men of today ... They lived out their lives in the fashion of wild beasts roaming at large." The next stage was the use of huts, fire, clothing, language and the family. City-states, kings and citadels followed them. Lucretius supposes that the initial smelting of metal occurred accidentally in forest fires. The use of copper followed the use of stones and branches and preceded the use of iron.

Early lithic analysis by Michele Mercati

By the 16th century, a tradition had developed based on observational incidents, true or false, that the black objects found widely scattered in large quantities over Europe had fallen from the sky during thunderstorms and were therefore to be considered generated by lightning. They were so published by Konrad Gessner in ''De rerum fossilium, lapidum et gemmarum maxime figuris & similitudinibus'' at Zurich in 1565 and by many others less famous. The name ceraunia, "thunderstones", had been assigned.

Ceraunia were collected by many persons over the centuries including Michele Mercati, Superintendent of the Vatican Botanical Garden in the late 16th century. He brought his collection of fossils and stones to the Vatican, where he studied them at leisure, compiling the results in a manuscript, which was published posthumously by the Vatican at Rome in 1717 as ''Metallotheca''. Mercati was interested in Ceraunia cuneata, "wedge-shaped thunderstones", which seemed to him to be most like axes and arrowheads, which he now called ceraunia vulgaris, "folk thunderstones", distinguishing his view from the popular one. His view was based on what may be the first in-depth lithic analysis of the objects in his collection, which led him to believe that they are artifacts and to suggest that the historical evolution of these artefacts followed a scheme.

Mercati examining the surfaces of the ceraunia noted that the stones were of flint and that they had been chipped all over by another stone to achieve by percussion their current forms. The protrusion at the bottom he identified as the attachment point of a haft. Concluding that these objects were not ceraunia he compared collections to determine exactly what they were. Vatican collections included artifacts from the New World of exactly the shapes of the supposed ceraunia. The reports of the explorers had identified them to be implements and weapons or parts of them.

Mercati posed the question to himself, why would anyone prefer to manufacture artefacts of stone rather than of metal, a superior material? His answer was that metallurgy was unknown at that time. He cited Biblical passages to prove that in Biblical times stone was the first material used. He also revived the 3-age system of Lucretius, which described a succession of periods based on the use of stone (and wood), bronze and iron respectively. Due to lateness of publication, Mercati's ideas were already being developed independently; however, his writing served as a further stimulus.

The usages of Mahudel and de Jussieu

On 12 November 1734, Nicholas Mahudel, physician, antiquarian and numismatist, read a paper at a public sitting of the Académie Royale des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in which he defined three "usages" of stone, bronze and iron in a chronological sequence. He had presented the paper several times that year but it was rejected until the November revision was finally accepted and published by the academy in 1740. It was entitled ''Les Monumens les plus anciens de l'industrie des hommes, et des Arts reconnus dans les Pierres de Foudres.'' It expanded the concepts of Antoine de Jussieu, who had gotten a paper accepted in 1723 entitled ''De l'Origine et des usages de la Pierre de Foudre''. In Mahudel, there is not just one usage for stone, but two more, one each for bronze and iron.

He begins his treatise with descriptions and classifications of the ''Pierres de Tonnerre et de Foudre'', the ceraunia of contemporaneous European interest. After cautioning the audience that natural and man-made objects are often easily confused, he asserts that the specific "''figures''" or "formes that can be distinguished (''formes qui les font distingues'')"