In the nineteenth century, before the advent of modern scientific chronometric dating, archaeologists and museum curators relied exclusively on relative dating. To make sense out of the chaotic collections, Christian Jurgensen Thomsen, the curator of the Danish National Museum, began to classify cutting tools according to the material used to make them: stone, bronze, and iron. He then extended this classification to other materials which were found with them. This gave rise to a chronological scheme known as the Three-Age System: Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age. Thomsen published an account of this chronological sequence in his Guide to Northern Archaeology. This guide had wide influence and was translated into several other European languages.
Thomsen’s assistant and successor at the Danish National Museum, Jens Jacob Asmussen Worsaae, extended the Three-Age system from museum displays to the field. He used layer-by-layer excavation to demonstrate its validity. Brian Fagan, in his book Archaeologists: Explorers of the Human Past, writes:
“Through excavation rather than museum work, this energetic and charismatic archaeologist proved with stratigraphic, or layer-analysis, geology that the Three Age System accurately reflected the physical record of prehistoric development.”
Today, the Three-Age system provides a basic set of chronological markers which are widely used in European prehistory. This chronology is, of course, relative—older/younger—rather than absolute in that it does not provide precise time periods. In addition, the Stone Age and Iron Age categories are also used in Africa. The system is not seen as an inevitable progression of cultural and technological development, but simply a way of providing relative dating classification. Brian Fagan writes:
“The Three Age System still flourishes today, even if it is now little more than a broad framework for the past.”
Humans have used stone tools for most of their existence and it is not surprising, therefore, to find that much of archaeology deals with the Stone Age. In 1865, Sir John Lubbock published his popular book Prehistoric Times in which he divided the Stone Age into two parts: Paleolithic (the Old Stone Age) and Neolithic (the New Stone Age). David Lewis-Williams, in his
The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origins of Art, writes:
“The Paleolithic period was one of flaked stone artefacts and hunting and gathering as a way of life. The Neolithic, by contrast, saw the introduction of polished stone axes and the beginnings of farming.”
Later archaeologists working in Europe would add a third era—the Mesolithic—to this sequence. The European stone ages—Paleolithic (Old Stone Age), Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age), and Neolithic (New Stone Age)—are briefly described below.
Paleolithic:
In Europe, the Paleolithic marks the earliest occupation of Europe by hominids beginning about 700,000 years ago. Not all of Europe was occupied during this time period and the archaeological record shows cycles of depopulation and recolonization in response to changing climatic conditions and resource availability.
Traditionally the European Paleolithic is subdivided into three time periods: (1) Lower Paleolithic beginning with the first hominids about 700,000 years ago; (2) Middle Paleolithic starting about 250,000 years ago; and (3) Upper Paleolithic at about 35,000 to 40,000 years ago.
Simple flaked stone tools and hand-axes are characteristic of the Lower Paleolithic. The hand-axes are sometimes referred to as the Acheulean Tradition. These stone tools were not made by Homo sapiens, but by earlier hominids such as Homo erectus and Homo hiedelbergensis.
The Middle Paleolithic is characterized by more sophisticated stone tools which include the use of the Levallois technique. In the Levallois technique, a stone core is carefully prepared so that the flakes struck from it will have a predetermined shape. In A Dictionary of Archaeology, Ian Shaw and Robert Jameson write:
“Flint knappers using the Levallois method controlled the eventual shape of the flake by carefully preparing a flint module, roughing it out to give a flattened face and a carefully designed striking platform.”
The Middle Paleolithic is contemporary with the Neanderthal occupation of Europe.
At about 40,000 BCE, the first anatomically modern humans arrived in Europe and this marks the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic. The Upper Paleolithic is characterized by highly developed stone tools as well as well as bone tools and the appearance of spectacular cave art. This seems to correspond with the arrival of fully modern humans in Europe. David Lewis-Williams, in his book The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origins of Art, writes:
“To take advantage of animal migrations, people had to be able to predict the times and places best suited to hunting and then to organize parties to be present at the right times and to perform different but complementary functions. Upper Paleolithic people were also able to predict the early spring salmon runs when these fish swim upstream to spawn.”
Mesolithic:
Later archaeologists added the Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age) to this sequence. The European Mesolithic is the period between the retreat of the ice sheets about 10,000 years ago and the introduction of farming. Writing about Britain in their book The Origins of Britain, Lloyd and Jennifer Lang write:
“This early post-glacial period is known archaeologically as the Mesolithic (middle Stone Age) and marks the adaptation of the upper Paleolithic societies to the changing environment. Men followed the rapidly migrating herds of animals, and spread out through the forests that gradually covered much of Britain.”
During this time, hunting and gathering societies managed a fairly comfortable way of life. As the climate warmed, the migratory herds of reindeer shifted north and were replaced by woodland game such as deer and wild pig.
During this time, microliths—tools in which tiny flint triangles and rhomboids were inserted into handles of wood and antler—were used for knives and composite spear points. Dugout canoes came into use. Willow and hazel branches were used to fashion fishtraps which were placed in streams to harvest the migrating salmon. Steven Mithen, writing in The Oxford Companion to Archaeology, reports:
“The rapid environmental change during the Mesolithic, and the diversity of animal and plant communities across Europe, make it difficult to generalize about Mesolithic communities.”
Neolithic:
Originally the Neolithic was defined by the appearance of ground stone tools. Later the Neolithic came to be characterized by the appearance of farming communities. The Neolithic begins in southeast Europe about 7000 BCE and in Central Europe by about 5500 BCE. With regard to Britain, Lloyd and Jennifer Laing write:
“The Neolithic in Britain begins with the arrival of scattered groups of immigrants whose origins are still largely obscure, but lie in western Europe. They introduced plant cultivation and animal husbandry before 4000 BC and began to open up the forests for their fields.”
Chris Scarre, writing in
The Oxford Companion to Archaeology, reports:
“This represented not an influx of new people but the adoption of new techniques by existing hunter-gather populations. They used cereals of Near Eastern origin, but steadily developed crop varieties better suited to the cooler and damper environment of temperate Europe.”
The Australian archaeologist Gordon Childe would characterize the Neolithic as the “Neolithic Revolution” and indicate that this was a period of sudden change. However, the archaeological data came to show that the introduction of farming was not a sudden event. In his book
Exploring Prehistoric Europe, Chris Scarre writes:
“Farming was never an easy option, and its spread through Europe was slow and gradual, dependent on particular sets of local circumstances—a famine, perhaps, or a temporary need—to gain acceptance. It was not a sudden change, however, and hunting and gathering, and seasonal mobility continued to play a major role in many parts of Europe long after domesticated plants and animals had been introduced.”
It should be pointed out that farming is far more labor intensive than hunting and gathering: the land has to be cleared, tilled, seeded, and the crops tended, all before they can be harvested. The herding of livestock, unlike hunting, requires daily effort. However, the result is the availability of more food and the ability to feed more people.
In a mobile hunting and gathering band, women spaced the birth of children so that they only had one child every four to five years. With farming and settled communities, women could have more children and the population grew much faster. This, in turn, created the demand for more farmland and so more forests were cleared which reduced the land available for the wild animals which had once been hunted.
Another characteristic of the Neolithic is the appearance of megalithic monuments. “Megalith” means “big stone” and megalithic monuments make use of very large, unshaped blocks of stone as a principal component. There are two key expressions of megalithic building: tombs, and ceremonial monuments. With regard to Neolithic monuments, Chris Scarre writes:
“They include both impressive stone circles and numerous burial mounds of various shapes and sizes, many of them containing stone-built chambered tombs.”
The most famous Neolithic monuments include Carnac in France, Stonehenge and Avebury in Britain, and Newgrange in Ireland.