Arguments over the Ice Age

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne O'Connor
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Ice Age ◽  
Great Activity ◽  
Chipped Stone ◽  
Glacial Chronology ◽  
Glacial Epoch ◽  
Coherent Sequence ◽  
The Web

The acceptance of human antiquity in the mid-nineteenth century fed a desire to know more about the age of these chipped stone tools from the drift. In 1863, Canon William Greenwell (1820–1918), the antiquary, archaeologist, and collector from Durham, declared: ‘The great question which has yet to be settled is this—at what period was the drift in which the flints are found deposited? And side by side with this was another important query—down to what time did these now extinct animals occupy any part of our continent?’ This chapter seeks to untangle the web of time that was spun around the stone implements of Britain over the last four decades of the nineteenth century. Greenwell’s great question was a popular one, and ‘what period’ was often answered by connecting the implementiferous drifts to the Glacial epoch. The mid-glacial submergence, entertained by geologists like Ramsay and Phillips, provided a convenient division between pre-glacial and post-glacial times. On each side of this great division, detailed patterns were being drawn in stratigraphy and bones. As decisions were made about the pre-glacial or post-glacial date of sediments from river drifts and caves, rich in tools and bones, the glacial chronology was, meanwhile, being revised and subdivided too. During the latter decades of the nineteenth century there was great activity and little agreement about the order of events in these distant times. Researchers immersed in different material, gathered from different geographical areas, and asking different questions would not find it easy—or even desirable—to mesh their findings into a single coherent sequence. Attempts to date the stone tools of Britain entered a contentious arena. The chronological indicators scrutinised by these researchers—river drifts, glacial drifts, and bones—offered few clear answers to Greenwell’s question. The sands, gravels, clays, and brickearths of Quaternary times were so scattered, patchy, and variable that even Prestwich found it diffcult to understand their sequence.

scholarly journals The Early History of Glacial Theory in British Geology

1970 ◽  
Vol 9 (55) ◽  
pp. 135-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bert Hansen
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Early History ◽  
Ice Age ◽  
Modern Theory ◽  
Charles Lyell ◽  
Glacial Epoch ◽  
Drift Theory ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Ideas

AbstractMuch of the history of British geological thought in the second quarter of the nineteenth century centered on problems which are now explained by reference to the events of the Ice Age. This paper reviews the data and theories then current among British geologists as the background of the British response to Louis Agassiz’s “modern” theory of a glacial epoch. Today, as we read Agassiz’s amazing speculation, our own sympathy for the striking accuracy of his ideas masks from us the difficulty they faced in gaining acceptance. By first examining the context into which the glacial theory was introduced, we can then appreciate the novelty of Agassiz's efforts and understand the long delay in their achieving prominence. The present examination suggests that this delay was due to the unfortunate merger of Agassiz’s new ideas with the older drift theory of Charles Lyell.

Ancient Dwellers of the Thames Valley

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne O'Connor
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Stone Age ◽  
Good Book ◽  
Glacial Chronology ◽  
The Subject

Stone-Age classifications of the nineteenth century are usually dismissed in a few sentences that refer briefly to Lubbock’s ‘Palaeolithic’ and ‘Neolithic’ divisions; the faunal chronology developed by the French palaeontologist, Édouard Lartet (1801–1871); and the famous industrial classification promoted by the French prehistorian, Gabriel de Mortillet. The reactions of other researchers to the stone tools of the British river drifts have been hidden under their shadow. But if the varied and detailed patterns that these researchers saw in the river-drift tools are painted back into the historical picture, a clearer perspective is gained of their response to Continental research and the reasoning behind more comprehensive classifications of the British Palaeolithic. Some of those who worked on the stone tools of Britain have already been introduced: Lubbock, Dawkins, Lyell, and James Geikie played geological roles in Chapter 2; Evans defended human antiquity in Chapter 1. All five published synthetic works on the British Palaeolithic. Lyell was one of the first to draw the new mass of information together in his book on the Antiquity of Man (1863), which sold well but did not impress all his peers. Lyell received several charges of plagiarism and Greenwell, the Durham archaeologist, confided to his friend: ‘We want Master Evans, a good book on the Antiquity of Man, there is quite sufficient matter now accumulated to admit of one. Lyell’s book is not satisfactory, there is too much of dubious evidence bought in, & with all humility I say, he is not master of the subject’. Other authors followed close on Lyell’s tail. In 1865, the first edition of Lubbock’s Pre-Historic Times, an account of past and present savages, could be purchased for fifteen shillings. Evans produced Ancient Stone Implements in 1872, a cautious, catalogue-like description of stone tools, full of careful engravings and priced at twenty-eight shillings. Dawkins presented his ideas about the Stone Age alongside now-familiar palaeontological arguments in Cave Hunting (1874) and Early Man in Britain (1880). Geikie’s glacial chronology had a central place in Prehistoric Europe (1881), the book that widened his rift with Dawkins.

scholarly journals The Early History of Glacial Theory in British Geology

1970 ◽  
Vol 9 (55) ◽  
pp. 135-141
Author(s):  
Bert Hansen
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Early History ◽  
Ice Age ◽  
Modern Theory ◽  
Charles Lyell ◽  
Glacial Epoch ◽  
Drift Theory ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Ideas

AbstractMuch of the history of British geological thought in the second quarter of the nineteenth century centered on problems which are now explained by reference to the events of the Ice Age. This paper reviews the data and theories then current among British geologists as the background of the British response to Louis Agassiz’s “modern” theory of a glacial epoch. Today, as we read Agassiz’s amazing speculation, our own sympathy for the striking accuracy of his ideas masks from us the difficulty they faced in gaining acceptance. By first examining the context into which the glacial theory was introduced, we can then appreciate the novelty of Agassiz's efforts and understand the long delay in their achieving prominence. The present examination suggests that this delay was due to the unfortunate merger of Agassiz’s new ideas with the older drift theory of Charles Lyell.

scholarly journals White Rock Oneota Chipped Stone Tools

2005 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 259-297 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew J. Padilla ◽  
Lauren W. Ritterbush
Keyword(s):  
Stone Tools ◽  
Chipped Stone

X.—Notes on “The Great Ice Age” in Relation to the Question of Submergence

1895 ◽  
Vol 2 (7) ◽  
pp. 321-326
Author(s):  
Dugald Bell
Keyword(s):  
Present Writer ◽  
Ice Age ◽  
Special Part ◽  
Glacial Epoch ◽  
The Subject ◽  
High Level

The new edition of Dr. Geikie's esteemed work has already been noticed at some length in this Magazine. The present writer desires to add some notes—freely, but with all respect to the author—on a special part of the subject, viz. that relating to the “high-level shelly deposits,” and their bearing on the question of submergence during the Glacial epoch.

The Quantification of Microwear on Chipped Stone Tools: Assessing the Effectiveness of Root Mean Square Roughness (Rq)

2008 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. James Stemp ◽  
Ben E. Childs ◽  
Samuel Vionnet ◽  
Christopher A. Brown
Keyword(s):  
Root Mean Square ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Root Mean Square Roughness ◽  
Mean Square ◽  
Chipped Stone

Stone Tools

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rodney Harrison
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Stone Tool ◽  
History Of Archaeology ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Old World ◽  
Material Culture Studies ◽  
History Of

The focus of this article is stone tools. The history of stone tool research is linked integrally to the history of archaeology and the study of the human past, and many of the early developments in archaeology were connected with the study of stone artefacts. The identification of stone tools as objects of prehistoric human manufacture was central to the development of nineteenth-century models of prehistoric change, and especially the Three Age system for Old World prehistory. This article draws on concepts derived from interdisciplinary material culture studies to consider the role of the artefact after being discarded. It suggests that it is impossible to understand the meaning or efficacy of stone tools without understanding their ‘afterlives’ following abandonment. This article aims to complement contemporary metrical studies of the identification of stone tools and the description of their production. A brief history of the stone tools is explained and this concludes the article.

Artifact Analysis

Harney Flats ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
I. Randolph Daniel ◽  
Michael Wisenbaker
Keyword(s):  
Stone Tools ◽  
Tampa Bay ◽  
The State ◽  
Metamorphic Rocks ◽  
Size And Shape ◽  
Chipped Stone ◽  
Artifact Analysis

This chapter presents the results of the artifact analysis which consists almost exclusively of some 1,110 chipped stone tools and cores and several thousand pieces of stone debitage. Morphological and technological criteria were used to classify the assemblage into bifaces, unifaces, cores, hammerstones, and abraders. Toolstone appears to have been acquired locally from the abundant limestone replaced cherts available in the vicinity of Tampa Bay. An exception to this is the presence of four rather amorphous shaped “exotic” metamorphic rocks—presumably acquired from outside the state. The function of these artifacts is unclear but given their size and shape, three of them could have functioned as planes or abraders. The fourth specimen is too large to be hand-held but could have functioned as an anvil. The presence of these artifacts in the assemblage is an enigma, and it is speculated the stone arrived via interband exchange.

Epilogue

2021 ◽  
pp. 231-236
Author(s):  
Bill Bell
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
British Empire ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Robinson Crusoe ◽  
Reading Habits ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Official Sources ◽  
The Web

The epilogue rounds off the argument by returning to Crusoe as a paradigm of the act of reading in the British empire. In the hands of different readers not even Robinson Crusoe was as straightforward as it seemed. Despite the fact that the novel has often been read as a manual for empire, it is far more complex than some commentaries would have us believe. Similar ambivalences apply to the lives and minds of many overseas British in the long nineteenth century. While the early twentieth century is commonly thought to have embodied a decline in imperial values, the reading habits of colonial subjects throughout the period would seem to indicate that imperial assurances were less robust than official sources would seem to suggest. The five reading constituencies that are described in the foregoing chapters, all of them in different ways operating within the web of empire, were ones in which individuals often found imperial confidence in its own mission wanting, something that was time and again demonstrated through in their acts of reading.

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