Aftermath

We have followed the story of the Three Age System a very long way indeed. We saw how it emerged in Copenhagen and Lund, how it was received there, and how Worsaae fought to establish it there. We then saw how it came to Britain, and followed in Worsaae’s footsteps from London to Edinburgh to Dublin and back to London again. In each of the three capitals in which it was considered, accepted or rejected, the academic context was quite different from the others. In London the archaeologists were safe sheltering under the dominant ethnological paradigm, and for some time saw no reason to venture out from beneath it. In Edinburgh the Four Stage Theory and long links with Denmark made the Scandinavian story much easier to swallow rapidly. In Dublin the historical elite was so blinded by the glory of their ancient history that there was no place for the archaeological theory, and it had to be carried into the capital by an originally provincial archaeological movement. Back in London, the safe ethnological chronology was jolted out of alignment by the discovery of human antiquity, and alongside this—and on the back of high-quality archaeological excavation—the Three Age System finally won the day. Some aspects of the story have long been well known. The roles of C. J. Thomsen, of J. J. A. Worsaae, of Daniel Wilson, and of John Lubbock have all received much exposure in discussions of the history of archaeology. But in following this story we have also sometimes looked beneath stones that have seldom if ever previously been lifted in this connection, at least in the Anglophone literature. It has for example rarely been understood that Thomsen’s ‘idea of prehistory’ was not simply forging back into hitherto uncharted chronological territory, but was to begin with leaning on the elaborate ancient historical structure of Peter Frederik Suhm. It was only when Christian Molbech kicked away this structure in the 1830s that the Three Age System had to stand on its own. Fortunately it was rapidly supported by three other chronologies employing physical evidence, and they acted as supports in its very earliest days of independence. When Worsaae hastened ancient history into its grave in the 1840s, the Three Age System was therefore able to stand on its own four feet (archaeology, economy, ecology, and craniology).

Ireland: Realm of the Four Masters

On 9 January 1843, Richard Griffith addressed the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) about some antiquities found in the River Shannon. The river was being dredged to render it navigable, and the artefacts were discovered during the deepening of the old ford at Keelogue. Griffith was the chairman of the Commissioners carrying out the work, and his expertise was in engineering rather than ancient history. He stated that the finds came from a layer of gravel; in its upper part were many bronze swords and spears, while a foot lower were numerous stone axes. Due to the rapidity of the river’s flow there was very little aggradation, so despite the small gap the bronze objects were substantially later than the stone ones. The river formed the border between the ancient kingdoms of Connaught and Leinster. The objects had apparently been lost in two battles for the ford that had taken place at widely differing dates; stressing that he was no expert himself, Mr Griffith wondered whether ancient Irish history might contain records of battles at this spot (Griffith 1844). This was probably the earliest non-funerary stratigraphic support for the Three Age System ever published, but it did not signal the acceptance of the Three Age System. Just as telling as Griffith’s stratigraphic observation was his immediate recourse to ancient history for an explanation; for, as we shall see, ancient history provided the dominant framework for the ancient Irish past until the end of the nineteenth century. The Irish had far more early manuscript sources than the Scots or the English, although wars and invasions had reduced them; the Welsh scholar Edward Lhwyd wrote from Sligo on 12 March 1700 to his colleague Henry Rowlands that ‘the Irish have many more ancient manuscripts than we in Wales; but since the late revolutions they are much lessened. I now and then pick up some very old parchment manuscripts; but they are hard to come by, and they that do anything understand them, value them as their lives’ (in Rowlands 1766: 315). In the seventeenth century various Irish scholars brought together the historical accounts available to them. Geoffrey Keating (Seathrú n Céitinn, in Irish) wrote the influential Foras Feasa ar Éirinn or ‘History of Ireland’ in c.1634, and an English translation was printed in 1723 (Waddell 2005).

Fighting it Through: England 1860–1880

On 29 July 1858, a stone tool was found among the bones of extinct mammals in Brixham Cave. More soon appeared; they were undeniably contemporary with the bones, and the antiquity of humankind was established. A carefully planned series of publications in 1859 ensured that most of the archaeological world accepted this conclusion very rapidly, and historians of archaeology have rightly identified this episode as one of the most crucial developments the discipline has ever seen. Darwin’s Origin of Species was also published in 1859, and evolution and human antiquity between them created a huge revolution in our understanding of ourselves. Histories of the archaeology of the rest of the nineteenth century correctly devote much attention to developments in the Palaeolithic, and to Near Eastern archaeology (Grayson 1983; Trigger 1989; van Riper 1993). These were the growth areas of the discipline. Palaeolithic archaeology was elucidating the new ‘deep time’ of the human species, by working out the sequence of industries in the ‘Drift’ (glacial moraine) and the caves, and the implications of human evolution. Near Eastern archaeology was deciphering long-forgotten scripts and excavating the ruins of cities hitherto known only from the Bible or the Iliad. Less consideration has been given to other areas of archaeology, in particular the study of the later pre-Roman periods in England, and this has left the impression that little remains to be said in this area (but see Daniel 1950: 79–84). In England, however, the debate about the adoption of the Three Age System was to continue for another twenty years, and that is the topic this chapter will address. The discovery of human antiquity outflanked the short chronology until then espoused by English archaeologists. Thomas Wright wrote rather plaintively that until recently, archaeologists had considered that the pre-Roman occupation of Britain amounted to ‘a few generations, at most’, and that they had been content with the biblical chronology of ‘somewhat more than six thousand years’ (Wright 1866a: 176). This very short chronology made unnecessary any subdivision into periods. Now these archaeologists found themselves jostled by an altogether alien group of new men, who dealt in huge (though unspecified) depths of time. For these people the Three Age System provided a vital series of intermediate periods bridging the gap between the people of the drift and the caverns, and the people of the classical world.

Scotland: The Creation of a Nation’s Prehistory

Scotland was the part of Britain that adopted the Three Age System most rapidly and completely. This chapter will argue that there were probably two main reasons for this. The first was that there were some intellectual similarities between Scotland and Denmark, and there had for a long time been strong links between the archaeologists of Edinburgh and Copenhagen—far stronger than ever existed between London and Copenhagen. The second was that, like Denmark, Scotland was seeking an identity rooted in its past. Scotland and Denmark share a number of characteristics. Both were (and are) small northern nations overshadowed by larger southern neighbours, and both were (and are) using their early history to protect their national identities. Although the Romans made inroads into Scotland, neither country had been incorporated into the Roman Empire, so their emergence into history was much more gradual. As scholars looked back through time, there was therefore a more gradual ‘greying out’ of historical knowledge, rather than an abrupt and brightly lit Roman threshold preceded by darkness. Both therefore had a greater willingness to use archaeological materials to shed light in the ‘grey-out’. This is probably one reason for the many archaeological links that had been established between Denmark and Scotland long before Worsaae’s visit. One important link between two key individuals worked in a rather different way, however: the friendship between the Norwegian Peter Andreas Munch and Daniel Wilson was partly based on their common mistrust of Copenhagen’s mid-century archaeological hegemony. But there were also differences between Scotland and Denmark, and these also had their effect on the course of events. The seeking of an identity rooted in the past was in Scotland an endeavour that was potentially fraught with problems. The deposed Stuart monarchy had last invaded Britain only a century before, and many Scots, particularly from the Gaelic-speaking Celtic Highlands, had supported the claim of Charles Stuart, ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’, in his bid to become King Charles III. His defeat at the Battle of Culloden did not immediately remove the threat of a renewed invasion, and Jacobite agents remained active in the Highlands for some time afterwards (Maclean 1982).

The Disinterested Gentlemen: England to 1860

In 1852 Thomas Wright reviewed Europe’s ancient past of Europe in his book The Celt, the Roman, and the Saxon (Wright 1852). Wright was an archaeologist who worked in a variety of Welds. During his active life he did a great deal of work on medieval manuscripts, history, antiquities, folklore, arts, and sciences; he wrote full-length histories of Scotland, Ireland, and France; he excavated at the Roman town of Viriconium; and finally, he took an interest in the pre- Roman past. Wright typified a generation of mid-nineteenth century archaeological scholars whose interest in pre-Roman matters amounted to no more than a minor sideline. There were arguably two main reasons why most of the London archaeologists paid little or no attention to the pre-Roman past. The first was that, as Englishmen themselves, they had no nationalist axe to grind by stressing the earliest archaeology of England. The ancient Celtic past had been firmly claimed by the Welsh, the Irish, and the Scots ever since the ‘Celtic Revival’ of the mid eighteenth century (Morse 2005: 41–7), while the English were post-Roman immigrants. The pre-Roman or Celtic past was therefore the past of other people—the ancestors of the Welsh or Irish, nationalities not generally held in high esteem by anyone but themselves. To emphasize the Celtic past was thus to exalt the inferior—and perhaps also, by emphasizing the relatively recent arrival of the English, to play into the hands of the nascent Celtic nationalisms. Such views were by no means articulated in the publications of Wright and his generation, and we can at this remove only guess how consciously motivating such concerns really were; but it remains true that the pre-Roman past got little attention. In Wright’s The Celt, the Roman, and the Saxon, the pre-Roman Celts were dealt with in just forty-four pages, or 9 per cent of the total book, the post-Roman Celts in a mere five pages, or 1 per cent. The second reason for the Londoners’ lack of concern with the pre-Roman past emerges from the very first sentences in Wright’s book: According to the system now generally adopted by ethnologists, Europe was peopled by several successive migrations . . . , all flowing from one point in the east.

The Three Age System as Predator: Copenhagen and Lund 1836–1850

We saw in the last chapter how Thomsen’s Three Age System was establishing itself as the ancient historical chronology started to fail in the 1830s. The years immediately following its publication in 1836 saw two major developments that Thomsen could never have foreseen. The first development was that three entirely separate chronologies came to maturity, and were grafted by their makers onto Thomsen’s stone–bronze–iron sequence. These chronologies were Sven Nilsson’s economic scheme of hunter-gatherers preceding farmers; Japetus Steenstrup’s environmental scheme of successive forest types; and the craniological scheme of racial replacement devised by Daniel Eschricht and Anders Retzius, and championed by Sven Nilsson. None could easily be linked to the ancient historical chronology; but since all three were based on material remains rather than literary sources, they were easier to link with Thomsen’s artefactual scheme, so they naturally gravitated towards it. Only Steenstrup’s environmental scheme provided any hint of absolute chronology—and the hint it gave was so revolutionary that Steenstrup initially lacked the confidence to make much of it. But as it became more secure, it gradually became evident that the human time depth revealed by the broadened Three Age System dwarfed the conception of ancient history. The First part of this chapter examines how these chronologies developed and then attached themselves to Thomsen’s. The second development was that, having attracted to itself these other chronologies, the Three Age System (in the hands of J. J. A. Worsaae) went over to the attack against ancient history. The second part of this chapter examines how Worsaae used archaeological excavation and data to wrest large parts of the material record from the ancient historians, by demonstrating that their use of it had been substantially inept. As a direct result, much of the ancient historical account lost its historical force and reverted to the status of literature and legend, leaving archaeology as the dominant voice speaking for the ancient past. In the later 1840s nationalist agendas were sharpening in various parts of Europe, and Worsaae used the archaeological voice to refute an aggressive historical claim by a German whose name is well-known in the Anglophone world— none other than Jacob Grimm, one of the brothers responsible for the fairy tales that are still so associated with their name.

The Construction of Prehistory: Copenhagen to 1836

Copenhagen lies on the eastern shore of Zealand, Denmark’s most easterly island. Scania, the southernmost province of Sweden, lies opposite; the city of Lund is just a few kilometres inland. They are separated only by the Sound, a body of water narrower than the English Channel, which narrows further to just 5 kilometres at a point some 40 kilometres north of Copenhagen. Lund and Copenhagen both have old universities, and an archaeologist travelling from one to the other can now make the journey via the new bridge over the Sound in less than an hour. In the early nineteenth century it took a little longer, but even in those days academic exchange was not dificult. For example, on 21 June 1830 the Swedish archaeologist Bror Emil Hildebrand embarked at 2 p.m. across the narrowest part of the Sound, and after spending that night in a hotel on the Danish side, reached Copenhagen on the afternoon of 22 June. Returning home on 17 August, he took a ferry direct from Copenhagen which departed at 8 a.m., but due to contrary winds he did not reach the Swedish side till that night (Hildebrand and Hermansen 1935). By 1842, steamships had speeded this up; the Danish historian Christian Molbech, visiting Lund, noted in his diary that he could be home in Copenhagen in just four hours (Molbech 1844a). Not surprisingly, the academic community of Lund was therefore much more closely linked to Copenhagen than it was to the Swedish capital, Stockholm, which is getting on for 600 kilometres from Lund as the crow fiies. Molbech left Lund early on 9 June 1842 and travelled overland to Ystad, from where he took a steamship to Stockholm. This journey took him four days, and he doubted that even the introduction of steamships would bring Copenhagen and Stockholm into close connection (Molbech 1844a: 274). (What Hildebrand learned during his visit, and how Molbech had contributed to prehistory, we shall see below). The Three Age System emerged from the Copenhagen–Lund academic axis in the early nineteenth century. This chapter will examine the initial developments, which took place mainly in Copenhagen and culminated in Thomsen’s publication of the artefactual scheme in 1836.

Chronologies in Conflict

This book is about a radically new scientific concept, how it was developed and promulgated, and finally came to be generally accepted. The concept in question is the archaeological Three Age System, the fundamental division of the prehistoric past into successive Ages of Stone, Bronze, and Iron. This is the basic chronology that now underpins the archaeology of most of the Old World. To be sure, we may question (for example) whether the transition from the Neolithic to the Early Bronze Age really marks as great a social and cultural change as that from Middle to Late Bronze Age; or we may debate whether the Mesolithic should really be so named, or should be referred to as the Epi-Palaeolithic. But the fact that we can even argue in such terms demonstrates the all-pervasive strength of the fundamental Stone–Bronze–Iron classification. Terms like ‘Mesolithic’ or ‘Late Bronze Age’ may create their own problems, and the precise definitions of such periods and the nature of the transitions between them are often keenly contested; but the debates they engender operate within the parameters of the Three Age System as a whole, and thus act to reinforce it. No-one, after all, doubts that the Stone Age preceded the Bronze Age. But it was not always so. There is an archaeology even of the Three Age System itself. It was conceived in Denmark and southern Sweden; it was initially published there in the mid-1830s, and was fully accepted and operating in those countries in under a decade. Its acceptance in southern Scandinavia was remarkably rapid, and no serious assault was made there upon its fundamentals. The same cannot be said for its reception in the British Isles, however. Its acceptance and uptake here was variable and patchy, and some leading British and Irish scholars shunned it for forty years. This is something which is almost always overlooked in histories of archaeology, which instead place emphasis on the people who adopted the Three Age System. This is entirely understandable, but it has led to the people who rejected the Three Age System being almost entirely written out of the history of the archaeology of the British Isles.