The Three Age System in English: new translations of the founding documents

Abstract

The Stone – Bronze – Iron framework for ordering archaeological artifacts and epochs emerged in Denmark and southern Sweden in the years 1835–43, and is justly considered one of the defining developments in the origins of archaeology. Some of the crucial documents appeared in English in the mid-19th century. Anglophone historians of archaeology make considerable use of these, but like the Scandinavian originals they are now scarce and often cannot be tracked down by the more general reader.

Keywords

• stone age
• bronze age
• iron age