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The idea that there was a Copper Age between the Neolithic and Bronze Age was inspired by the discovery of the use of native copper in prehistoric North America. Its currency in European prehistory owes much to the 1861 observations by William Wilde that copper tools preceded the use of bronze in Ireland, though Wilde did not postulate a Copper Age per se. Acceptance of the existence of a Copper Age was a long process, not least as it seemed to contradict the premises of the Three Age System and was conflated with arguments for the local development of copper metallurgy, but the 1876 and 1880 international prehistoric archaeology congresses were key moments in its recognition. By the mid 1880s its validity was widely accepted in Europe. In contemporary dating schemes, the definition of the Copper Age varies according to regional and national traditions. This paper touches on the debate concerning the use of technological stages as chronological periods and examines the history of alternative conceptualisations of the early periods of metallurgy in Europe, including those that posit socio-economic phases of development.

During more than three million years, the substance civilization of human society went through the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, the Steel and Cement Age, and the Silicon Age. At the beginning of the new century, the human society has entered into the Nanomaterials Age, which indicates that a completely new substance civilization of human society has started. This paper analyses and discusses why the typical materials serve as the only standard for dividing the eras of the substance civilization of human society. The author argues about the subject of dividing the substance civilization of human society. The goal is to initiate broad and thorough discussion of that subject so as to get a rather thorough understanding about it.

There is room for considerable cooperation between archaeology and neuroscience, but in order for this to happen we need to think about the interactions among brain-body-world, in which each of these three terms acts as cause and effect, without attributing a causally determinant position to any one. Consequently, I develop the term social ontology to look at how human capabilities of mind and body are brought about through an interaction with the material world. I look also at the key notion of plasticity to think about not only the malleable nature of human brains, but also the artefactual world. Using an example from the British Iron Age (approx. 750 BC-AD 43), I consider how new materials would put novel demands on the bodies and brains of people making, using and appreciating objects, focusing on an especially beautiful sword. In conclusion, I outline some possible areas of enquiry in which neuroscientists and archaeologists might collaborate.

This article explores the importance of the Derbyshire antiquarian Thomas Bateman in the context of mid-nineteenth-century debates about ethnology, craniology, and archaeological chronology. New information on the relationship between Bateman and the authors of Crania Britannica, Joseph Barnard Davis and John Thurnam, is brought to light thanks to unpublished archival material from the Sheffield Museums and the Royal Anthropological Institute. Crania Britannica was the first publication of British national skull types from prehistory to the Anglo-Saxon period. The publication employed the techniques of craniology—the systematic study of head types—as a chronological tool. Indeed, craniology is often seen as the mechanism by which the Three Age System was initially received in Britain and Ireland. Here, Bateman's involvement in the publication and his own theories on the development of the past with regard to cranial sequencing and archaeological chronology are explored in greater detail. L'ampleur de l'influence de l'antiquaire Thomas Bateman, natif du Derbyshire, sur les débats du dix-neuvième siècle en ethnologie, craniologie et chronologie archéologique forme le sujet de cet article. Un examen des archives inédites conservées dans les musées de Sheffield et du Royal Anthropological Institute nous éclaire sur les des rapports entre Bateman et les auteurs de Crania Britannica, Joseph Barnard Davis et John Thurnam. Crania Britannica fut le premier ouvrage sur les types de crânes provenant de l'ensemble des Iles britanniques de la préhistoire à l’époque anglo-saxonne à avoir utilisé les techniques de la craniologie (l'analyse systématique des formes de crânes) à des fins chronologiques. En effet on pense que la craniologie a été un des mécanismes à travers lesquels le concept des trois âges fut introduit en Grande Bretagne et en Irlande. Le rôle que Bateman a joué dans la publication de cet ouvrage et ses propres théories sur l’évolution des crânes et leur position en chronologie archéologique sont exposés en détail dans cet article. Translation by Madeleine Hummler Die Bedeutung des Derbyshire Altertumsforschers Thomas Bateman in den Diskussionen der Mitte des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts innerhalb der Ethnologie, der Kraniologie und der archäologischen Chronologie wird in diesem Artikel geschildert. Die Beziehungen zwischen Bateman und die Autoren von Crania Britannica, Joseph Barnard Davis und John Thurnam, werden hier anhand von Archivmaterial in den Museen von Sheffield und im Royal Anthropological Institute untersucht. Crania Britannica war die erste Veröffentlichung von urgeschichtlichen bis angelsächsischen Schädeltypen aus ganz Großbritannien. Sie verwendete kraniologische Techniken (die systematische Untersuchung von Schädeln) um eine chronologische Reihenfolge aufzustellen. Man nimmt oft an, dass die Kraniologie zur ursprünglichen Annahme des Drei-Alter-Systems in Großbritannien und Irland beigetragen hat. Die Beteiligung von Bateman an der Veröffentlichung von Crania Britannica und seine eigenen Theorien über die Entwicklung der Vergangenheit hinsichtlich der zeitlichen Abfolge der Schädel und der archäologischen Chronologie werden hier eingehend untersucht. Translation by Madeleine Hummler

John Lubbock's Pre-Historic Times (1865) was the first publication to use the terms ‘Palaeolithic’ and ‘Neolithic’ to define major periods of early prehistory. Because of this he has come to be seen as one of the most influential figures in the history of prehistoric archaeology. We examine this image here, in terms of his influence on contemporaries both in Britain and in France, where early excavations were providing materials that came to form the basic periodization of the Palaeolithic that is still in use today. We show how Lubbock contributed to this emergence of a professional Palaeolithic archaeology, and what he did and did not achieve in the critical decades of the 1850s and 1860s before his interests moved elsewhere.

Focused on a series of French scholars and travelers, this article proposes that a distinct approach to history and antiquarianism developed in France during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries emphasizing the importance of artifacts as bearers of historical evidence. Beginning with the circle around Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc, the article introduces aspects of the work of the Marquis de Nointel, Jacob Spon, Bernard de Montfaucon, Michel Fourmont, the Comte de Caylus, and the scholars who accompanied Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt in 1798. The article concludes with a discussion of Abel Blouet’s expedition to the Peloponnese (Morea) in Greece in 1829–31 that, in its scientific management of fieldwork, can be regarded as a landmark in the development of modern archaeological research.

The idea of human prehistory was a provocative and profoundly influential new notion that took shape gradually during the nineteenth century. While archaeology played an important role in providing the evidence for this idea many other sciences such as geology, paleontology, ethnology, and physical anthropology all made critical contributions to discussions about human prehistory. Many works have explored the history of prehistoric archaeology but this paper examines the conceptual content of the idea of \"human prehistory\" as it developed in the British scientific community. Both the natural and the human sciences contributed to what was in fact a complex collection of individual elements that together constituted the prevailing idea of human prehistory, although there were other competing conceptions of human prehistory endorsed by various scientists and critics of the new view of early human history.

[...]very little has been written about the study of stone artifacts during the late eighteenth century.

The aim of this study is to individualize potential differences between two cranial regions used to differentiate human populations. We compared the neurocranium and the facial skeleton using skulls from the Great Hungarian Plain. The skulls date to the 1st–11th centuries, a long space of time that encompasses seven archaeological periods. We analyzed six neurocranial and seven facial measurements. The reduction of the number of variables was carried out using principal components analysis. Linear mixed-effects models were fitted to the principal components of each archaeological period, and then the models were compared using multiple pairwise tests. The neurocranium showed significant differences in seven cases between nonsubsequent periods and in one case, between two subsequent populations. For the facial skeleton, no significant results were found. Our results, which are also compared to previous craniofacial heritability estimates, suggest that the neurocranium is a more conservative region and that population differences can be pointed out better in the neurocranium than in the facial skeleton.