14. ID Christian Thomsen Three Age Theory

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Christian Jürgensen Thomsen was a Danish archaeologist born on December 29th, 1788. He was the first curator of the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen and was in charge of the museum for 49 years. His job was to arrange Scandinavian pieces in the museum. From doing this repeatedly, he invented the three age theory, which separated the ages of Stone, Bronze, and Iron by their technological advances in Europe. Thomsen died on May 21, 1865.

Thomsen developed this three age system as a means for the display of artifacts for the museum (then called the Museum of Northern Antiquities). Thomsen based his classification of artifacts on the relationships between stylistic changes, decoration and the context in which they were found. He defined the Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age by the technology used to make the artifacts. He felt that the system's order was important, where stone preceded bronze, and bronze preceded iron. From this arose the Law of Association, stating that objects deliberately placed in a grave generally consist of things in use at the time of the burial.

http://blog.yovisto.com/christian-jurgensen-thomsen-and-the-three-age-system/

Sources:

http://archaeology.about.com/od/tterms/g/threeage.htm

http://www.bibarch.com/concepts/ArchPeriods.html

http://www.historyofinformation.com/expanded.php?id=3028

For more information, please visit https://archaeology.knoji.com/the-threeage-system-of-archaeology-stone-age-bronze-age-and-iron-age/

Julian Westerfield and Calista Smith