Fighting it Through: England 1860–1880

Abstract

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.