Archaeological Ages as Technological Stages

Archaeological Ages as Technological StagesAuthor(s): V. Gordon ChildeSource: The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol.74, No. 1/2 (1944), pp. 7-24Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and IrelandStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2844291 .

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7

ARCHAROLOGICAL AGES AS TECHNOLOGICAL STAGES

Huxley lUemorial Lecture for 1944

By PROFESSOR V. GORDON CHILDE, D.LITT., D.Sc., F.B.A., F.S.A., F.R.A.I.

SYNCHRONY AND HoMOTAXIS In his Presidential Address of 1862 Huxley' warned

the Geological Society against a facile assumption that the several epochs, defined by palkeontological species and genera, were necessarily contemporary all over the world when measured against a time scale provided by extra-terrestrial phenomena. The same assemblages of fossils did demonstrably follow one another in the same order all over the globe. It did not follow that they must everywhere occupy the same positions if aligned according to the series of solar years. To express their mutual relations he suggested some term like ' homotaxis ' instead of 'synchrony.'

His warning might even more appositely have been addressed to the anthropologists of his generation, and his adjective, homotaxial, will be helpful today. 'On the corner-stone laid by Thomsen, archeologists have been engaged in building up a series "f Ages, defined like geological eras, by assemblages of fossils. But their fossils are tools, those extra-corporeal organs by the improvement of which human societies have progressively enlarged their capacities for survival. The distinctive assemblages of tools have been shown stratigraphically to follow one another in the same order wherever they occur. But the archaeologist is fortunate in having to hand independent time scales with which to compare each local sequence. So he has come reluctantly out of dire confusion to realise that his Ages are in fact not everywhere contemporary; they are just homotaxial and might therefore more legitimately be called Stages.

Nevertheless, historical time as opposed to mere succession does enter into the archseologist's con- ception. Suppose a tool or group of tools, tradition- ally assigned to one Stage while not being the 'ttype fossil ' differentiating that Stage, turn up at a point in historical (cosmic) time earlier than the first appear- ance of the type fossil anywhere. Then the tool or group will be automatically transferred to the previous Stage, however long it may persist in succeeding Stages. Thus the polished stone celt, appearing in Boreal Europe before the first hint of plant-cultivation or stock-breeding is perceptible in the archseo- logical record from that or any other region, must ipso facto surrender its privileged place in the Neo- lithic Stage if that be defined by " Food Production."

1 Collected Essays, Vol. VIII.

Secondly, the several Stages were Ages too in the sense that there were periods of cosmic time in which each Stage did represent the highest technological level hitherto attained by any human society. If, for instance, the British Neolithic be only a Stage because contemporary with the Bronze Stage of the Orient, the Neolithic of Fayum-Merimde or Tell Hassuna is more, being absolutely older than any Bronze Age. It is, I take it, just this that gives the archaeological classification by Ages or Stages sonie claim to anthropological value and scientific significance. It is to this claim I wish to turn today, since a further elabora- tion of Huxley's warning is by now superfluous.

For the classification of his museum specimens Thomsen fastened upon precise 'and easily recognizable criteria which thus satisfied one requirement for any scientific classification. The Ages defined thereby did give a scaffolding within which a more coherent structure could be, and has been, reared. In the process the scaffolding has been enlarged and patched up, but the main outlines of the frame remain. As a chronological framework it is admittedly shaky and no longer indispensable. But has this classification no further value for the science of man ?

Our scaffolding purports to sustain,a series of con- secutive stages in technological development, in the evolution of forces of production. Archaeological classification has in fact isolated this one factor in human progress. Here I venture not so much an appraisal of the factor thus isolated, as a critical evaluation of the traditional divisions; for these have been assailed no less than the chronological use of the scheme.

To illustrate the argument I choose the Bronze Stage advisedly, for it is the, significance of just this stage that has been specially,challenged in the last couple of years by Dr. Daniel2 and T. A. Rickard3. The former contends, mainly I suspect on the strength, of the British material, that a more significant division would dissolve the 'Bronze Age,' relegating its earlier subdivisions to the New Stone Age as an ' eochalcic episode' and bracketing Late Bronze and Early Iron together as the Full Metallic Age. Rickard, on the contrary, would fuse Bronze and Iron together into one Metallurgic Age.

Fortunately, too, the Bronze Stage is so well known that it is apt also to illustrate the relations of

2 The Three Ages, Cambridge, 1942. 3 A.J.A., Vol. XLVIII (1944), pp. 10-16.

A 4



8 V. GORDON CHILDE

technology to other aspects of culture. Moreover it approximates more closely to a true Age than any earlier Stage. Its upper and lower limits are approxi- mately definable in calendar dates. Nowhere did a Bronze Stage begin much before 3500 B.C., in no relevant area did it outlast A.D. 500, and only during the last 1500 years of those four millennia were advanced societies in the Iron Stage contemporary with belated Bronze Stage communities.

THE TECHNICAL ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE STONE AGES

For an evaluation of the Bronze Age as a stage in human progress a recapitulation of the level of control over the environment attained in previous Stages is indispensable. This control was of course achieved by the standardization of tools and the progressive differentiation of generalized all-purpose tools to fulfil more perfectly an ever-narrowing range of specialized functions. Standardization of lithic types and of, techniques for their production is already conspicuous in the Lower Palaeolithic, but even in the Mousterian the differentiation of standard forms for specific functions had not proceeded far.

But early in the Upper -Palaeolithic Homo sapiens had created specialized secondary and tertiary tools. With their aid, supplemented by the invention of new processes like, grinding and sawing, he acquired mastery over bone; antler and ivory. Before the end of the Pleistocene some societies at least were using single-edged knives, gravers, saws, spoke-shaves, borers, wedges,4 mallets with handles,5 awls, needles and naturally a paraphernalia of sinews, thongs, plaits and knots allowing of construction. By the same time the productivity of. the food-quest had been enhanced by light but efficient missiles, by the spear-thrower and the bow6 and by harpoons and gorges for fishing.

During the Mesolithic the carpenter's kit was com- pleted by the addition of the ground stone celt7 and other forms of axe, adze, gouge and chisel, mounted in suitable hafts.8 With their aid navigation may have been accelerated by paddles, while land transport was certainly simplifed in suitable areas by the invention of skis and sledges9 that may have been drawn by dogs. The food supply was further enlarged by the domestication of dogs to help in the chase and

4Antiquity, Vol. XVI (1942), Ipp. 259-261. 5 Of reindeer antler, from Mezin. 6 Pericot's discoveries at Parpallo (La Gueva del P., cf.

Antiquity, Vol. XVIII, p. 31) have settled the Upper Pale- olithic age of this device, albeit, significantly enough, only south of the Pyrenees and Alps.

7 Clark, Mesolithic Settlement of Northem Europe, p. 105; more from Kunda.

8 J.R.A.I., Vol. LXI. p. 325; Antiquity, Vol. XVI, pp. 258ff,

S.M., Vol. XLI (1934), p. 11; Vol. XLII, p. 21.

by the invention of the fish-hook and the net and, among the Natufians, of the straight sickle or reaping knife. Quite possibly the manufacture of pottery10 had begun.

Finally, the Neolithic farmer, in cultivating plants and breeding stock, ' harnessed powerful forces of Nature' and made 'biochemical mechanisms work for him,' as Leslie White11 has recently insisted. To exploit this revolution the dibble and a hoe, sometimes stone-bladed, sickles and saddle querns were devised and gradually standardized. New techniques applied to stone-sawing and drilling with abrasives'2 -lightened the manufacture and improved the form of celts and gave some societies rather fragile shaft-hole hoes or adzes and still less reliable axes. With such appliances Neolithic carpenters could make even rough mortise-and-fenon joints13 and construct quite complicated looms for weaving. There was no technical reason why they could not put together a wooden plough or set up a mast in a sailing-boat, but there is no positive evidence that they ever did.'4

Such were the accumulated technical resources, directly revealed in the archaeological record as being at the disposal of the most advanced societies before any of them acquired the control of a new industrial material-copper and its alloys. The extent to which these resources were exploited varied widely between the several homotaxial societies. Only, as they occur in stratigraphical sequences, such variations cannot be used for a stadial subdivision of the Neolithic, nor

10 If Westerby's claim to have found pottery in a Magle. mosean deposit in Zealand (Acta Arch., Vol. VIII, pp. 298-300) be sustained, as seems likely (Mathiassen, Sten- aldersbopladser i Aamosen, Nord. Fortidnsminder, 1943, as summarized in J.S.G. U., Vol. XXXIII, 1942, p. 28), pottery will be absolutely older than any known Neolithic and in any case too old to have been borrowed from any immigrant Neolithic farmers locally. Moreover it would be con- venient to give stadial recognition to the fact that pottery and polished stone celts were made widely in northern Europe in contexts anterior to the first manifestations of local food production. Krichevski's view ('Mezolit i Neolit Evropy,' Kratkie Soobshcheniya, No. IV, pp. 1-12) that simple hoe cultivation was a contenmporary -alternative to the sedentary collecting of the known Mesolithic, though ethnographically plausible, still lacks archaeological documentation.

11 Amer. Anthr., Vol. XLV (1943), p. 341. 12 Drilling was of course used even in Upper Palaolithic,

but thick blocks were perforated by percussion still in the Mesolithic. In the Danube valley and elsewhere a hollow drill was being used before metal was available, and in any case metal was so prized in the early Bronze Age that it certainly would not have been used and consumed in making stone tools.

13 E.g., at Niederwyl: Keller, Lake Dwellings, p. 79. 14 Hatt (Landbrug i Danmarks Oldtid, p. 56) has effect-

ively criticized the pollen-analystic dating of the Walle plough. Vouga's ploughshares from the Lower Neolithic of L. Neuchatel (La Neolith. lacustre ancienne, p. 28) are doubtful.



Archcoloyical Ayes as Technological Stage8 9

for that matter of previous Stages. Theoretically, for example, the Neolithic should have begun with a ' mixed economy,' in which plant-cultivation or animal husbandry were subsidiary to hunting, fishing and collecting. And this is just what the earliest Neolithic settlements in the Near East-Sialk I, Merimde, Fayum A-disclose. But Danubian I or the Lower Neolithic of Western Switzerland notoriously reveal just the opposite, whereas in Danubian III or Upper Neolithic we seem to have a reversion to the 'mixed economy.'

MODAL DIFFERENCES IN THE UTILIZATION OF METAL In the Bronze Stage such discrepancies cannot be

ignored, if our purpose be to establish the general line of progress. Nor need they be. For the Stage's differentia, the industrial use of copper or bronze, entailed so much intercourse between distinct societies all over the known world, that chronological comparisons between the several local sequences can be established with far greater confidence and precision than in preceding Stages. Throughout seven- eighths of the time involved, some societies were keeping written records from which a chronology in terms of our reckoning can be deduced. Intercourse between barbarian and literate societies permits, even for the former, approximations to calendar dates a good deal sharper than anything geology, meteorology and palkeobotany can yet offer.

As a material for tools, metal offers two kinds of advantages over stone, bone or wood. In the first place it is in some respects intrinsically superior: tougher, susceptible of a finer edge, more durable. Secondly, as malleable and fusible, it can yield new kinds or genera of tools, and handier translations of older forms-new species. It is 'hard to estimate, even for the output of an individual craftsman, how much energy was saved or how much accuracy added by replacing, say, a stone celt by a copper chisel. Yet Steensberg's'5 experiments suggest that the saving effected by merely translating a flint sickle into bronze is considerably less than might have been anticipated. From the standpoint of social productivity it would be still harder to evaluate any increment of society's total output, having regard to the cost in social labour of extraction, manufacture and distribution. Against this would have to be set any economies, say in transportation by wheeled carts, that metal tools might indirectly effect.

Doubtless part of the increase in social productivity made possible by improvements in the instruments is due to the fact that, with such instruments,

15 Steensberg (Anci'ent Harvesting Implements, 1942, p. 23) has shown experimentally that bronze sickles of Danish types could reap in 60-66 minutes what took 68-73 minutes with their flint precursors.

amateurs can do jobs that only highly trained experts could execute with inferior equipment: 'Superior tools have partially done away with the tyranny of the master-craftsman' of pre-European, Neolithic Samoa.16 In practice, however, this will hold good only if the superior tools be reasonably cheap; Margaret Mead is actually speaking of factory-made iron tools. In so far as bronze was fantastically costly, the superiority of metal craft tools might just as well have intensified the ' tyranny ' of the few craftsmen who possessed them or, in class societies, of the priestly corporations, landowners or merchants who alone had the capital to acquire metal at all.

On the other hand, the formal improvements-the new genera and species of tools-are tangible and can be enumerated. I might mention in the first category carpenters' saws, nails, clamps, and tweezers capable of growing into small tongs; in "the second, reliable'7 shaft-hole axes, adzes and hammers, socketed chisels, adzes, gouges, axes, hammers and hoe blades, saddlers' knives, and so on.

Looked at from the latter standpoint, the archaeological record discloses that the extent to which metal was utilized at all in industry and the degree to which its advantages were exploited productively differed surprisingly between various provinces and periods. It is partly these differences of mode that have prompted Daniel's proposal to dissolve the old Bronze Age. It will, however, appear that the several modes need be neither synchronous nor homotaxial in all provinces. For this reason I have rejected any term like ' phase ' in favour of the word ' mode.' We can, I suggest, profitably and legitimately distinguish four modes in the use of copper and bronze, though we shall be able to relegate one to the 'Neolithic Stage,'

When in 1876 Pulszky'8 proposed to introduce a Copper Age between the Neolithic and Bronze Ages, he had in mind the use of native copper as a curious sort of stone that could be shaped by bending and hammering as well as by chipping and grinding. Such a use of copper did not universally precede ' metallurgy' in RPckard'sl9 sense and was not demonstrably a necessary prelude thereto. In so far as its products were only small ornaments, or slavish copies of Neolithic forms, as in Badarian and Amratian or Sialk I and II, the Copper Age has no significance as a progressive Stage in technological evolution; it can be treated as a mere facies of the Neolithic. But in the Balkans and Hungary, and possibly also in Iran, even the cold hammering of copper seems to have led

16 Margaret Mead, Coming of Age in Samoa. 17 So many 'Neolithic' perforated axe-heads have been

found broken across the shaft-hole that we must infer they were extravagantly fragile.

18 Congres inter. d'arch. et anthr., Buda-Pest, 1876, pp. 220ff. 19 Cf. Rickard, A.J.A., Vol. XLVIII, p. 15.



10 V. GORDON CHILDE

to the creation of shaft-hole adzes or hoes, if not as mutant types, at least as the first translations of Neolithic or Mesolithic forms that could be used effectively for chopping wood or breaking up soil and rock.20 I propose therefore to retain Pulszky's 'Copper Stage,' but to emphasize its hmited significance and doubtful relevance to the main sequence by giving it zero numeration: Mode 0.

Mode 1 will accordingly denote the sort of thing familiar from the 'Early Bronze Age' of Europe. Weapons and ornaments are made from copper and its alloys, but no mutant tools and hardly any implements adapted exclusively to industrial use. On the other hand, stone tools including celts are still made, and generally with as much care as in the Neolithic.

In Mode 2, on the contrary, copper and bronze are regularly used in handicraft, but not in husbandry, nor for rough work. The metal types include knives, saws, and specialized axes, adzes and chisels. On domestic sites, ground stone celts, flint blades and similar implements are still abundant.

Mode 3 is distinguished by the use of metal also in agriculture and for rough work. It is symbolized in the archaeological record positively by the production of metal sickles, hoe blades or even hammer heads and negatively by a certain decline in the lithic industry, but not by its complete suppression.

To justify and clarify this division, let me sketch the sequences stratigraphically established in three well documented archaoological provinces.

THE MODAL SEQUENCE IN EGYPT Egypt illustrates all four modes. There we have

a long and exceptionally complete record of the use of metal. It is enlivened by graphic pictures of the coppersmith at work and of other workers using, or not using, his products to prove the negative (see Fig. 2). In the Badarian and Amratian a few pins or harpoons hammered or cut out of copper

FIG. I.-COPrEPn SAW WITH WOODEN HANDLE: IST DYNASTY, MASTABA, SAQQAA. 1/7. (after Annales du Service)

define Mode 0. By Gerzean times cast copper celts21 and midrib daggers, -coexisting with a wide range of

20 Cf. the axe and adze from Gabarevo, Childe ) Dawn of European Civilisation (1939), p. 124.

21 Frankfort, Studies, Vol. II, pp. 8 f.; Nature, Vol. CXXX (1932), p. 625.

superbly flaked flint artifacts, are symptomatic of Mode 1. But by Dynasty I22 the craftsmen attached to great estates were equipped with copper axe and adze blades, bare chisels, saws (see Fig. 1), bits, several kinds of knife, tweezers and needles. But wooden mallets23 and stones held in the bare palm still served as hammers even among metal-workers.24 Indeed the latter's equipment was rudimentary. His anvil was a stone cushioned on wood; crucibles and hot metal he must hold between two stones, or with green withies in place of tongs (as in Fig. 2); in lieu of bellows, hapless assistants had to blow down reeds tipped with clay nozzles. No wonder ' the metal-worker's skin was like a crocodile's' ! As for the husbandman, his equipment was Neolithic: wooden plough, wooden hoe, curved wooden sickles armed with flint teeth (see Plate II, A), wooden rakes, and wooden mallets to break up the clods.25 While stout copper chisels and wedges were un- doubtedly supplied to the employees of the royal quarries and mines,26 the bulk of their labour was tediously accomplished with stone mauls and flint picks, the fragility of which is demonstrated by the broken pieces lying about the sites in thousands.

After the acquisition of an Asiatic empire under the New Kingdom metal was used more freely, and tin-bronze began to be employed at the same time as unalloyed copper.27 Even farmers sometimes had metal sickles28 and perhaps metal blades for their hoes.29 The smith's labour was lightened by a primi- tive sort of bellows and by the enlargement of tweezers into tongs capable of holding small objects (see Fig. 4). But for lifting crucibles a pair of pliant rods, presumably of green wood, handled by two persons, were still required, while the stone hammer was held in the naked palm as under the Old Kingdom. Indeed as late as 400 B.C. a coppersmith is depicted in the

22 In a mastaba of this age Emery recently found 68 knives, 7 saws, 32 tweezers, 79 chisels, 149 adze blades and. hundreds of needles: Annales du service, Vol. XXXIX (1939), pp. 428-434.

23 Petrie, TW, p. 40. 24 For what follows see esp. Klebs, " Die Reliefs des alten

Reiches," Abh. Heidelberg. Akad., phil.-hist. KI., No. 3. But cf. Wainwright, Man, 1944, No. 75.

25 Cf. Lucas (Anc. Egyptian Materials, p. 166): " Egypt was an agricultural country where the greater proportion of the people did not use copper " till the New Kingdom. I don't know why Emery calls some of the larger adzes (n. 22) "hoe-blades."

26 Somers Clark and Engelbach, Ancient Egyptian Masonry (1930). Cf. Caton-Thompson, The Desert Fayum, Vol. I, p. 104; Petrie, Researches in Sinai, p. 161.

27 Wainwright, Antiquity, Vol. XVII (1943), p. 96; Vol. XVIII, p. 100 ; Lucas, pp. 66, 209.

28 Klebs, " Die Reliefs des neuen Reiches " (Abh. Heidel- berg., No. 9), p. 10.

29 Petrie, TW, p. 18, M39, reign of Rameses II; but cf. Sedment, Vol. I, p. 8-Dynasty IX!



Archa3ological Ages as Technological Stalges 1

t~ ~~ ~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A, , C7 >?<I!i a ,< l i / + W; <E \S~~~~~

""F SN

Fxc\. 2.RP-AIG CA PETR AN B GYECSG TOM OF /EMA _ \\ I XI 11 \ \ 1(after ebr

tomb of Petosiris30 still using this wrist-shattering procedure and the same inefficient tweezer-tongs (see P1. II, B), almost two centuries after the Attic smith had acquired the modern equipment familiar from black-figured vases (see Fig. 12).

THE MODAL SEQUENCE IN CIS-ALPINE EUROPE AND UPPER ITALY

Affectionate study of the relics left by our illiterate ancestors has yielded a record of the use of metal this side of the Alps that is almost as complete as the Egyptian. But the pattern is different: Mode 2 is nowhere distinguishable, Mode 0 only in Hungary and perhaps Ireland; for the daggers of the Beaker folk are cast products of intelligent metallurgy.31

30 Lefebvre, Le Tombeau de P&tosiris, p. 51, pls. vii, ix. 31 Note that the West European daggers were cast, as at

I ast one mould is known: Childe, Dawn, p. 213; Cas. V.S. Mus. Olomouci, Vol. XLI (1929), pl. xi.

In the former area alone did the Copper Stage bring forth the significant innovations mentioned above: axe-adzes, axe-hammers and the like. They have been stratigraphically assigned to their proper horizon, the Bodrogkeresztur culture, before the Early Bronze Age of Toszeg and Perjamos, by Banner, Csalgovics, Hillebrand, Roska and Tompa during the last decade.32 Round the copEper lodes of Slovakia, Transylvania and the Balkans such tools are surprisingly numerous; away from the sources only a few have turned up, in the western Ukraine, Silesia, Saxo- Thuringia and Austria.33 Nowhere did they supersede a Neolithic equipment.

In the succeeding Early Bronze Age, metal-generally tin-bronze-was worked, and worked intelligently, throughout Central Europe and in the British Isles.

32 Hillebrand, Arch. Hung., Vol. IV, p. 49; Tompa. B.R.G.K., Vol. XXIV-V, pp. 51-9.

33 Childe, Danube, p. 204.



12 V. GORDON CHILDE

W. . '-S

Fi:G. 3.-CARPENTERS AND METAL-WORKERS: ToMB OF REKHMAJIE

(after Newberry)

But the only common industrial tools of metal are celts that could also serve as weapons; the only knives are knife-daggers. A few hoards and still fewer graves include, in addition, small and simple craft tools like chisels (see Fig. 5) and tracers34, probably used primarily by the metal-workers themselves. On domestic sites,35 celts and other Neolithic types are so common that the "Age " of their occupation was mis- taken till the ceramic evidence was studied. Even the bronze-smith himself continued to use largely stone tools, the grooved hammer being perhaps his invention. Whenever it began, this mode lasted at least till 1400 B.C., on the evidence of the segmeented

24 Mar.yon, Ant. J., Vol. XVIII (1938), pp. 243-9. 25 Childe, ibid., pp. 273, 288; Schrainil, UBM, p. 107.

fayence beads imported from the East Mediterranean, which are associated with its products.36

The Late Bronze Age presents a radical contrast. From hoards, and settlements too, come single- (or, in the British Isles, double-) bladed knives unsuitable for warlike use, sickles, new and mutant industrial tools, socketed gouges,37- chisels,37 adzes,37 axes, and hammers,38 tanged chisels, bits and rimers,39 and

36 A.J.A., Vol. XLIV, pp. 23f. 37 These are found already in Reinecke D. 38 Probably only for metal-workers and best represented in

late (Larnaudian) hoards and foundaries: Carlton Rode, Evans, p. 181; Velem St. Vid (von Miske, pl. xxix, 1-4), etc.

39 Velem St. Vid (ibid., no. 13; Bologna fondarie, Petrie, TW, p. 39.



Archweological Ages as Technological Stages 13

FIG. 4.-METAL-WORKER TTsrNG ToNGs: ToMB oF REKiHMARE (after Newberry)

saws.40 Many of these specialized tools seem to have been used only, or primarily, by smiths, and the latter were further equipped with small embossing anvils, files,41 and tweezers enlarged up to 28 cm. in length to serve as tongs.42 Miners in the Eastern Alps used gads with socketed bronze points, and sledge-hammers with heavy bronze heads (see Fig. 6),43 which none the less copy the shape of contemporary wooden mallets with a palheolithic pedigree.

On domestic sites a comparative scarcity of stone celts and a certain decline of the flint work must be connected with a more general replacement of stone by metal even for comparatively rough work. In Denmark, "' the Late Bronze Age dwelling-places show indeed that the old flint techniques surviveed in a simplified form and were applied to the production of certain common articles of daily use. The thick-butted flint axe itself persisted, but the metal celt was widely used, the most democratic product of the Bronze Age."144 Nor was it only in the distant North that the bronze celt failed to replace alto- gether the type fossil of the Neolithic Stage. The continued use of polished stone celts even in the

40 Sophus Muller thought such wore used for cutting away the jets from bronze castings: cf. Ebert, Real, s.v. Sage; Grimes, Gtuide, p. 72; Chantre, Age du Bronze, pls. xxv, xliii; Hampel, Bronzkcor, Vol. III, pl. cxxxii, etc.

41 Velem St. Vid (von Miske, pl. xxix); Larnaud (Chantre, pI. xliii) , Hallstatt; Bologna (Evans, p. 184), ete.

42 Heathery Burn Cave, Evans, p. 185. 43 Kyrle, (Osterr. Kunsttopographie, Vol. XVII, p. 1 (1918);

Andree,,Bergbau in der Vorzeit, 1922. 44 Brondsted, Danmarks Oldtid, Vol. II, p. 258.

Late Bronze Age has been emphasized by recent excavations on habitation sites: the Lausitz village of BIuch near Berlin,45 east Hungarian tells,46 Fort Harrouard in Normandy,47 and others. And Stone48 has revealed the continuance of flint-mining, and the wealth of that industry, in Late Bronze Age England.

Such survivals in themselves weaken Daniel's contrast of the Late Bronze Age as a 'Full Metal Age ' with the ' eochalcic episode ' of Early Bronze; and this contrast itself is much less sharp in Central Europe than in Britain. A real Middle Bronze Age, however brief and transitional, is discernible in the basins of the Po, Danube, Oder, Elbe, Rhine and Rhone. It witnessed a veritable extension of the industrial use of metal, but in the direction of Mode 3, not of Mode 2. If saws,49 socketed chisels,5 and embossing anvils,51 appropriate to Mode 2, do

45 Kiekebusch, Das bronzezeitl. Dorf, p. 76. 46 Childe, Danube, p. 379; cf. p. 360: Rhenish urnfield

culture. 47 Philippe, Fort Harrouard, pp. 47, 58, 70, 88, 104;

L'Anthr., Vol. XLVI (1936), p. 566. 48 M1ining, W.A.M., Vol. XLVII ( 1936), p. 482; ibid., p. 650

(technique); Childe, P.C.B.I., p. 193. 49 Velk'a Dobra barrow, Schrainil, p. 134. 50 In the North they may belong here chronologically and

typologically: Kersten, 7ur alter. nord. Bronzezeit, p. 71, Taf. VI, 6. Of course this Northern form is inspired by the socketed chisels of bone which, beginning in the Maglemosean, were still used in Passage Grave times in Denmark (Aarboger, 1939, p. 26), and in Shetland in the Late Bronze Age (PS, p. 183).

51 Nova VeS, Velim, Schranil, p. 145; Stocky, BAB, pl. xl; Porcieu-Amblagnieu (Isere), Dechelette, Vol. II, p. 173.



14 V. GORDON CHILDE

FIG. 5.-AuNJETITZ CHISELS: RADOTIN AND KAM ?K, BOHEMIA. . (after Schr6nil)

emerge in this Middle Bronlze Age, sickles are still more prominent, and they are taken as distinctive of Mode 3. Indeed, in Upper Italy Terremare II seems to use bronze fully in the latter Mode.

Moreover, the Late Bronze Age itself covers a long period of time, beginning and ending differently in the several provinces and nowhere easy to date with any precision. As defined by the cut-and-thrust sword and the socketed axe, it should begin in Central Europe soon after 1300 B.C., and deep mining in the Eastern Alps cannot start much later. But the big hoards and 'foundaries ' that best illustrate industrial equipment were mostly deposited in Hall- statt times nearer 700 B.C., while the Danish dwelling places and the Heathery Burn smithy,52 whence came the sole European tongs of the Bronze Stage, may come down to as late as 400 B.C.

EVIDENCE FROM MESOPOTAMIA

A third pattern seems to be disclosed in Meso- potamia, in so far as any sequence can be deduced from the terribly incomplete record there. Till Early Dynastic III, indeed, no inventory of Sumerian metal types can be attempted. But by 2500 B.C. the many specialized chisels and saws, as well as

52 Brondsted, Vol II, p. 152 ; iencken in P.R.I.A., Vol. XLVII (1942), C, pp. 26-7.

nails,53 and clamps,54 from Kish, Lagash, Shuruppak and Ur are obvious symptoms of Mode 2 at least.

On the other hand, while stone celts were quite common in Gawra VI in Assyria55, and composite flint sickles, possibly merely ritual, were found in the Temple Oval at Khafaje,56 metal sickles were freely used even in rural Gawra.57 There, too, the smith had perhaps already elongated tweezers into tongs, 42 cm. in length,58 as efficient as, but of a different form from, those used by New Kingdom smiths in Egypt a millennium later. Moreover, the cele- brated 'transverse axe ' appears first in Uruk times with a broad blade, more suitable for a hoe than an adze,59 and reappears in the same form about 1000 B.C.

among barbarian mountaineers in Transcaucasia (see Fig. 7).6' Indeed, Deimel claims that a " spade or hoe, mentioned in texts of Urukagina's time, may well have had a metal blade,"61 but his statement is not supported by the determinatives used in other texts. Still, it does look as if the use of metal approximated to Mode 3 in Sumer by the middle of the third millennium.

In any case, in the sequel the archaeological record discloses no such multiplication of metal tools and novel types as serve to distinguish Mode 3 from 1 or 2, elsewhere. No doubt the unilaterally winged adze (see Fig. 8), traceable as far back as 1800 B.C. at least,62 grew after 1500 B.C. into a veritable socketed celt (or chisel)63, while a hoe blade constructed on the same principle is attested about the same time.64 But in view of the superior shaft-hole tools current already in the previous millennium, we need not be

13 E.g. for attaching the tyres to chariot wheels: Langdon and Watelin, Kish, Vol. IV, p. 33.

54 Cf. Woolley, Ur Excavations, Vol. II, p. 64. 55 Speiser, pp. 85-6; no less than 29 from this small level! "I OfP, Vol. LIII (Delougaz, The Temple Oval), pp. 30f. 57 Speiser, pl. xlviii; cf. also Andrae, Die archd. Ischtar-

tempel, Fig. 63 (Assur, G.); de Genouillac, Foouilles de Telloh, Vol. I (1934), p. 89; Vol. II, p. 92. Christian suggests that some of Woolley's " wrought axes " from TUr, types S. 17-18, and one from Chagar Bazar, 5 (Iraq, Vol. III, p. 27, Fig. 8, 3) should also be regarded as sickles.

58 Speiser, p. 109, pl. li, a; of. MDP., Vol. XXV, p. 231. 59 At Susa, MDIP, Vol. XX, p. 104; Vol. XXV, p. 195,

illustrated Childe, NLMAE, Fig. 90. Cf. also the stone copy from Gawra IX, Speiser, pl. xlii, 5, and the " her- minette " from Sialk III, 4 (Ghirshman, Vol. 1, pl. xxiii, 8).

60 Infra, App. B. 61 "Sumerische Tempelwirtschaft," Analecta Orientalia,

Vol. II, p. 82; Gadd doubts his assertion: the only determinative found with the instrument is that for wood, not for metal.

62 At Susa inseribed, Rev. d'Assyr., Vol. XXVII (1930), pp. 187f.

63 Starr, Nuzi, p. 472, pl. cxxiv, H. The same development of a socket is noticeable at Alishar; Gezer (Macalister, Vol. II, p. 85, Fig. 276); Gerar (Petrie, pl. xxiii, 14), etc., and again South Russia (E.S.A., Vol. iii, p. 123).

64 Tell Sifr; of. Petrie, TW, p. 18.



Archoaological Ages as Technological Stages

FIG. 6.-WOODEN MALLET, ;13BRONZE GAD POINTS AND HAMMElR HEAD ,7; GROOVED STONE HAMMER, : MITTEBERG, AUSTRIA

misled by the formal parallelism with a type fossil of Late Bronze Age Europe.

LOCAL AND MODAL VARIETIES Additional sequences are tabulated in the appendix,

to illustrate the application of my scheme to other regions from which data are available. Only a few deductions need be noted here. The copper saws (see Fig. 9) and chisels, appearing rather surprisingly among the crudely cast metal weapons and superbly worked stone arms and implements from Los Millares, Carmona and Alcal'a65 proclaim the so-called ' Copper Age' of Almeria, Andalusia and Algarve as truly 'Bronze.' ,Hence the modal sequence in the Iberian, as in the Balkan, peninsula would be Modes 0, 2, 3.

On the other hand, in Asia Minor and probably northern Iran Mode 3 follows directly upon Mode 1; as in cis-Alpine Europe and Upper Italy. In particular, if Imperial Hittite metallurgy be homotaxial- and almost synchronous-with the 'purer' facies of Europe's Late Bronze Age (Reinecke D), the post- Hittite 'chalcosiderian' hoards and cemeteries of Transcaucasia and Sialk present a striking parallel to our 'Larnaudian' hoards and the Villanovan fondarie.

Everywhere the persistence of a lithic technology, side by side with the metallurgic, is as clear as in Egypt and cis-Alpine Europe. Thus, not to mention flint blades and sickle teeth, even polished stone celts survive not only in Early Helladic Greece, Troy

65 All the daggers from Los Millares and at least one from Aleala' have been cast in one-piece (open-hearth) moulds; notches take the place of rivet holes.

I-V, Thermi, but also in the Hittite layers at Alishar and Boghaz-keui itself; and Schmidt66 found more celts in Hissar III, which is typologically 'Late Bronze Age,' than in earlier settlements.

Our method of approach inevitably makes abstrac- tion of differences of form which are nevertheless historically significant. Notoriously even the relatively simple artifacts produced in Modes 1 and 2- axes, chisels, daggers, tweezers, saws-assume easily recognizable local types.67 That is equally true and just as significant of the new tools confined to Mode 3. For example, a cursory survey would disclose eight or nine quite distinct types of sickle corresponding, as Steensberg68 has shown, to different methods of mounting and handling. Besides the four funda- mental types with local variants long recognized in Europe69-Type 1, the south-west Alpine grooved sickle; Type II, the north Alpine button sickle; Type III, the Transylvanian hooked sickle; and Type IV, the British and West Mediterranean socketed sickle--, we could distinguish also Type V, the Northern serrated crescentic sickle70; Type VI, the Aegean gently curved tanged sickle (see Fig. 14)71;

66 Excavations at Tepe Hissar, 1931-3, p. 220. 67 Childe, Bronze Age, p. 24; NLMIAE, p. 295. 68 Cf. also Antiquity, Vol. XVII, p. 197. 69 As classified by Schmidt, ZfE., Vol. XXXVI, pp. 416 if;

all illustrated in my Bronze Age. 70 Steensberg, pp. 74, 162. 71 Differentiated by the very modest curvature of the

blade: examples, Palaikastro (pl. xxv, G, H); Gournia (Montelius, GP, pl. xvi); Acropolis hoard (ibid., Fig. 491); Zygouries (p. 203); aTroy VI (Schliemann, Ilios, p. 604); Enkomi foundary (with folded socket 'to the tang), (Murray, etc., Excavs. in Cyprus, no. 1483).



16 V. GORDON CHILDE

3~~~~~~~~~

5 t

2 Q 2 4

FiG. 7.-i, 4, AXES; 3, 5, SICKLES; 6, 7, TRANSVERSE AxES or HOES: HOARD FROM ZENITI (TRANSCAIUCASIA). .

(after Yessen)

Type VII, the Asiatic sickle with bent-over tang72; Type VIII, the Mesopotamian narrow-tanged sickle73; and perhaps Type IX, the tangless riveted sickle.74

Few, if any, of these can be derived from one another75; for some distinct, and presumiably earlier,

72 The really distinctive feature is the, way the blade curves back from the tang rather than the latter's loop. The reliable specimens, in so far as dated, i.e., Tell Sifr; Nuzi (Starr, pl. cxxiv, E); Alalakh (J.H.S., Vol. LVI, 1936, p. 130); Ugarit (B.S.P.F., 1931, pp. 75 and 473; Syria, Vol. XVI, p. 143); Alishar (OIP, Vol. XXIX, Fig. 289); Boghaz-keui Abh. preuss. A.kad., phil-hist. KI., 1935, pl. xxi, 11); Troy VI; Sialk cemetery A (CGhirshman, Vol. II, p. 19), seem later than 1500 B.c. The interpretation as sickles of earlier objects from Ur and Chagar Bazar (note 57) is doubtful, as is an alleged specimen from Gournia.

73 Andrae, Die Archdischen Ischtartempel, p. 83. 74 Speiser, Gawra, pl. xlviii, 1. If the hole be really

* designed to take a rivet the much later Siberian and east Russian sickles could be derived from it, as Steensberg suggests (p. 148), but Tallgren (E.S.A., Vol. XI, p. 115) regards these as prii ing knives.

76 In particular I agree with Ghirshman (Sialk, Vol. II p. 82) that Type III cannot be derived from VII; at Sialk III replaces VII in cemetery B.

non-metallic prototypes are actually known. Type I may go back to the 'jaw-bone' form of wood and flint, as represented at Solferino and in Egypt from Dynasty V onwards76; Type II perhaps to the Stenild type. Type V is a translation of the crescentie flint sickle70 and Type VI of flint-armed reaping knives such as are known from Karanovo, in Bulgaria,, and from Cueva de los Murcielagos, in southern Spain.77 The reversed curve and bent tang of Type VII can alike be explained from the earliest dynastic wooden sickle-mounts (see Plate II, A) as recently found in the tomb of Hemaka,78 while the forward curve of Type VIII is no less clearly foreshadowed in the clay sickles of al'Ubaid age.

Conversely, formal agreements between the new metal types may result from parallel translation of ,common non-metallic tools, since such were current even in Bronze 3, or from pure convergence. Thus the formal pedigree of the bronze sledge-hammers,. (see Fig. 6) used by. Alpine miners and Cypriote smiths can be traced back through a series of Egyptian wooden mallets to the Palaeolithic hammer of reindeer antler found at Mezin. On the other hand, the- Northern socketed chisel of bronze 'looks like a metallic version of the socketed chisel of bone which persisted from Maglemosean times in Denmark to the Passage Grave period, at least, and in Shetland right down to the Late Bronze Age itself.50 But the late Anatolian and Mesopotamian socketed chisels, almost certainly developed from unilaterally winged implements, like that shown in Fig. 8, for their sockets are normally formed by folding, while, Sumerian dart heads had been provided with, sockets in this way during the IIIrd millennium.

E kisi dint-ma (?),

Sf(it >f ITTTT 1- ; +: Pi:

FIG. 8-UNILATERALLY WINGED ADZE oR HOE SUSA.

(after Revue d'As8yriologie)

76 L'Anthr., Vol. XXIX (1918-19), pp. 395, 408. 77 Antiquity, Vol. XIII (1939), p. 345; L'Anthr., Vol.

XXIX, p. 412. 78 Emery, " Tomb of Ilemaka" (Excavations at Saqqara),

p1. xv; the same form is represented in hieroglyphics of Dyn. III, but the " jawbone " type is depicted by Dyn. V.



Archweological Ages as Technological Stages 17

FIG. 9.-COPPER CHISEL, DAG#GE-R 13LADES AND SAW: ALCALA, iNO. III.

CHRONOLOGICALX ANILE SOCIOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS OF MIODES

Analyses, distinguishing uinalloyed. copper fromn any bronze, are no help in eitlher chronological or modal classification. Some Sumerian tools already con- taiined tin before 2500 B.C., but bronze was relatively rarer in Sargonid times. There was m-ore cop?peir than bronze in Tutankhamen's tomb,79 and in Boghaz-keui under the Hittite Empire.80 1In South Russia socketed celts and the rest of the ' Late Bronze Age ' industry were still made of unalloyed copper.81 The term 'Bronze Age ' is a misnomner, as Rickard says, but 'Copper Age ' would be stilI mwore misleading, and his alternative, ' Metallurgic Age,' fails to do justice to the significance of iron, which I hope to establish.

The first manifest;ations of Mode 3 in Egypt, Ania- tolia, the Aegean and even Central Europe began so nearly at the same time (within the large units of archa,,oloorical time) that it would be tempting to seek some historical event, or complex of events, to account for the general reductioni in the cost of mnetal that its populari'zation implies. In cis-Alpine Europe deep mining, involving also tbe. reduction of sulpbide

79 Lucas, p. 178. 80 Przeworski, p. 1J01. 81 Yessen, IGAIMK, Vol. CX (1935), Tab. III, nos. 8, 13.

ores, must have been a decisive factor. But the available analyses imply that copper from sulphide ores was being used over a thousand years earlier, in Thermi V and Troy 1-I1.82 In Egypt, on the contrary, copper and tin were fruits of Asiatic empire; and in Mesopotamia it remains to be shown that the supplies and employment of metal were appreciably extended at the crucial date. So the search has led to no definite result so far.

The mnodes of using metal here distinguished do not follow one another in the same order everywhere. They are therefore not homotaxial; nor are they systadial, in the economic-sociological hierarchy of Morgan and Engels. North of the Alps, Europeans were just as much illiterate barbarians in the Late Bronze Age (Mode 3) as in the Early Bronze Age (Mode 1). Using metal in Mode 2, the Egyptians were fully civilized and literate, the townsfolk of Troy or Early Helladic Greece illiterate, and the villagers of Portugal seem complete barbarians. Nevertheless the multiplication of craftsmen's tools distinguishing Mode 2 is presumably the archaeological counterpart of an increased specialization in industry, of a further ' separation of handicraft from husbandry.' If so, the Bronze Stage communities of the west Mediterranean, as of the east, would be further from the hypothetical self-sufficiency of the Stone Age, and further on the road to economic articulation and urbanization, than the dispersed groups of temperate Europe. In fact the-cemeteries of Los Millares and Alcala do point in the same direction.

ACHIEVEMENTS AND LIMITATIONS OF THE BRONZE STAGE

Archaeology has detected wheeled vehicles only- where and when tools (and particularly saws) confined to Modes 2 or 3 were available. 'Copper Age;' Spain83 and Middle Minoan Crete84 are decisive instances of the first case; early Mesopotamia, Shang China and the Late Bronze Age of Sweden, Central Europe and Britain, of the second. Another pregnant application of the wheel idea, the windlass, is attested in the East Alpine copper mines,43 still in a pure Bronize Stage context, albeit absolutely late. Egypt already had the shaduf for raisinig water. These quite stubstantial extensions of man's control over external nature, may confidently be regarded as conditioned by Bronze technology. That is not

82 Przeworski, p. 92; cf. Schaeffer, Mission en Chypre, p. 101.

83 Represented on the schematic rock paintings assigned to the ' Copper Age ' by Breuil (Rock Paintings of Sotthern Andalusia, p. 86).

84 Evans (P. of M., iv, 2, p. 797) stresses the significant juxtaposition of the symbols for wheel and saw in tablets of Linear B at Knossos; see Fig. 10 here.

B



18 V. GORDON CHILDE

A _

g 1- FA/?1 -4 'e

FIG. I 0.-SAW AND WHEEL SIGNS JUXTAPOSED ON MINOAN TABLET: KNOSSOS (after Evans)

certainly true of the plough, nor of the sailing boat, yet neither is reliably attested before the Bronze Age, and till the nineteenth century the plough was used only where Bronze technology had been established in the past.85

Contrasted with these very real advances are no less striking deficiencies. As far as we know, for 'instance, no society in the Bronze Stage disposed of cranes, nor of block-and-tackle, nor even of such ,commonplace but seemingly, indispensable tools as hinged tongs and shears.86

To evaluate the Bronze Stage's claim to retention as a category in archaeological classification, its equipment with all its shortcomings must be compared with that of the Iron Stage, with which it should be contrasted.

THE IRON STAGE

Technical equipment wrought of iron is less well known than that cast in earlier industrial metals. Iron is far more susceptible to corrosion than copper, or bronze. There is nothing in a rusty iron tool to attract a collector, whereas a bronze one.is always

85 Whiting Bishop, Antiquity, Vol. X, (1936). pp. 261 ff. 86 While sheep were plucked, goats were shorn even in

Sumerian times, and. shearing seems to have been applied to sheep in the Nuzi tablets (G. 1500). The instrument, termed in Akkadian maqassu, while-doubtless of metal, can hardly have been a clipper with paired blades, since then it should have appeared as a grammatical dual; it was presumably just a sort of knife. (Information kindly supplied by Messrs. Gadd and Sidney Smith.)

romantic and, if nicely patinated, quite handsome. Till very recently excavators in the most important centres of the Iron Age world have concentrated their attention on the recovery of architectural monuments, art objects and inscribed documents, and have treated ugly and banausic tools with lofty contempt. Even had they been less eclectic, the iron tools would probably have perished, as installations capable of treating them are recent additions to such museums as have any at all.

At the same time, the industrial use of iron began in the Dark Age between the collapse of the Minoan and Hi'ttite civilizations and the eclipse of Egypt, on the one hand, and the Egyptian revival and the dawn of Greek history, on the other. As a result there are very few completely reliable historical dates in the east Mediterranean between 1100 and 700 B.C., and naturally still less in cis-Alpine Europe.

None the less I suggest that we might conveniently distinguish two modes in the use of iron, in the enlargement of human control over brute nature by the use of iron tools. Let me exclude from the Iron Stage, as irrelevant, both the use of iron as a precious metal for ornaments or ceremonial weapons (Tutankh- amen's iron dagger no more symbolized an Iron Age than Shubad's saw symbolized a Gold Age) and also its occasional use for small objects, like knives, while bronze was still the normal material for implements as for weapons. I should have no hesitation in classing the Villanovan cemeteries and those of Sialk A and B as Late Bronze Age, just as much as



Archceological Ages as Technological Stages 19

Larnaudian hoards or the foundary in Heathery Burn cave, were I but sure that the settlements would display an equal poverty in substantial iron tools.

THE FIRST MODE OF TILE INDUSTRIAL USE OF IRON The Iron Age really dawns only when the new metal

is used for large and heavy tools, in other words, when it begins to replace bronze, and also stone, in husbandry and for heavy work. Its commencement will accordingly be signalized by the Tiryns hoard,87 with its big iron sickle (perhaps as early as 1200 B.c.), by the heavy axe-adze, ploughshare and chisels from Golzii Kule, Tarsus,88 and by the sickles, hoes and ploughshares from Gerar (see Fig. 11),89 Tell el Mut- sellim90 and other Palestinian sites.91 In Assyria we

2 T

FIG. 11.-HoE BLADES AND PLOUGHSHARE OF IRON: GERAR. 1C,2, A;3, W.(after Petrie)

87 Ath. Mitt., Vol. LV, p. 136. 88 A.J.A., Vol. XLI, p. 277. 89 Petrie, Gerar, pls. xxvi, 1-8; xxvii, 8-20. 90 Schumacher, Tell el Mutsellim, p. 130. 91 E.g., Bliss, Mound of Many Cities, pp. 105-8; Macalister,

Excavs. at Gezer, Vol. II, pp. 34, 32, n. 2.

find iron used not only for agricultural implements and entrenching tools, but also for grappling irons and other novel military devices, by 850 B.C. In Egypt92 the use of iron in this mode begins after 663 B.C., while still earlier, in Hallstatt Europe, iron was replacingf stone as bronze had never done-

In this first mode of its effective use tools of iron are mainly copies, often slavish copies, of stone or bronze ones. In Palestine, where the bronze sickle was almost unknown, the blacksmith imitated the serrated edge of the flint-armed wooden sickle, just as in Hallstatt Britain he laboriously forged imita- tions of the socketed celt which the bronze-smith could cast so easily. Few, if any, new industrial genera or species emerge.

But metal was evidently available and used on an unprecedented scale. The farmer, in any case, is now equipped with cheap but efficient metal tools for clearing the land and breaking up the soil. Miners, quarrymen and similar workers must have benefited no less. The use of iron picks in road building is expressly mentioned by Assurnasirpal, about $50 B.a.9 Such works as Sennacherib's aqueduct, the subter- ranean tunnels that brought water to Samos, and Etruscan drainage works in Italy are scarcely con- ceivable without iron tools.

THE SECOND MODE OF THE INDUSTRIAL USE OF IRON

Then, among the vastly augmented army of workers now accustomed to the use of metal tools, some were clever enough to devise new species and even new genera of implements, and some societies accepted and standardized their inventions. Thus began a second mode of using iron. In Greece it is proclaimed already in the 6th century by hinged tongs, frame saws, several specialized varieties of hammer (see Fig. 12),9 and the lathe,95 and before the end of the 4th century, by hinged compasses96 and true paired shears.97 Its culmination in Hellenistic and Imperial Roman times brings forth metal-bladed spades, seythes and a bewildering variety of other specialized agricultural tools,98 and a still greater multiplicity of craftsmen's

92 Lucas, p. 197. 93 Quoted by Wainwright, Antiquity, Vol. X (1936), p. 20. 94 Illustrated on black-figured vases, Darembourg and

Saglio, s.v. Fornax; Cloche, Les Classes, les Metiers et le Troffique, pp. 29 ff.

95 Cloche, op. cit., p. 59. 96 .5th century, Cloche, I.c. .9 Used by a barber on a Tanagra figurine, Cloche, op. cit.,

p. 72; actual specimens, Wiegand and Schrader, Priene, pp. 387 ff, Fig. 514.

98 E.g., Wiegand and Sebrader, Figs. 495-594; Maiuri, Casa del Menandro, p. 463 ; Petrie, T W, pls. lvii, lix, lxvii, lxix; Reinach, Cat. Mu8see nat. de St. Germain, Vol. I (1917), Figs. 273, 277-9.

B2



20 V. GoRDoN CHILDE

FIG. 12.-G:R:EEK SMITHY FROM A BLACK-FIGURDED VASE

tools, including the plane,99 the auger,100 nail-heading anvils,101 and draw-blocks for wire.102

Moreover, first in Iron Stage 2, and therefore presumably as a result of the new metallic equipment, emerge other productive implements of no less pregnant import. Somewhere about 500 B.c. rotary querns103 began to replace the saddle quern that had served throughout the Bronze Stage, while cranes took the place of the ramps that had alone been available to Bronze Stage builders for raising weights.104 The corn mill and the trapetum, using rotary motion and animal motive power, should belong to much the same chronological horizon.

Moreover, in Hellenistic times water wheels and gearing already herald the dawn of a new technological stage, the Stage of Power Production. But, though not for purely technological reasons, its effective expansion was delayed for over a thousand years. Thus, the Iron Stage is also historically an Age; for it was nowhere superseded for two thousand years after its commencement. To this extent it is comparable in absolute duration with the Bronze Age.

COMPARISON BETWEEN THE BRONZE AND IRON STAGES

In comparison with the Bronze Stage, even Bronze Stage 3, the universal availability of cheap and efficient iron tools must have involved an increment to social productivity quite comparable in scale with what followed the reduction in the cost of metal in Bronze 3.

99 Petrie, TW, p. 39. 100 Ibid. 101 Reinach, Cat. Mus. nat. de St. Germain, Fig. 275, 8630;

Mercer, Ancient Carpenters' Tools (Bucks. Co. Hist. Soc., Doylestown, Pa, 1929).

102 Fre6mont, M6m. Soc. pour I'Encouragement de l'Industrie nat.

103 Childe, Antiquity, Vol. XVII (1943), pp. 1.9-26. 104 Cloche, Les Classes, p. 62; Darembourg and Saglio, s.v.

Machina.

If so, it would deserve recognition over against the latter in any scientific classification. If it be objected that my estimate of this increment is subjective, let me again invoke as criteria the new species and genera of tools and contrast Iron Stage 2 with Bronze Stage 3 from that angle. To appreciate the gulf it would suffice to compare the 6th century Greek smithies depicted on black-figured vases (see Fig. 12) with those represented in New Kingdom tomb paintings (see Fig. 13), without attempting a numerical evaluation by setting side by side the fairly exhaustive lists of Bronze Age tools given in the section on Modal Differences in the Utilization of Metal (above) with the very incomplete list of iron tools offered in the last section. By the beginning of our era all the main species of manual tools employed in handicraft or husbandry today were already in vogue; only scissors remained to be added in Byzantine times,105 and the screw complex with the brace in the Middle Ages.

As for the technological inventions that may be regarded as indirectly evoked by the contrasted industrial metals, even the few I have listed under the Iron Age alone exceed numnerically the novel by- products of bronze technology-essentially the wheel and the windlass.

Accordingly the direct and indirect advances in human control over the environment achieved through the use of iron, at least according to Mode 2, are equal and more than equal to those of Bronze Modes 2 and 3. On the other hand, Bronze Modes 2 and 3 do denote such a degree of technical advance beyond the highest achievements of the Neolithic as to constitute a distinct and significant stage in progress. If Bronze I, like the Copper Age, might theoretically be eliminated, there are grave practical difficulties in

105 Wiegand and Schrader, Priene, Fig. 513.



Archcaological Ages as Technological Stages 21

-~

C. C

sa /e> L - /12- 3CC;-

FIG. 13.-METAL-WORKERS FROM THE ToMB OF PETOSIRIS (after Lefebvre)

distinguishing it from other modes. Hence no modal aspect nor chronological subdivision of the Bronze Stage can conveniently or properly be bracketed with the Iron Stage, on the one hand, nor yet relegated to the Neolithic, on the other. Still less can Bronze and Iron be fused together in a 'Metallurgical Age '; for it was only with Iron Stage 1 that a metallic equipment effectively replaced the Neolithic. Hence the Bronze Stage or Age should be retained in the

traditional position, if the classification on a technological basis be accepted as scientifically profitable.

CRITIQUE OF THE BASIS OF ARCHAzOLOGICAL CLASSIFICATION

But the very facts I have adduced have incidentally exposed the limitations of a classification based on isolating a single factor. The mere knowledge of bronze, the smith's presence alone, did not of itself

B 3



22 V. GORDON CHILDE

..-..... . .

491 a b. Va.

FIG. 14.-SWORD, SPEARHEAD,.CHISELS, DOUBLE AXES, KNIFE, SICKLE, FnLE, NARROW CHISEL, SMALL HAmmwt, Brr (?), HAMMER, HOE BLADES: HOARD FROM THE ACROPOLIS, ATHENS

(after Montelius)



Archaeological Ages as Technologtcal Stages 23

produce even new tool types, nor enlarge social productivity by saws, wheeled vehicles or metal sickles. Iron of itself does not draw men on to fresh devices, as the contrast between Greek and Egyptian smithies of the Iron Age (see Figs. 12 and 13) graphically shows. In other words, as Stalin106 puts it, "the relations of production constitute just as essential an element in production as the productive forces of society "-its tools and the traditional skill of the operatives.

It is hardly an accident of excavation that the full fruits of iron technology have come to light first in the republics of Greece and Italy and not in the despotic states of the Orient. It looks as if relations of production, adequate to a Bronze technology, had there turned into " fetters on the development of the new forces107 " represented by iron, leaving for instance Petosiris' wretched serf to shatter his wrists with the miserable equipment of Bronze 2 two centuries after Iron 1 had dawned in Egypt.

For this reason a classification based on the property relations within which tools were used might be more significant. Soviet archaoologists have in fact tried to build up a system on this basis, speaking of a ' pre-clan stage,' a 'stage of the matriarchal clan,' and so on. However sound this may be in theory, the trouble is that the archweological record is, to put it mildly, vague as to the social organization of pre-

106 4"4Dialectical and Historical Materialism " (reprinted from Chap. IV of the History of ite Communist Party oJ the Soviet Union (B) ), p. 20.

107 Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Preface (Selected Works, 1942, p. 356).

literate communities. The scheme would therefore lack one essential qualification for a scientific classification. Indeed it might be claimed as a justification for the traditional system that it does permit us to detect just those contradictions between the material forces of production and the relations of production on which Marxism lays such stress.

One might venture further along this line. Of course neither bronze nor iron tools alone suffice to civilize barbarians; judged by the accepted criteria, the Celts and Germans were as much barbarians in the Early Iron Age as their ancestors or forerunners of the Bronze Stage, while the Bronze Age Sumerians were by the same token as civilized as the Iron Age Assyrians. Nevertheless it remains true that the first civilizations of the Old World did in fact arise in the Bronze Age. And it is plausibly arguable that the peculiarities of the industrial metal-the necessity of importing it from a considerable distance and its consequent high cost-have left a stamp on the character of those civilizations.

During the Iron Age a new type of civilization was first firmly established. I should not dream of contending that iron of itself evoked the poli's. I am prepared to argue that the Mediterranean city-state was impossible without the transport facilities iron tools could alone provide. Hence, though the older type was not superseded in China, Mesopotamia and Egypt, the Bronze and Iron Stages are both associated historically with distinct types of civilization. To this extent the archaeologist, by retaining the traditional framework, is enabled to offer the historian of culture a body of data classified significantly for his interpretation.

APPENDIX

OT MODAL SEQUENCES SUMMARIZED

A.-Greece and the Aegean In E.H., while stone celts (a, b, c) are common on settle-

ment sites, knives (c), chisels (c), an axe-adze (c) and tweezers (a, b, c) denote already Bronze 2. In M.H., stone celts are confined to rural settlements (c), while the saw (d) and gouge (d) are first attested. In Crete, ETM. seems analogous to E.11., with the double-axe added and fewer stone celts.. In M.M., saws are attested first by a sign in the earlier hiero-

FIG. 15.-SAW SIGN OF MINOAN HIEROGLYPHIC SERIES

glyphic script (e), at the same time as wheeled vehicles. Actual saws, double adzes and other craft tools survive from M.M. IIIb (J). Though hammers from Praisos and Hagia Triada are attributed to M.M. II, Mode 3 is represented by

sickles first in L.M.-L.H. (b, g, h, i), but most are late, L.M. IIIb, as are hoards and foundaries containing also hoes (h, i), hammers (h, i) and tongs (i), but smnall objects of iron (i) too.

(a) Asine, Fr6din and Persson, pp. 242, 244. (b) Zygouries, B3legen, pp. 182, 199. (c) Eutresis., Goldman, pp. 202, 207, 215. (d) Levkas grave 84; Dorpfeld, Alt-Ithaka, Beilage, p. 69. (e) Evans, P. oj M., Vol. IV, 2, p. 797. (f) Ibid., Vol. II, p. 629. (g) Palaikastro, Gournia, Kilindir, cf. note 71, and

Heurtley, P.M., p. 231. (h) Acropolis hoard, Montelius, OP, pp. 153-5. (i) Enkomi foundary, Murray, Smith, etc., Excavs. in

Cyprus, pp. 15f. 25.

B.-Anatolia During. III s.C., stone blades are universal on settlement

sites and stone celts more (4 n) or less (in) common, but B 4



24 V. GORDON CHILDE

axes (I), chisels (1, m, n), and even knives (1) were made of metal too. In Troy VI-VIJa there first appear sickles and saws, and in the Hittite period of Central Anatolia lug-adzes and winged and socketed chisels too (n). But even in late Hittite times stone chisels and blades were still common (o). From post-Hittite times Transcaucasian hoards contain shaft- hole hoes (p, q, r), socketed axes (p), bow fibulm (q), Koban battle-axes (q, r, w) and hooked sickles (r, w).

(1) Troy I-V and Thermi I-V. ((m) Kusura A-B, Arch., Vol. LXXXVI (1936), p. 45; Vol.

LXXXVII, p. 260. (n) Alishar, "Chalcolithic-Early Bronze," OIP, Vol.

XXIX. (o) At Alishar and Boghaz-keui, Przeworski, p. 168. (p) Artvin, Tiirk Tarih, Arch. Etnog., Dergisi , Vol. I (1933),

pp. 150-6. (q) Dzhvari, Yessen, IGAIMK, Vol. CXX, p. 125. (r) Ibid., p. 119 (Zeniti). (w) Agur (Tebarda), ib., p. 132.

C.-Palestine-Syria Despite an absence of stone celts (save amulets) and

'Copper Age ' graves well furnished with weapons (s), I know no craft tools before 2000 B.C., but the evidence is insufficient to exclude Mode 2. That is signalized at Byblos by saws, chisels and gouges (t) in the great hoard of the (?) 18th century, and a hammer, and in Palestine (u) in the 16th. By the 14th century in Syria, plenty of sickles, winged and shaft- hole adzes, etc. (v), denote Mode 3, but in Palestine bronze sickles seem unknown.

(s) Dunand, Fouilles de Byblos; Petrie, Ancient Gaza, Vol. II, p. 2.

(t) Montet, Byblos et l'Egypte, pp. 147, 151'; Dunand, op. cit., p. 183.

(u) Petrie, Ancient Gaza, Vol. IV, p. 10; cf. Tell Beit Mersin, Ann. Am. S.O.R., Vol. XVII, p. 53.

(v) B.S.P.F., 1930, p. 475; cf. also note 72.

D.-The Iberian Peninsula The Bell-Beaker culture might represent Mode 1 if Bosch-

Gimpera (w) be right in making it anterior to Alcala and its homologues, in which side by side with stone celts and finely worked flint tools and weapons, metal saws (x) and narrow flat celts that are obviously tools occur in the tombs. In the El Argar phase of Almeria, stone celts persist, the type site yielding 30 (y), but metal was used more freely for saws (z) and a few other craft tools and exclusively for weapons. These are typologically ' Early Bronze Age,' but there is no Middle Bronze Age at all and Late Bronze Age types (aa), obviously belated and localized in the west and north, are probably already contemporary with an Iron Age in the south-east.

(w) Prehistoire, Vol. II, p. 198. (x) Los Millares, t. 37; Alcala, No. 3, and near Carmona,

Dechelette, Manuel, Vol. II, p. 273. (y) Siret, Les preniiers Ages des Metacux, p. 114; so Zapata,

p. 102, Ifra, p. 92, etc. (z) Ifra, ibid., p. 94. (aa) Bosch-Gimpera in Real; s.v. Pyrenden Halbirnsel

Two Celtic Waves in Spain (Proc. Brit. Acad., Vol. XXVI, 1939).

References: Unusual Abbreviations AJA ... ... ... ... ... American Journal 6f Archceology, Bryn Mawr. Ann. Am. SOR ... ... ... Annual, American Schools of Oriential Research, New Haven. BRGK ... ... ... ... Berichte der r6mischgermanischen Kommission, Frankfort a/M. BSPF ... ... ... ... Bulletin de la Societe prehistoriquefrangaise. Childe, NLMAE ... ... ... New Light on the Most Ancient East, 1935.. ESA .. . ... ... . ... Eurasia Septentrionalis Antiqua, Helsinki. Ghirshman ... ... ... ... Fouilles de Sialk. IGAIMK ... ... ... ... Izvestiya Gos. Akademii Istorii material. Kultury. JSGU ... ... ... ... ... Jahresberichte der schweizerishen Gesellschaft fur Urgeschichte, Fravenfeld. Lucas ... ... ... ... Ancient Egyptian Materials, 1934. MDP .. ... ... ... ... Memoires de la Delegation en Perse. Montelius, GP ... ... ... La Grece preclassique, 1928. OIP . ... ... ... ... Publications of the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago. Petrie, TW .. ... ... ... Tools and Weapons, 1918. PRIA ... ... ... ... ... Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin. Przeworski ... ... ... ... Die Metallindustrie Ancttoliens (Internat. Arch. f. Ethnog.), 1939. Schranil, UBM ... ... ... Urgeschichte B6hmens unnd Mdhrens. Speiser ... ... ... ... Excavations at Tepe Gawra, 1935. Stock.f, BAB .. ... La Boheme a' l'Age du Bronze, 1928. SM ... ... ... ... ... Suomen MHu8seo, Helsinki. WAM ... ... ... -Wiltshire Archceological Magazine, Devizes.

Description of Plates Plate I. METAL-WORKERS FROM THE TOMB OF REKHMARE

A. Metal-workers using hammer and tongs, from the tomb of Rekhmare B. Craftsmen from the tomb of Rekhmare (after Wreszinsky)

Plate II. WOODEN SIOIWT FROM THE TOMB OF HEMAKA AND METAL-WORKERS PROM THE TOMB OF PETOSIRIS A. Flint-armed wooden sickle from the tomb of Hemaka, IIIrd Dynasty (after Emery) B. Metal-workers using hammer and tongs, from the tomb of Potosiris, 4th century, B.C.



J.R.A.I., Vol. LXXIV, 1914 Plate I Childe, Archc,ological Ages as Technological Stages

A

B

METAL X TORKERS FROM THES TOMB OF REKHMARE



A 13

WOODEN SICKLE FROM THE TOMB OF HEMAKA AND METAL-WORKERS FROM THE TOMB OF PETOSIRIS

-U~~~~



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Archaeological Ages as Technological Stages