Christian Jurgen Thomsen (1788-1865) Controlled relative chronology

2. Christian Jurgen Thomsen (1788-1865) • Controlled relative chronology • Did not rely on written records • 1836 “Guidebook to Scandinavian Antiquity” laid out the system • Stimulated by patriotism, romanticism (Herder 1744-1803), and Enlightenment evolutionism • Thomsen had an early interest in numismatics • Recall John Evans’ (1850) study of “Typological Changes in British Coins” • Large collection of Roman and Scandinavian coins • Arranged coins based on dates, inscriptions, and style

3. Early 1800s period of intense patriotism in Denmark. British destroyed most of Danish navy (1801) and bombed the Copenhagen (1807) because of Danish support for Napoleon. • Jens J.A. Worsaae (1821-1885) suggested that these events stimulated Danes to study their history. • Worsaaealso observed that the French Revolution promoted greater respect for political rights of middle class everywhere. • In Denmark this stimulated an interest in evolution—in part because Denmark was “politically and economically less evolved”. • In England most antiquaries were conservatives that followed romantic nationalism, but in Denmark antiquaries were stimulated by the Enlightnment.

4. RasmusNyerup(1759-1829) • 1806, protested the destruction of antiquities and highlighted • Urged the creation of a National Museum of Antiquity to be modeled on the Museum of French Monuments established after the Revolution. “Remind Danes of their past greatness”. • 1807 named Secretary of Antiquities Commission. • 1816, C. J. Thomsen was invited to catalog and prepare the collection (created by the Commission) for public exhibition. • "Everything which has come down to us from heathendom is wrapped in a thick fog; it belongs to a space of time we cannot measure. We know that it is older than Christendom, but whether by a couple of years or a couple of centuries, or even by more than a millenium, we can do no more than guess."(RasmusNyerup, 1802)

5. Thomsen ordered the material chronologically and divided the prehistoric period into stages of stone, bronze, and iron. • There was precedence for a notion of successive ages of stone, bronze, and iron. • This was perhaps influenced by: • Lucretius Three Age scheme via VedelSimonsen (another Danish archaeologist) • French antiquaries Montfaucon (1655-1741) and Mahudel (1673-1747) • Heizer also suggests that Thomsen was influenced by Goguet (1758)

6. Bronze artifacts continued to be produced into the iron age. • How to distinguish Bronze Age bronze artifacts from bronze artifacts produced during the Iron age. • Context key to solution • Danish collection had artifacts that derived from single graves, hoards, or other discrete contexts. • Thomsen called these “closed finds” and compared assemblages from these to develop knowledge regarding diagnostic forms. • Artifacts sorted according to function and material type. • Thomsen then examined closed finds to see which types co-occurred and which did not. • In addition, he examined stylistic characteristics of the artifacts and evaluated the degree of similarity. • Shape and decoration allowed Thomsen to discern which bronze artifacts predated iron and which were later bronze artifacts produced during the Iron Age.

7. Groups were ordered in a historical sequence: • Early Stone Age: only shipped stone • Later Stone Age: included polished and chipped stone, and some limited use of metal. • Bronze Age: weapons and cutting tools made of bronze, artifacts decorated with ring patterns. • Iron Age: tools and weapons made of iron, bronze used for ornaments and luxury items. • Early Iron Age: curvilinear serpent motifs • Late Iron Age: elaborate dragons and fantastic animals. Associated with runic inscriptions and persisted into the historic period. • Earlier temporal schemes highly speculative: could represent different cultures or social classes. • Method of occurrence sorting • Parsing of Early and Late phases of Iron age and the Historic Period a rudimentary form of seriation. • Earlier periods did not have stylistic cross-ties that would have permitted a seriation approach.

8. Thomsen sought to support his sequence through stratigraphic excavations. • 1837, published report on burial mound that had Bronze Age deposits superimposed on Stone Age interments. • Congruent analysis of style, decoration, and context in ways that reinforced one another. This resulted in a simple yet effective relative chronology. • The scheme not based on explicitly evolutionary sequence. • Change was attributed to migration and diffusion. Yet, Scandinavian archaeologists did assume that evolutionary development had taken place in Europe or the Middle East.

9. Sven Nilsson (1787-1883) zoologist influenced by Georges Cuvier. • Cultural evolutionist • Interest in subsistence economies more than evolution of technology. • Increasing population caused the shift from hunting and gathering to pastoralismand agriculture. • 1822, one of the first published reports on animal bones from an archaeological site. • Nilsson used ethnographic analogy to interpret stone and bone tools. • Believed that people from North America, the Arctic, and Pacific Islands could provide information on Ancient Scandinavians that were at the same level of cultural development. • First archaeologist to use personal experience in flint-knapping to explain ancient artifacts. • 1868 published “The Primitive Inhabitants of Scandinavia” • Combined evolution of technology (Lucretius) and subsistence patterns (Enlightenment) • First individual to use a term that could be translated as “prehistory”

10. Johannes JapetusSteenstrup(1813-1907) • Discovered stratigraphic evidence of environmental change. • Postglacial aspen forests replaced by pine, oak, beech, and elm. • 1840s, associated the stone and bronze artifacts with the oak forests. This linked cultural evolution with environmental history. • Later, associated pine forests with Stone Age, oak forests with Bronze Age, and elm forests with Iron Age. • This correlated Thomesn’s sequence with major environmental changes. • Steenstrup first to assign great time depth to Scandinavian Stone Age.

11. Jens J.A. Worsaae (1821-1885) • First professional prehistoric archaeologist. • Worsaae an avid field worker. Excavations confirmed Thomsen’s chronology and produced more closed finds. • Worsaae refused to use local oral history to explain archaeological remains. • Worsaae reacted against euhemerisms • Euhemerus was an Ancient Greek (ca. 350 BC) mythographer. Main work was “Sacred History”. Euhemerisms treat mythological accounts as reflections of historical events. The historical interpretation of mythology. • Worsaae popularized Thomsen’s three age system and linked it with work by Nilsson and Steenstrup. • In 1846-7, with money from Frederick VII, Worsaae visited Britian and Ireland to study Viking remains. This convinced Worsaae that Thomsen’s scheme was applicable to vast areas of Europe. Yet, he was also aware of stylistic differences between British Isles and Scandinavia. • Worsaae used archaeology to validate Denmark’s existence in the context of war.

12. In 1848, Denmark included a large population of ethnic Germans. As much as one third of the population. • The Napoleonic Wars (ended 1815) fueled Danish and German nationalism. • Pan-German ideology was influential. • Jacob Grimm argued that the Peninsula of Jutland was populated by Germans before the arrival of the Danes and thus belonged to Germany. • Worsaae dug at Danevirke “work of the Danes” • A system of Danish Fortifications in Schleswig-Holsten, now Northern Germany. • This region was one of the main concentrations of ethnic Germans living in Denmark. • These claims were countered by Worsaae who argued: • No way to know the language of earliest inhabitants of Danish territory • Germans had more solid historical claims for France and England • Slavs had grounds for annexing parts of Eastern Germany.

15. Wall probably first built to protect Viking trade routes to the west. • The wall was likely a frontier between Denmark and Charlemagne’s Holy Roman Empire.

16. Earliest parts of the wall built during 8th Century • Other sections were built around AD 1170. • Some sections constitute the earliest brick structures of northern Europe

17. Sjaelland shell mounds • 1848 Royal Danish Academy of Sciences established interdisciplinary commission to study the shell middens. • Worsaae, Steenstrup, and Forchhammer (father of Danish geology) all involved. • 1850s they published a six volume report on their studies of the “kitchen middens”. • Middens were of human origin • When the middens formed, environmental setting consisted of fir and pine forests (different than modern). • The only domesticated animals were dogs. • Based on faunal assemblage, researchers concluded that the site was occupied in the autumn, winter, and spring but not the summer. • Experiments were conducted to see how dogs impacted the faunal assemblage.