Why read From Genesis to Prehistory?

Book cover of From Genesis to Prehistory: The Archaeological Three Age System and its Contested Reception in Denmark, Britain, and Ireland

Book description

We are now familiar with the Three Age System, the archaeological partitioning of the past into Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age. This division, which amounted at the time to a major scientific revolution, was conceived in Denmark in the 1830s. Peter Rowley-Conwy investigates the reasons why the Three…

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Why read it?

1 author picked From Genesis to Prehistory as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Tim Murray

Author

It is a commonplace observation about the history of archaeology that the Three Age System, along with the discovery of high human antiquity, forms one of the two great defining ‘events’ of prehistoric archaeology in the nineteenth century.

Generations of students have been introduced to the discipline (and the nature of its distinctive contribution to the writing of human history) through re-telling of foundation stories about antiquity, and our capacity to order and measure it.

Rowley-Conwy’s excellent book significantly recasts the first of these great foundation narratives and teaches us much about the continuing importance of those narratives.

From Tim's list on The best books on the history and philosophy of archaeology.