The so-called “Copper Age” in the nineteenth century: contributions by Casiano de Prado and Juan Vilanova y Piera

Abstract

The three ages identified by Tito Lucrecio Caro (99 B.C.-55 A.D.) as those defining the primitive eras, the Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age, were still accepted in the first half of the XIX century to classify prehistoric objects, when this discipline had yet to be officially recognized and was practised by very few investigators. Nevertheless, this static classification, based solely on the evidence of technical features, was soon to be opposed by new disciplines such as geology and palaeontology, which put forward such criteria as the succession of archaeological strata and began to discover anomalies in the old system of classification. These anomalies became even more apparent on the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in 1859 containing his theories concerning evolution, which at the same time led to a recognition that intermediate or transition phases (evolution as a continuum) could also exist in cultural development. The appearance of pure copper objects, for example, led researchers to postulate the existence of a Copper Age, occurring between the Stone Age and the Bronze Age. Recognition of the Copper Age came very slowly and the debate as to its existence continued well into the XX century. We offer here the results of a historical study into what was among pre-historians one of the most divisive arguments of the XIX century: whether the Copper Age really existed or not, an argument which has been somewhat unjustifiably forgotten in modern specialist scientific literature.