Finding time for the old Stone Age : a history of Palaeolithic archaeology and Quaternary geology in Britain, 1860-1960 / Anne O'Connor.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

O'Connor, Anne, 1958-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Paleolithic period--Great Britain.

Paleolithic period.

Archaeological geology--Great Britain--History.

Archaeological geology.

Geology, Stratigraphic--Quaternary.

Geology, Stratigraphic.

Tools, Prehistoric--Great Britain.

Tools, Prehistoric.

Antiquities, Prehistoric--Great Britain.

Antiquities, Prehistoric.

History.

Great Britain.

Physical Description:

xxxix, 423 pages : illustrations, map ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2007.

Summary:

'A vain cocky humbug', 'a nincompoop in physical geology'-thus confided one geologist to another, over a hundred years ago, appalled at the views of a fellow researcher. Finding Time for the Old Stone Age explores a century of colourful debate over the age of our earliest ancestors. In the mid-nineteenth century, curious stone implements were found alongside the bones of extinct animals. Humans were evidently more ancient than had been supposed-but just how old were they? Answers were drawn from geology, palaeontology, anthropology, and archaeology. Some saw clues in a succession of Ice Ages; others preferred the chronological patterns in river sediments, bones, or shells, or even looked to the implements themselves for an answer. There were several clocks for Stone-Age (Palaeolithic) time, and it would prove difficult to synchronize them.

Anne O'Connor draws on a wealth of lively, personal correspondence to explain the nature of these arguments. The trail leads from Britain to Continental Europe, Africa, and Asia, and extends beyond the world of professors, museum keepers, and officers of the Geological Survey: wine sellers, diamond merchants, papermakers, and clerks also proposed timescales for the Palaeolithic, defended their views in publications and private letters, excavated caves, and fought forgers of stone tools in the gravel pits of London. This book brings many of their stories to light for the first time-stories that offer an intriguing insight into how knowledge was built up about the ancient British past.

Contents:

Before the Stone Age existed

Arguments over the Ice Age

Ancient dwellers of the Thames Valley

Riverdrift men and cave men

Eoliths : an earlier phase of the Stone Age?

The Prepalaeolithic of East Anglia

Chronologies of the early twentieth century

Swanscombe : a standard Stone Age sequence for Britain

The advent of the Abb Breuil

Geological reshuffling and the growth of suspicion

Conclusion.

Notes:

includes bibliographical references (pages [363]-407) and index.

ISBN:

9780199215478

0199215472

OCLC:

122423706