carried out fieldwork and collected archaeological and ethnographical objects, and through his experiments in flint knapping he was able to confirm the function of knapping stones.

The idea of primitive people had existed since the seventeenth century, and during the nineteenth century, it became the object of classification and development theories within the natural sciences. Nilsson preferred natural science and comparative, ethnographic archaeology, which he formulated on the basis of the French paleontologist and geologist Georges Cuvier’s (1769–1832) natural-scientific method, with archaeological methods above historical analogies. Nilsson was the first scholar in Sweden to use the term prehistory (Welinder 1991).

This change in the discourse was, among other things, linked to the Enlightenment’s division of society into different subject areas, a way of thinking that both Botin and Lagerbring had borrowed from Voltaire. The need to view society from an evolutionary and holistic perspective developed and was related to the popularity of German Romanticism and its advocates Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831). Thus, Nilsson viewed development as a whole, with everything in nature, including man’s culture, evolving from the lowest stages to the highest. Hidden behind the material world was the development of reason. The process was predetermined.

At first (in 1835), he divided the development of mankind into three economic periods: savage, nomad, and agriculturalist. This system and its divisions were completely separate from Thomsen’s three-age system, as the two men were not familiar with each other’s work at the time. Later, however, they were in close contact. In the late 1830s, Nilsson added a fourth stage: the agriculturalist, with a written language, production, and a division of labor among the members of society (Nilsson 1838–1843).

The three-age system, on the other hand, was not based on an a priori interpretation of cultural development but neither was it socioeconomic. It was chronological, and since it was related to archaeological find-contexts, it had a great impact because it had empirical and scientific proof. It was not an intuitive, practical method of arranging finds but rather the chronological means of assistance for further investigations (Gräslund 1987, 27).

Mid-1800s

It was through Thomsen and Nilsson that antiquarian research became separate from history and modern archaeology took shape. Gradually, comparative ethnography lost its influence because of its alienation from find-contexts. Instead, it became important to improve on Thomsen’s three-age system.

The Dane jens jacob worsaae (1821–1886) laid significant groundwork for archaeology during the mid-nineteenth century. European cave finds of extinct animal species discovered in stratigraphic connection with cultural remains, finds that Lubbock later called Paleolithic, may have been important for Worsaae’s initial division of the Stone Age into two periods. Later Worsaae divided the Stone Age into three periods, with cave finds constituting the earliest period, kitchen middens the middle period, and stone chamber graves the youngest period. Today, these periods are called Paleolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic.

The division of the Bronze Age into two parts was first expressed in 1854 by the Swede Nils Gustaf Bruzelius (1826–1895). The division was based on stratigraphy and on the fact that cremation burials overlay inhumations. Through various bog finds, Worsaae formulated a division of the Iron Age into two parts, which was successively confirmed by new finds, and the concept of the Iron Age became common in the Scandinavian countries during the 1850s and 1860s.

After a visit to Hallstatt, austria, in 1858, Bruzelius asserted that the Iron Age in southern and central Europe must have begun a couple centuries before the birth of Christ. He also noted a sharp border between the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. He did not, however, compare this observation with conditions in Scandinavia. Instead, it was the Dane Emil Vedel (1824– 1909) who asserted that the transition between the Bronze and Iron Ages in Scandinavia occurred before the birth of Christ. He drew this conclusion after investigations at Bornholm between