usefully by the enigmatic James Douglas (1753– 1819), whose Nenia Britannica (1793) was a thorough and at times brilliant discussion of the burial customs of “ancient Britons.”

Generations of systematic (and frequently unsystematic) fieldwork had, by the end of the eighteenth century, created a crisis in British antiquarian circles. Although a great deal of material culture had been excavated, swelling the collections of antiquaries and providing the foundations for the collections of new museums, its usefulness for writing history was severely curtailed by what seemed to be insuperable problems with establishing chronology. Many of the more careful observers (especially those with field experience in either excavation or survey) well understood that everything could not be the same age and that there was variation within and between sites and artifact types, but things basically came to a grinding halt at that point. Naturally, this did not stop antiquaries from continuing their researches. Indeed, in many ways the problem became even more acute through the systematic work of richard colt hoare, william cunnington, and others; in Ancient Wiltshire (1810–1821), for instance, Colt Hoare took pains to limit his interpretations to the physical data he had at hand—interpretations that were consequently confined to admitting his inability to write the history of prehistoric Wiltshire.

It is well known that the solution to Colt Hoare’s problems—the three-age system—had already been worked out in Scandinavia by c. j. thomsen and jens jacob worsaae. Although Thomsen’s great work was not translated into English until 1848 (as the Guide to Northern Archaeology) and Worsaae’s was not issued in English until 1849 (as The Primeval Antiquities of Denmark), some British antiquaries were au fait with the system before then. Nonetheless, the three-age system received a mixed welcome in Britain and from institutions such as the British Museum. Thomas Wright, who regarded himself as one of the leading British antiquaries, would have none of it, but Sir John Lubbock enthusiastically embraced it as a major step forward. Throughout the rest of the period (and continuing for the remainder of the nineteenth century) differences of opinion about the value of the three-age system (or perhaps more spectacularly the discovery of high human antiquity) were aired in a wide variety of scientific and antiquarian associations. The case study that follows focuses on the British Archaeological Association (BAA) and the Royal Archaeological Institute (RAI), but the same kinds of issues were the meat and drink of debate and dispute in similar associations in Britain (and, of course, elsewhere in Europe).

Certainly, excavation continued right across Britain, but the goals of such work became increasingly diverse as the problems with chronology, so apparent in the efforts of Colt Hoare and his predecessors, were gradually resolved by adjusting the three-age system to more closely fit regional realities in British prehistoric archaeology. One example of this growing diversity was the work of John Thurnam (1810–1873), whose primary interest was in the skeletal remains found in barrows and tumuli. Thurnam (later in partnership with J.B. Davis [1801–1881]) sought to use these remains to write the racial history of Britain, a goal that he and Davis believed they had achieved with the publication of Crania Britannica (1856– 1865). Others, such as Thomas Bateman (1787– 1835), Charles Roach Smith (1807–1890), and the indefatigable Canon William Greenwell (1820–1918), continued to dig barrows at a fast pace and with rather broader interests in mind. Greenwell’s British Barrows (1877) represented the high tide of antiquarian activity in a world where the kind of prehistoric archaeology undertaken had clear cultural and political implications. It is testimony to the three-age system that the resolution of chronological problems, however imperfect it was, could release such passion and creativity among those writing the prehistory of Britain.

Case Study: Institutions and Disciplinary Identity in the Mid-Nineteenth Century

This analysis of the early years of the British Archaeological Association and the Royal Archaeological Institute should be read in conjunction with the entry, “Royal Archaeological Institute,” by Martin Millett in this encyclopedia. Here, the reasons for their foundation with regard to