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picture of the environment and living conditions in Sweden over long periods of time—the beginning of late-quaternary research.

Although Nilsson had collected archaeological artifacts since the 1820s and had participated in archaeological excavations as early as 1819, it was not until later in his career that he began to devote much of his time to archaeology, when he endeavored to translate a natural-science approach into a complex model of cultural development that could be measured empirically through technological change. Nilsson was the first to use comparative ethnography to elucidate cultural history—and thus he exercised great influence on the development of modern anthropology, particularly on American anthropologist lewis h. morgan and English ethnographer e. b. tylor. oscar montelius, who was critical of Nilsson in other contexts, believed that his cultural-evolutionary scheme and his comparative method had elevated antiquarian research into a science.

Nilsson began to lose prestige within the archaeological establishment mainly because his attempts to determine the origin of the Swedish Bronze Age led to chronological misjudgments. But his contributions were considerable: he provided a picture of prehistory that was more complex than any other; he clarified how flint tools were made, both through the use of experiments as well as through ethnographical and ethnological analogies; and he helped confirm and develop the three-age system. Perhaps most significant of all, however, was the fact that he showed how Stone Age societies had probably lived and demonstrated that the three-age system applied to Sweden as well as to denmark.

Johan Hegardt

Nimrud

Also known as Kalhu, Nimrud was an Assyrian city on the banks of the Tigris River quite close to nineveh. Made famous as a result of its excavation, initially by austen henry layard beginning in 1845 and later by sir max mallowan in 1954, Nimrud suffered fluctuating fortunes during its history. First established in the late second millennium b.c., the city was designated an imperial Assyrian city around 883 b.c. but shortly afterward lost that status to Khorsabad.

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Phoenician bronze bowl from Nimrud

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But there had been time enough to produce the palaces, major sculptures (such as the winged bulls), and hundreds of cuneiform texts that were so enthusiastically excavated by Layard. The public exhibition of the results of his excavations in England after 1849 created a high level of public interest, which can in part be explained by the lure of spectacular objects. By the same token, Layard was quite aware of the powerful attraction of archaeological “proofs” of stories from the Old Testament (even though he managed to confuse Nimrud with the biblical Nineveh). In 1954, the site was systematically reexcavated in a somewhat less bravura manner by Mallowan, who had signal successes of his own, particularly in the recovery of the famous Nimrud ivories.

Tim Murray