Sentence:  He drew on the growing ethnographic record contained in travellers' tales about extra-European societies to develop a <WSD>stadial</WSD> view of human evolution according to which each society passed through the stages of hunting, pastoral life, farming and trading – a schema which had no place for scriptural precept. 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  Pertaining to or existing in successive stages of a given culture, society etc.