page_title: Three-age system
section_title: Early lithic analysis by Michele Mercati
hierarchical_section_title: Three-age system / Origin / Early lithic analysis by Michele Mercati
caption_attribution_description: Specola, medaglione di michele mercati
context_page_description: The three-age system is the periodization of history into three time periods;
  for example: the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age; although it also refers to other tripartite divisions of historic time periods. In history, archaeology and physical anthropology, the three-age system is a methodological concept adopted during the 19th century by which artifacts and events of late prehistory and early history could be ordered into a recognizable chronology. It was initially developed by C. J. Thomsen, director of the Royal Museum of Nordic Antiquities, Copenhagen, as a means to classify the museum's collections according to whether the artifacts were made of stone, bronze, or iron.
  The system first appealed to British researchers working in the science of ethnology who adopted it to establish race sequences for Britain's past based on cranial types.
context_section_description: By the 16th century, a tradition had developed based on observational incidents, true or false, that the black objects found widely scattered in large quantities over Europe had fallen from the sky during thunderstorms and were therefore to be considered generated by lightning. They were so published by Konrad Gessner in De rerum fossilium, lapidum et gemmarum maxime figuris & similitudinibus at Zurich in 1565 and by many others less famous. The name ceraunia, "thunderstones," had been assigned.
  Ceraunia were collected by many persons over the centuries including Michele Mercati, Superintendent of the Vatican Botanical Garden in the late 16th century. He brought his collection of fossils and stones to the Vatican, where he studied them at leisure, compiling the results in a manuscript, which was published posthumously by the Vatican at Rome in 1717 as Metallotheca. Mercati was interested in Ceraunia cuneata, "wedge-shaped thunderstones," which seemed to him to be most like axes and arrowheads, which he now called ceraunia vulgaris, "folk thunderstones," distinguishing his view from the popular one. His view was based on what may be the first in-depth lithic analysis of the objects in his collection, which led him to believe that they are artifacts and to suggest that the historical evolution of these artifacts followed a scheme.
  Mercati examining the surfaces of the ceraunia noted that the stones were of flint and that they had been chipped all over by another stone to achieve by percussion their current forms. The protrusion at the bottom he identified as the attachment point of a haft. Concluding that these objects were not ceraunia he compared collections to determine exactly what they were. Vatican collections included artifacts from the New World of exactly the shapes of the supposed ceraunia. The reports of the explorers had identified them to be implements and weapons or parts of them.
  Mercati posed the question to himself, why would anyone prefer to manufacture artifacts of stone rather than of metal, a superior material? His answer was that metallurgy was unknown at that time. He cited Biblical passages to prove that in Biblical times stone was the first material used. He also revived the 3-age system of Lucretius, which described a succession of periods based on the use of stone (and wood), bronze and iron respectively. Due to lateness of publication, Mercati's ideas were already being developed independently; however, his writing served as a further stimulus.
caption: Michele Mercati, Commemorative Medal.
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