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Chalcolithic
The Chalcolithic (/ˈkælkəˌlɪθɪk/ KAL-kə-LI-thik) (also called the Copper Age and Eneolithic) was an archaeological period characterized by the increasing use of smelted copper. It followed the Neolithic and preceded the Bronze Age. It occurred at different periods in different areas, but was absent in some parts of the world, such as Russia, where there was no well-defined Copper Age between the Stone and Bronze Ages. Stone tools were still predominantly used during this period.
The Chalcolithic covers both the early cold working (hammering) of near pure copper ores, as exhibited by the likes of North American Great Lakes Old Copper complex, from around 6,500 BC, through the later copper smelting cultures. The archaeological site of Belovode, on Rudnik mountain in Serbia, has the world's oldest securely dated evidence of copper smelting at high temperature, from c. 5,000 BC. The transition from Copper Age to Bronze Age in Europe occurred between the late 5th and the late 3rd millennium BC. In the Ancient Near East the Copper Age covered about the same period, beginning in the late 5th millennium BC and lasting for about a millennium before it gave rise to the Early Bronze Age.
A study in the journal Antiquity from 2013 reporting the discovery of a tin bronze foil from the Pločnik archaeological site dated to c. 4,650 BC, as well as 14 other artefacts from Bulgaria and Serbia dated to before 4,000 BC, showed that early tin bronze was more common than previously thought and developed independently in Europe 1,500 years before the first tin bronze alloys in the Near East. In Britain, the Chalcolithic is a short period between about 2,500 and 2,200 BC, characterized by the first appearance of objects of copper and gold, a new ceramic culture and the immigration of Beaker culture people, heralding the end of the local late Neolithic.
The multiple names result from multiple definitions of the period. Originally, the term Bronze Age meant that either copper or bronze was being used as the chief hard substance for the manufacture of tools and weapons. Ancient writers, who provided the essential cultural references for educated people during the 19th century, used the same name for both copper- and bronze-using ages.
The concept of the Copper Age was put forward by Hungarian scientist Ferenc Pulszky in the 1870s, when, on the basis of the significant number of large copper objects unearthed within the Carpathian Basin, he suggested that the previous threefold division of the Prehistoric Age – the Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages – should be further divided with the introduction of the Copper Age.
In 1881, John Evans recognized that use of copper often preceded the use of bronze, and distinguished between a transitional Copper Age and the Bronze Age proper. He did not include the transitional period in the Bronze Age, but described it separately from the customary stone / bronze / iron system, at the Bronze Age's beginning. He did not, however, present it as a fourth age but chose to retain the tripartite system.
In 1884, Gaetano Chierici, perhaps following the lead of Evans, renamed it in Italian as the eneo-litica, or "bronze–stone" transition. The phrase was never intended to mean that the period was the only one in which both bronze and stone were used. The Copper Age features the use of copper, excluding bronze; moreover, stone continued to be used throughout both the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. The part -litica simply names the Stone Age as the point from which the transition began and is not another -lithic age.
Subsequently, British scholars used either Evans's "Copper Age" or the term "Eneolithic" (or Æneolithic), a translation of Chierici's eneo-litica. After several years, a number of complaints appeared in the literature that "Eneolithic" seemed to the untrained eye to be produced from e-neolithic, "outside the Neolithic", clearly not a definitive characterization of the Copper Age. Around 1900, many writers began to substitute Chalcolithic for Eneolithic, to avoid the false segmentation. The term chalcolithic is a combination of two words- Chalco+Lithic, derived from the Greek words "khalkos" meaning "copper", and "líthos" meaning "stone".
Chalcolithic
The Chalcolithic (/ˈkælkəˌlɪθɪk/ KAL-kə-LI-thik) (also called the Copper Age and Eneolithic) was an archaeological period characterized by the increasing use of smelted copper. It followed the Neolithic and preceded the Bronze Age. It occurred at different periods in different areas, but was absent in some parts of the world, such as Russia, where there was no well-defined Copper Age between the Stone and Bronze Ages. Stone tools were still predominantly used during this period.
The Chalcolithic covers both the early cold working (hammering) of near pure copper ores, as exhibited by the likes of North American Great Lakes Old Copper complex, from around 6,500 BC, through the later copper smelting cultures. The archaeological site of Belovode, on Rudnik mountain in Serbia, has the world's oldest securely dated evidence of copper smelting at high temperature, from c. 5,000 BC. The transition from Copper Age to Bronze Age in Europe occurred between the late 5th and the late 3rd millennium BC. In the Ancient Near East the Copper Age covered about the same period, beginning in the late 5th millennium BC and lasting for about a millennium before it gave rise to the Early Bronze Age.
A study in the journal Antiquity from 2013 reporting the discovery of a tin bronze foil from the Pločnik archaeological site dated to c. 4,650 BC, as well as 14 other artefacts from Bulgaria and Serbia dated to before 4,000 BC, showed that early tin bronze was more common than previously thought and developed independently in Europe 1,500 years before the first tin bronze alloys in the Near East. In Britain, the Chalcolithic is a short period between about 2,500 and 2,200 BC, characterized by the first appearance of objects of copper and gold, a new ceramic culture and the immigration of Beaker culture people, heralding the end of the local late Neolithic.
The multiple names result from multiple definitions of the period. Originally, the term Bronze Age meant that either copper or bronze was being used as the chief hard substance for the manufacture of tools and weapons. Ancient writers, who provided the essential cultural references for educated people during the 19th century, used the same name for both copper- and bronze-using ages.
The concept of the Copper Age was put forward by Hungarian scientist Ferenc Pulszky in the 1870s, when, on the basis of the significant number of large copper objects unearthed within the Carpathian Basin, he suggested that the previous threefold division of the Prehistoric Age – the Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages – should be further divided with the introduction of the Copper Age.
In 1881, John Evans recognized that use of copper often preceded the use of bronze, and distinguished between a transitional Copper Age and the Bronze Age proper. He did not include the transitional period in the Bronze Age, but described it separately from the customary stone / bronze / iron system, at the Bronze Age's beginning. He did not, however, present it as a fourth age but chose to retain the tripartite system.
In 1884, Gaetano Chierici, perhaps following the lead of Evans, renamed it in Italian as the eneo-litica, or "bronze–stone" transition. The phrase was never intended to mean that the period was the only one in which both bronze and stone were used. The Copper Age features the use of copper, excluding bronze; moreover, stone continued to be used throughout both the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. The part -litica simply names the Stone Age as the point from which the transition began and is not another -lithic age.
Subsequently, British scholars used either Evans's "Copper Age" or the term "Eneolithic" (or Æneolithic), a translation of Chierici's eneo-litica. After several years, a number of complaints appeared in the literature that "Eneolithic" seemed to the untrained eye to be produced from e-neolithic, "outside the Neolithic", clearly not a definitive characterization of the Copper Age. Around 1900, many writers began to substitute Chalcolithic for Eneolithic, to avoid the false segmentation. The term chalcolithic is a combination of two words- Chalco+Lithic, derived from the Greek words "khalkos" meaning "copper", and "líthos" meaning "stone".