![]() ![]() There is evidence, however, of strong continuity with Bronze Age culture, although as one moves later into Iron Age the culture begins to diverge more significantly from that of the late 2nd millennium. There is no definitive cultural break between the 13th and 12th centuries BC throughout the entire region, although certain new features in the hill country, Transjordan and coastal region may suggest the appearance of the Aramaean and Sea People groups. Iron I (1200–1000 BC) illustrates both continuity and discontinuity with the previous Late Bronze Age. The Near Eastern Iron Age is divided into two subsections, Iron I and Iron II. In other regions of Europe the Iron Age began in the 8th century BC in Central Europe and the 6th century BC in Northern Europe. Increasingly the Iron Age in Europe is being seen as a part of the Bronze Age collapse in the ancient Near East, in ancient India (with the post- Rigvedic Vedic civilization), ancient Iran, and ancient Greece (with the Greek Dark Ages). The Warrior of Hirschlanden (German: Krieger von Hirschlanden), a statue of a nude ithyphallic warrior made of sandstone, the oldest known Iron Age life-size anthropomorphic statue north of the Alps Īs its name suggests, Iron Age technology is characterized by the production of tools and weaponry by ferrous metallurgy ( ironworking), more specifically from carbon steel. The development of the now-conventional periodization in the archaeology of the Ancient Near East was developed in the 1920s to 1930s. By the 1860s, it was embraced as a useful division of the "earliest history of mankind" in general and began to be applied in Assyriology. As an archaeological era, it was first introduced for Scandinavia by Christian Jürgensen Thomsen in the 1830s. Its name harks back to the mythological " Ages of Man" of Hesiod. ![]() The three-age system was introduced in the first half of the 19th century for the archaeology of Europe in particular, and by the later 19th century expanded to the archaeology of the Ancient Near East. The Sahel ( Sudan region) and Sub-Saharan Africa are outside of the three-age system, there being no Bronze Age, but the term "Iron Age" is sometimes used in reference to early cultures practicing ironworking, such as the Nok culture of Nigeria. In China, written history started before iron-working arrived, so the term is infrequently used. The use of the term "Iron Age" in the archaeology of South, East, and Southeast Asia is more recent and less common than for western Eurasia. ![]() Recent estimates suggest that it ranges from the 15th century BC, through to the reign of Ashoka in the 3rd century BC. In the Indian sub-continent, the Iron Age is taken to begin with the ironworking Painted Gray Ware culture. AD 800, with the beginning of the Viking Age. The Germanic Iron Age of Scandinavia is taken to end c. In Central and Western Europe, the Roman conquests of the 1st century BC serve as marking for the end of the Iron Age. 550 BC is traditionally and still usually taken as a cut-off date, later dates being considered historical by virtue of the record by Herodotus, despite considerable written records from far earlier (well back into the Bronze Age) now being known. This usually does not represent a clear break in the archaeological record for the Ancient Near East, the establishment of the Achaemenid Empire c. The Iron Age is taken to end, also by convention, with the beginning of the historiographical record. Its further spread to Central Asia, Eastern Europe, and Central Europe is somewhat delayed, and Northern Europe was not reached until later, by about 500 BC. The technology soon spread throughout the Mediterranean Basin region and to South Asia. In the Ancient Near East, this transition took place in the wake of the so-called Bronze Age collapse, in the 12th century BC. For example, Tutankhamun's meteoric iron dagger comes from the Bronze Age. The "Iron Age" begins locally when the production of iron or steel has advanced to the point where iron tools and weapons replace their bronze equivalents in common use. It is defined by archaeological convention. The duration of the Iron Age varies depending on the region under consideration. ![]() The concept has been mostly applied to Europe and the Ancient Near East, but also, by analogy, to other parts of the Old World. It was preceded by the Bronze Age and the Stone Age ( Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, and Chalcolithic). The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. ![]()
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