Iron Age, an archaeological term indicating the condition as to civilisation and culture of a people using iron as the material for their cutting tools and weapons. It is the last of the prehistoric stages of progress represented by the series of the three ages of Stone, Bronze, and Iron. But it has to be remembered that this sequence is not necessarily true of every part of the earth's surface, for there are areas, such as the islands of the South Pacific, the interior of Africa, and parts of North and South America, where the peoples have passed directly from the use of stone to the use of iron without the intervention of an age of bronze. In Europe the iron age may be defined as including the last stages of the prehistoric and the first of the protohistoric periods. As the knowledge of iron seems to have travelled over Europe from the south northwards, the commencement of the iron age was very much earlier in the southern than in the northern countries. Greece, as represented in the Homeric poems, was then in the transition period from bronze to iron, while Scandinavia was only entering her iron age about the time of the Christian era. The transition from bronze to iron in central Europe is exemplified in the great cemetery, discovered in 1846, of Hallstatt, near Gmunden, where the forms of the implements and weapons of the later part of the bronze age are imitated in iron. In the Swiss or La Tène group of implements and weapons the forms are new and the transition complete. The early iron age forms of Scandinavia show no traces of Roman influence, though these become abundant towards the middle of the period. The duration of the iron age is variously estimated according as its commencement is placed nearer to or further from the opening years of the Christian era; but it is agreed on all hands that the last division of the iron age of Scandinavia, or the Viking Period, is to be taken as from 700 to 1000 A.D., when Paganism in those lands was superseded by Christianity. The iron age in Europe is characterised by forms of implements, weapons, personal ornaments, and pottery, and also by systems of decorative design, which are altogether different from those of the preceding age of bronze. The implements and weapons are no longer cast but hammered into shape, and as a necessary consequence the stereotyped forms of their predecessors in bronze are gradually departed from, and the system of decoration, which in the bronze age consisted chiefly of a repetition of rectilinear patterns, gives place to a system of curvilinear and flowing designs. But the principal feature that distinguishes the iron age from the preceding ages is the introduction of alphabetic characters, and the consequent development of written language which laid the foundations of literature and historic record.
See Horse Ferales, or Studies in the Archaeology of the Northern Nations, by Kemble, edited by Latham and Franks (1863); Scotland in Pagan Times—The Iron Age, by Joseph Anderson, LL.D. (1883); The Industrial Arts of Denmark from the Earliest Times (South Kensington).
Handbook), by Worsaae (1882); The Industrial Arts of Scandinavia in the Pagan Time (South Kensington Handbook), by Hans Hildebrand (London, 1883).