Archæology. The period or stage in the development of human culture that is marked by the exclusive or greatly predominant use of stone as material for weapons and implements, in contradistinction to the later ‘ages’ in which bronze or iron was used.
The Stone age is divided into the PALÆOLITHIC and NEOLITHIC periods.
[1863. Lyell, Antiq. Man, ii. (ed. 2), 10. The age of stone in Denmark coincides with the period of the first vegetation, or that of the Scotch fir.]
1864. J. Hunt, trans. Vogt’s Lect. Man, xii. 343. Long heavy skulls, which differ entirely from those of the stone-age.
1874. Pitt-Rivers, Evol. Culture, Princ. Classif. (1906), 14. The Fijians … at the time of their discovery were still in the stone age.
attrib. 1878. J. C. Southall, Epoch of Mammoth, iv. 45. In the Stone-Age lake-stations, pottery (hand-made) is found in abundance.
1910. Haddon, Races of Man, 20. The ancestors of the Tasmanians, who never advanced beyond an early stage of stone-age culture.
