BJHS, 2002, 35, 255269

The meaning of ceraunia : archaeology, natural

history and the interpretation of prehistoric
stone artefacts in the eighteenth century
MATTHEW R. GOODRUM*

Abstract. Historians of archaeology have noted that prehistoric stone artefacts were first identified
as such during the seventeenth century, and a great deal has been written about the formulation
of the idea of a Stone Age in the nineteenth century. Much less attention has been devoted to the
study of prehistoric artefacts during the eighteenth century. Yet it was during this time that
researchers first began systematically to collect, classify and interpret the cultural and historical
meaning of these objects as archaeological specimens rather than geological specimens. These
investigations were conducted within the broader context of eighteenth-century antiquarianism
and natural history. As a result, they offer an opportunity to trace the interrelationships that
existed between the natural sciences and the science of prehistoric archaeology, which
demonstrates that geological theories of the history of the earth, ethnographic observations of
savage peoples and natural history museums all played important roles in the interpretation of
prehistoric stone implements during the eighteenth century.

Prehistoric stone implements have long been an important source of information about the
earliest stages of human technological and cultural evolution. Stone implements were also
among the first objects to be recognized by naturalists as evidence that a prehistoric human
past even existed. Historians of archaeology have written extensively on certain specific
problems relating to the study of prehistoric artefacts, but many of these studies are
narrowly focused and either ignore or leave obscure interesting and important historical
changes. Moreover, historians of science have shown little interest in this subject, or in the
history of prehistoric archaeology in general. This is despite the fact that the study and
interpretation of prehistoric stone implements has been, from the very beginning, closely
related to developments in the natural sciences, especially geology."
Historians investigating the early history of prehistoric archaeology have emphasized
two critical episodes in the study of stone implements. The first involves the initial
recognition, at the end of the seventeenth century, that these objects were in fact human
artefacts. Stone implements had been known and collected for centuries by naturalists who
considered them to be stones that had acquired their unique form through some kind of
* Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, IN 47405, USA.
I would like to thank the anonymous referees for their comments and suggestions.
1 The process by which prehistoric stone implements were eventually understood to be archaeological remains
shares many features with the gradual recognition of the organic origin of fossils, which also occurred during the
seventeenth century. Despite this, little has been written on how these problems may have been related. On the
debates over the interpretation of fossils and the process by which their organic nature was accepted see Martin
J. S. Rudwick, The Meaning of Fossils : Episodes in the History of Palaeontology, 2nd edn., New York, 1976.

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Matthew R. Goodrum

natural process. As a result, stone arrowheads and axe heads were often placed in the
general category of fossils , or objects dug out of the ground. It was also commonly
believed that these objects were produced when lightning stuck the ground, and because
of this they were called ceraunia or thunderbolts .# By the end of the seventeenth
century, however, several works had been published that argued that these objects were
implements of human manufacture. Although the prehistoric origin of these objects was
not recognized until over a century later, this change has been heralded by historians of
archaeology as fundamentally important in the development of prehistoric archaeology.$
The second influential episode in the study of stone implements that has drawn the
attention of historians of archaeology was the formulation, during the first half of the
nineteenth century, of the three-age system. The idea that prehistoric artefacts could be
arranged chronologically into three periods (the Stone Age, the Bronze Age and the Iron
Age) provided a powerful new framework for interpreting prehistoric artefacts and all
subsequent archaeological research has been grounded on this basic scheme. It is not
surprising to find, therefore, that the search for precursors to the invention of the threeage system, its formulation by the Danish archaeologist Christian Jurgensen Thomsen
(17881865), and its subsequent modification by Jens Jacob Asmussen Worsaae (182185)
have been the focus of many historical studies.% Scholars have shown very little interest,
however, in what occurred during the eighteenth century, the period between the initial
realization that stone implements were human artefacts and not a geological phenomenon
and the postulation of a chronological Stone Age defined as a stage of cultural development
where tools, weapons and other implements were made of stone.
The problem of stone artefacts, of what they could mean and how they should be
interpreted, was the subject of much discussion during the eighteenth century. Antiquaries
collected them and speculated about their origins, but so too did naturalists. The long
tradition of classifying stone implements with fossils and gems influenced the way they
were studied throughout the eighteenth century, and while it was increasingly accepted that
they were an archaeological and not a natural phenomenon, naturalists continued to
participate in their interpretation.& Likewise, the natural history collections and cabinets of
curiosities amassed by naturalists and antiquaries frequently contained prehistoric stone
artefacts. The fact that stone artefacts were often displayed side by side with geological
specimens and ethnographic objects collected from the savages of the New World, and
2 The French term for them, pierre de foudre, literally means thunder stones . Ceraunia is a Latin word,
derived from the Greek word , both of which mean thunderbolt .
3 See Glyn Daniel, The Idea of Prehistory, London, 1962, Chapter 2 ; Stuart Piggott, Ancient Britons and the
Antiquarian Imagination : Ideas from the Renaissance to the Regency, London, 1989, 8994.
4 See Glyn Daniel, The Three Ages : An Essay on Archaeological Method, Cambridge, 1943 ; Robert F. Heizer,
The background of Thomsens three-age system , Technology and Culture (1962), 3, 25966 ; Ole Klindt-Jensen,
A History of Scandinavian Archaeology, London, 1975, Chapters 45 ; Judith Rodden, The development of the
three age system : archaeologys first paradigm , in Towards a History of Archaeology (ed. Glyn Daniel), London,
1981, 5168 ; Bo Gra$ slund, The background to C. J. Thomsens three age system , in Towards a History of
Archaeology (ed. Glyn Daniel), London, 1981, 4550 ; and Bo Gra$ slund, The Birth of Prehistoric Chronology :
Dating Methods and Dating Systems in Nineteenth-Century Scandinavian Archaeology, Cambridge, 1987.
5 It is fundamentally important to understand that throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and in
some cases even into the eighteenth century, stone implements (ceraunia) were treated as a geological
phenomenon and that they were collected and studied in large part by naturalists interested in geology.

The meaning of ceraunia

257

later from the South Pacific, also contributed in critical ways to the understanding of stone
implements in the eighteenth century. Because the natural sciences played such an
important role in studies of prehistoric stone artefacts, it is essential not only that the
problem of their meaning be viewed not solely from the perspective of the history of
archaeology, but that it also be situated within the history of eighteenth-century natural
science.
Some significant research has been done on the history of prehistoric archaeology during
the eighteenth century and on the study of stone artefacts. Much of this research, however,
emphasizes the work of just a few individuals' or else it primarily seeks precursors to the
idea of the three-age system.( Other studies have shown more interest in situating the
archaeological investigation of stone implements within the broader context of eighteenthcentury archaeology, scientific institutions and society,) but these often fail to discuss
important aspects of the problems posed by prehistoric stone implements or the ideas that
were proposed to account for their existence. Any comprehensive historical understanding
of the way ceraunia were reinterpreted and reconceptualized during the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries must look at contemporary developments in natural history,
antiquarianism, and historical scholarship, as well as in the ways these disciplines were
used to construct a meaningful interpretation of the origin and significance of ceraunia.
Both antiquaries and naturalists utilized ethnographic and historical data in their attempts
to determine who might have made these implements, which were being discovered right
across Europe, but in their effort to discover the meaning of stone artefacts they were
gradually forced to construct a radically different conception of early human history. New
ideas and discoveries arising from many different kinds of scientific and scholarly research
resulted in the need to revise long-held conceptions about the origin and early history of
humanity. This broader intellectual context is often pushed into the background in many
studies but, as this paper aims to demonstrate, it is only by investigating the way that
antiquaries and naturalists applied archaeological, geological, historical, religious and
ethnographic knowledge to the problem of stone artefacts that their meaning could be
uncovered.
Ceraunia as objects of study : antiquarianism and natural history
Curiously shaped stone objects, labelled ceraunia, frequently appear in sixteenth- and
seventeenth-century scientific works devoted to stones and fossils, where they are treated
as a naturally occurring geological phenomenon. Late in the sixteenth century, the Italian
naturalist Michele Mercati (154193) formulated the first reasoned argument supporting
6 An example is Annette Laming-Emperaire, Origines de larcheT ologie preT historique en France : Des
Supersitions medievales aZ la deT couverte de lhomme fossile, Paris, 1964.
7 This is the approach taken by Heizer, op. cit. (4), which identifies some important eighteenth-century works
that discuss stone implements but only to the extent that they serve as steps towards the idea of a Stone Age.
8 Alain Schnapps Le ConqueV te du passeT : Aux Origines de larcheT ologie, Paris, 1993 presents a very interesting
and wide-ranging analysis of archaeological thought, including many of the major developments in the
interpretation of stone artefacts during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. See also B. D. Lynch and T. F.
Lynch, The beginnings of a scientific approach to prehistoric archaeology in seventeenth-century and eighteenthcentury Britain , Southwestern Journal of Anthropology (1968), 24, 3365.

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Matthew R. Goodrum

the idea that ceraunia were not produced when lightning struck the ground, but were
instead implements made by humans. He arrived at this novel conclusion as a result of
being the curator of the Vatican botanical garden, where he was responsible for an
expanding natural history collection that included fossils and other geological specimens,
as well as ethnographic material sent from the New World. It was through working with
these materials that Mercati noticed that the ceraunia in the geological collection closely
resembled some stone arrowheads made by the peoples of the Americas. This insight led
him to suggest that all ceraunia were implements made for use as weapons or tools.*
Because Mercatis ideas were not published until the early eighteenth century it is
difficult to determine their relation to seventeenth-century discussions of ceraunia, but it
appears to have been slight since works that mention ceraunia continued to describe them
as a geological phenomenon. It was not until late in the seventeenth century that
antiquaries and naturalists began to discuss widely the idea that ceraunia were objects
manufactured by humans and not produced by nature. Despite this, ceraunia continued to
be treated as geological specimens into the eighteenth century and as a result naturalists
were compelled to compose increasingly convincing arguments to support their
archaeological nature.
For some naturalists, such as the British geologist John Woodward (16651728), it was
obvious that ceraunia had been made by humans. In his estimation, ceraunia carry in them
so plain Tokens of Art, and their Shapes be such as apparently to point forth, to any Man
that rightly considers them, the Use each was destined to , thus making it remarkable that
anyone should ever have considered them natural productions."! But for those who did not
find it so obvious, stronger evidence was available. The ability to compare ceraunia with
stone implements collected from the New World, and later from the South Pacific, proved
critical to the new interpretation of the origin and use of ceraunia. Private museums and
natural history cabinets played a pivotal role in this. Natural history collections often
contained archaeological and ethnographic objects arrayed alongside zoological, botanical
and geological specimens. From the first voyages to the New World, ethnographic material
of various kinds began to be collected and sent to museums and cabinets in Europe.""
Weapons, implements, clothing and even human beings were sent to Europe, while
travellers and artists contributed valuable ethnographic information through their accounts
and illustrations of savage peoples and their way of life."# This material was to be
exploited in the interpretation of ceraunia in the eighteenth century.
9 Mercati discussed ceraunia in a manuscript work on geology, but it was not published until the eighteenth
century. While there is evidence the manuscript circulated, it is unclear if Mercatis ideas influenced seventeenthcentury thought on ceraunia. See Michele Mercati, Metallotheca opus posthumum, Rome, 1717. On Mercatis
discovery that ceraunia were prehistoric artefacts see Laming-Emperaire, op. cit. (6), 448. For an excellent
account of Mercatis scientific work, and of the publication and content of the Metallotheca, see Bruno Accordi,
Michele Mercati (15411593) e la Metallotheca , Geologica Romana (1980), 19, 150.
10 John Woodward, Fossils of All Kinds, Digested into a Method, Suitable to Their Mutual Relation and
Affinity, London, 1728, Part 2, 37. Original italics.
11 See Christian F. Feest, North America in the European Wunderkammer , Archiv fuW r VoW lkerkunde (1992),
46, 61109.
12 See Christian F. Feest, The collecting of American Indian artifacts in Europe, 14931750 , in America in
European Consciousness, 14931750 (ed. K. O. Kupperman), Chapel Hill, 1995, 32460.

The meaning of ceraunia

259

The French naturalist Antoine de Jussieu (16861758) found convincing proof of the
human origin of ceraunia in the resemblance they bore to the stone implements used by the
inhabitants of the New World. The renowned Welsh naturalist and antiquary Edward
Lhwyd (16601709) had remarked upon this a quarter of a century earlier, noting simply
that certain triangular pieces of stone found throughout Britain were just the same chipd
Flints the Natives of New England head their Arrows with at this Day ."$ Jussieu drew
upon an even wider range of ethnographic material for his own studies and found striking
similarities in form between the ceraunia he had seen and such objects as an axe taken from
a Caribbean tribe, a stone wedge from Canada, and some flint arrowheads. From these
observed similarities, Jussieu felt assured that the thunder stones (pierres de foudre)
mentioned in books on fossils or figured stones (pierres figureT es), must be regarded as
man-made implements, at least when they resemble wedges, axe heads or arrowheads."%
The interest of antiquaries in collecting archaeological objects was just as important in
determining what ceraunia were and what they had been used for. It is important to note
that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries antiquarian and scientific studies were
closely related, sharing institutional, methodological and social ties."& Many naturalists
engaged in antiquarian research and vice versa, and memberships in such institutions as the
Royal Society and the Society of Antiquaries frequently overlapped. While naturalists had
long collected ceraunia as geological specimens, antiquaries in the late seventeenth and
early eighteenth centuries began to collect them as examples of stone implements used by
the early inhabitants of Europe."'
The collection and identification of prehistoric stone artefacts began early in Scandinavia.
The museum and publications of the Danish antiquary Ole Worm (15881654) are a
prominent example, although there were many other Scandinavian antiquaries who wrote
on this subject."( In England, the seventeenth-century naturalists and antiquaries Robert
Plot and Edward Lhywd gathered prehistoric stone implements, many of which found their
13 Edward Lhwyd, Extracts of several letters from Mr. Edward Lhwyd, (M.A.) Late Keeper of the Ashmolean
Museum in Oxford, to Dr. Rich. Richardson, (M.D.) of North Bierly in Yorkshire ; containing observations in
natural history and antiquities, made in his travels thro Wales and Scotland , Philosophical Transactions (1713),
99. Lhwyd also noted the similarity between the stone hatchets used by the natives of America and some types
of ceraunia found in Britain.
14 Antoine de Jussieu, De lOrigine et des usages de la pierre de foudre , MeT moires de lAcadeT mie royale des
sciences (1723), 7.
15 On this see Michael Hunter, The Royal Society and the origins of British archaeology : I , Antiquity (1971),
45, 11321 ; Joseph M. Levine, Dr. Woodwards Shield : History, Science, and Satire in Augustan England,
Berkeley, 1977 ; Stanley Mendyk, Speculum Britanniae : Regional Study, Antiquarianism, and Science in Britain
to 1700, Toronto, 1989 ; Piggott, op. cit. (3).
16 Scientific institutions and the virtuoso culture of Britain, especially as they relate to the Royal Society during
the eighteenth century, have been explored by Michael Hunter in The cabinet institutionalized : the Royal
Societys repository and its background , in The Origins of Museums : The Cabinet of Curiosities in Sixteenthand Seventeenth-Century Europe (ed. Oliver Impey and Arthur MacGregor), Oxford, 1985, 15968 ; David P.
Miller, The Hardwicke circle : the whig supremacy and its demise in the eighteenth-century Royal Society ,
Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London (1998), 52, 7391 ; and G. S. Rousseau and D. Haycock, The
Jew of Crane Court : Emanuel Mendes da Costa (171791), natural history and natural excess , History of Science
(2000), 38, 12770.
17 On Worms museum and archaeological work see Schnapp, op. cit. (8), 1607 ; and H. D. Schepelern,
Museum Wormianum, dets Forudsaetninger og Tilblivelse, Odense, 1971.

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way to the Ashmolean Museum, where first Plot and then Lhywd were curators.") Thomas
Hearne (16781735), the renowned English antiquary and keeper of the Bodleian Library,
possessed some flint arrowheads and axe heads, while his friend Richard Richardson
(16631741), an antiquary and Fellow of the Royal Society, also owned several heads of
Darts that are Flints of several Colours , which he thought were probably used by the
ancient Britons."* The Yorkshire antiquary Ralph Thoresby (16581725) assembled an
impressive collection of prehistoric stone implements in his private museum, and the
immense collection of prehistoric British artefacts of the naturalist Sir Hans Sloane
eventually became the foundation for the British Museums collection of prehistoric
antiquities.#!
Perhaps the most dramatic single discovery of stone implements was made in 1685 in the
French town of Cocherel. Workmen digging on an estate there stumbled upon a tomb
containing the bodies of several individuals, along with a large number of objects shaped
from stone and bone. Accounts of the excavation and the objects found were widely known
and they prompted much discussion about the contents of the tomb and their historical
significance. The Cocherel tomb eventually drew the attention of Bernard de Montfaucon
(16551741). Montfaucon was a highly respected scholar who had travelled widely in
Europe studying Roman antiquities. His monumental work LAntiquiteT expliqueT e et
repreT senteT e en figures (1719) was a thorough and erudite study of classical art and
archaeology, and in the latter parts of this work Montfaucon discussed some of the
prehistoric ruins he was familiar with, including the tomb at Cocherel.
Montfaucon described several of the stones found in the tomb as being shaped like an
axe head (aZ la manieZ re du fer dun hache) with a very sharp edge. These stone axes were
all of the same form, but the stones themselves were of different kinds and colours. He
noted with particular interest that one axe head was perforated with a hole, and a piece
of stag horn had also been recovered from the tomb that had been perforated in such a way
as to receive a wooden handle at one end and a stone axe head at the other. Moreover,
there were stone points that clearly were used to head arrows.#" Montfaucon drew from
a variety of sources to support his view that these objects were stone weapons. He quoted
Herodotus on the practice of the Ethiopians of heading their arrows with stone instead of
iron, while Pausanius and Tacitus noted similar practices among the Sarmatians and
18 R. F. Ovenells The Ashmolean Museum 16831894, Oxford, 1986 contains a valuable account of Plot and
Lhywds contributions to the museum and the place of the Ashmolean in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century
science.
19 Thomas Hearne, A discourse concerning some antiquities lately found in Yorkshire , in The Itinerary of
John Leland the Antiquary, 3rd edn., 9 vols., Oxford, 1770, i, 1234, 143. This discourse is dated 1709.
20 On Sloanes collection see Arthur MacGregor, Prehistoric and Romano-British antiquities , in Sir Hans
Sloane : Collector, Scientist, Antiquary, Founding Father of the British Museum (ed. Arthur MacGregor), London,
1994, 18097. It is important to note here that Sloane also assembled an important collection of North American
ethnographic material ; see J. C. H. King, North American ethnography in the collection of Sir Hans Sloane , in
The Origins of Museums : The Cabinet of Curiosities in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Europe (ed. Oliver
Impey and Arthur MacGregor), Oxford, 1985, 2326. Another eighteenth-century naturalist who collected
prehistoric artefacts as well as ethnographic material was Joseph Banks. On this see John Gascoigne, Joseph
Banks and the English Enlightenment : Useful Knowledge and Polite Culture, Cambridge, 1994.
21 Bernard de Montfaucon, LAntiquiteT expliqueT e et repreT senteT e en figures, 2nd edn., 5 vols., Paris, 1722, v,
Part 2, 1945.

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261

Germans.## Stone hammers had also been used in war by the ancient Gauls and they were
still used by tribes in America.#$ Thus Montfaucon relied upon both textual and
ethnographic sources to support his identifications. He also noted the similarity in form
between the stone points found at Cocherel and the iron points used to head halberds.#%
Montfaucon, Hearne and Thoresby seem to have had few problems distancing
themselves from the traditional view of ceraunia held by many naturalists and readily
accepted stone implements for what they were. But once ceraunia were identified as ancient
stone weapons and tools a host of new questions readily arose. Foremost among them was
the question of who had made them. For men educated in the classical authors and the
Bible there was only a limited set of possibilities. Hearne believed his flint implements were
made by the ancient Britons, but he thought they could have been Roman as well.#& Yet
he considered a stone hammer described by Thoresby to be of Danish origin, based partly
on similarities to an object described by Ole Worm and because the Danes had once
inhabited the British Isles.#' Monfaucon, however, appears to have sensed that great
expanses of time might be confronting the antiquary in the stone weapons of Cocherel. He
thought the tomb belonged to peoples of the highest antiquity , but this still did not deter
him from identifying those peoples as Gauls or some other barbarous European nation.#(
There could be no question of antiquaries and naturalists in the eighteenth century
imagining that these objects might have been produced in some remote geological epoch,
tens or hundreds of thousands of years ago. For most antiquaries and naturalists of the
eighteenth century, the makers of stone implements had to be sought among the historic
peoples of Roman or pre-Roman Europe, or to hitherto unknown barbaric tribes who,
nonetheless, had lived only a few thousand years in the past.
Far more troubling was the question of why ancient Europeans had made implements
from stone in the first place, given the superiority of metal and the supposed early origin
of metallurgy. Montfaucon suggested that the stone weapons of Cocherel had been
manufactured by barbarians who did not know how to use iron or copper. This did not
mean that all Europeans had passed through a stone age, but merely that some peoples
might have inhabited regions without natural sources of metal or that they lacked
commerce with nations that could have provided it to them.#) John Woodward suggested
that stone implements had been used before iron was discovered and that they had
subsequently been replaced by iron ones when people had learned how to use the metal.#*
As we will see, the idea that there had been a time in European history when metals were
not known raised serious questions and prompted much speculation about the meaning
this held for the history of mankind. But as a basic solution to the question of why stone
22 Montfaucon, op. cit. (21), iv, Part 1, 28.
23 Montfaucon, op. cit. (21), iv, Part 1, 701.
24 Montfaucon, op. cit. (21), iv, Part 1, 68.
25 Hearne, op. cit. (19), 124.
26 Thomas Hearne, Some remarks occasiond by the foregoing letter , in The Itinerary of John Leland the
Antiquary, 3rd edn., 9 vols., Oxford, 1770, iv, pp. xiixiii.
27 Montfaucon, op. cit. (21), v, Part 2, 196.
28 Montfaucon, op. cit. (21), v, Part 2, 1967.
29 Woodward, op. cit. (10), 39. Ralph Thoresby suggested that the ancient Britons made arrowheads of flint
because iron was so rare that they had even used it for money.

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Matthew R. Goodrum

artefacts were found in Europe, most scholars drew the same conclusion that Montfaucon
and Woodward had.
Once antiquaries and naturalists agreed that ceraunia were implements made before the
use of metal was known they immediately began to question how these implements had
been made, what they had been used for, and what kinds of weapons and tools had been
manufactured by these ancient peoples. Here again, the comparison of ceraunia with the
implements made by contemporary savage peoples and with the ways those peoples made
and used tools was an important guide to the interpretation of prehistoric European stone
implements. Woodward concluded, by looking simply at their form, that ceraunia were
used as axes, wedges, chisels, arrowheads, darts and lances by peoples in the most early
Ages .$! Antoine de Jussieu, too, judged from their form that the large wedge-shaped
ceraunia had been used as axes and wedges for cutting wood, while the smaller pointed
forms were used as arrowheads for hunting.$" Jussieu felt confident in his interpretation of
their use because just as the natives of North America used stone implements to cut wood,
kill animals for food and defend themselves against enemies, so too the earliest peoples,
living under similar conditions, would need similar tools to fulfil the same needs.$#
The French antiquary Nicolas Mahudel (16731747), who presented one of the last
arguments against the identification of ceraunia as thunder stones in a paper read before
the Acade! mie royale des inscriptions et belles lettres in 1734, noted that stone is also well
suited as a material for making weapons and tools. Stone, and flint in particular, is readily
available, is easily fractured and is durable and solid. When struck, flint breaks into pieces
that are sharp and of the right size to serve as axes, knives or arrowheads. In addition, some
fragments can be ground and polished so as to be easily held in ones hand.$$ Jussieu,
because of his extensive knowledge of geology, also recognized that the stone from which
some implements were made was not indigenous to the location where they were
sometimes found, which meant that ancient peoples must have traded for these stones
when they were not locally available.$%
Mahudel also commented upon the efforts made to identify different types of implement
among ceraunia. He noted that some people had recognized axes, both those designed to
be attached to a handle and those designed to be wielded by hand, as well as hammers and
other types of tool in collections of ceraunia.$& But these early identifications and the
methods used to make them appeared somewhat speculative. While artefacts continued to
be discovered over the next few decades, antiquaries did little to refine their methods for
identifying and classifying them. This state of affairs prompted the British antiquary
Samuel Pegge (170496) to complain in 1770, in a paper read before the Society of
Antiquaries, that his fellow scholars were not carefully distinguishing between different
kinds of artefact, and that this often led to erroneous interpretations of them.$'
30 Woodward, op. cit. (10), 39.
31 Jussieu, op. cit. (14), 8.
32 Jussieu, op. cit. (14), 7.
33 Nicolas Mahudel, Sur les Pre! tendues Pierres de foudre , Histoire de lAcadeT mie royale des inscriptions et
belles lettres (1740), 12, 1657.
34 Jussieu, op. cit. (14), 8.
35 Mahudel, op. cit. (33), 168.
36 Samuel Pegge, Observations on stone hammers , Archaeologia (1773), 2, 1278.

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It was the naturalists, in fact, who took a lead in classifying stone artefacts in the middle
of the century. This is hardly surprising since natural history was grounded in the task of
classification and taxonomy. The Swiss naturalist E; lie Bertrand (171290), for example,
did not attempt to compile a comprehensive list of types, but he did mention that one could
recognize hammers, wedges, weapons and clubs among the ceraunia that he had seen. He
explained the existence of such weapons by stating that before the widespread use of iron
many peoples headed their arrows, spears (dards) and pikes (piques) with pointed stones.$(
The prominent French naturalist Antoine-Joseph Dezallier dArgenville (16801765)
identified axes, hammers, knives, arrowheads and wedges in collections of ceraunia.$) The
Swedish mineralogist Johan Gottschalk Wallerius (170985) added tongues of stone
(langues de pierre) to Dezallier dArgenvilles list, without saying what they might have
been used for or how they differed from other forms.$* In all these cases the classification
of artefacts into different types and the interpretation of their uses was based almost
exclusively on their form.
New artefacts continued to be found and described throughout the remainder of the
century, however, and antiquaries continued to speculate about their identification and
their possible uses. A stone celt found in Cornwall,%! a polished stone axe head ploughed
up in Carlisle%" and some stone hammers%# all elicited learned discourses about who had
made them and what they had been used for. But the weight of evidence accumulated in
the first half of the century had largely settled the question of the human origin of ceraunia.
Geological texts, where ceraunia had long been discussed, now either ignored ceraunia or
corrected their identification of them. Dezallier dArgenville promulgated the new
interpretation of ceraunia in his Histoire naturelle eT claircie (1742), stating that ceraunia,
commonly called pierres de foudre , were stones shaped by the hands of men who made
weapons and tools from stone before the use of iron.%$ Wallerius expressed the same
opinion in his widely read work on mineralogy, which was translated into French in 1753.%%
E; lie Bertrand still found it necessary in 1763 to mention ceraunia in his work on fossils,
where he explained that they were stones shaped by art and used by ancient peoples for
37 E; lie Bertrand, Dictionnaire universel des fossiles propres, et des fossiles accidentels contenant une
description des terres, des sables, des sels, des soufres, des bitumes, des pierres simples and composeT es, communes
and preT tieuses, transparentes & opaques, amorphes & figureT es, des mineraux, des meT taux, des peT trifications du
reZ gne animal, & du reZ gne veT geT tal &c. avec des recherches sur la formation de ces fossiles, sur leur origine, leurs
usages, Avignon, 1763, 1356.
38 Antoine-Joseph Dezallier dArgenville, LHistoire naturelle eT claircie dans deux de ses parties principales. La
Lithologie et la conchyliologie, dont lune traite des pierres et lautre des coquillages. Ouvrage dans lequel on
trouve une nouvelle meT thode & une notice critique des principaux auteurs qui ont eT crit sur ces MatieZ res, Paris,
1742, 689.
39 Johan Gottschalk Wallerius, MineT ralogie, ou description geT neT rale des substances du reZ gne mineT ral, 2 vols.,
Paris, 1753, ii, 134.
40 William Borlase, Antiquities, Historical and Monumental, of the County of Cornwall. Consisting of Several
Essays on the First Inhabitants, Druid-Superstitions, Customs, and Remains of the most Remote Antiquity in
Britain, and the British Isles, Exemplified and Proved by Monuments now Extant in Cornwall and the Scilly
Islands, with a Vocabulary of the Cornu-British Language, 2nd edn., London, 1769, 2879.
41 Charles Lyttelton, Observations on stone hatchets , Archaeologia (1773), 2, 11823.
42 Pegge, op. cit. (36), 1248.
43 Dezallier dArgenville, op. cit. (38), 689.
44 Wallerius, op. cit. (39), 1335.

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various purposes before the common use of iron.%& Yet, while naturalists and antiquaries
had succeeded, by 1740, in resolving the problem of the origin and probable use of
ceraunia, there still remained many difficulties and questions surrounding their
archaeological and historical meaning. As more artefacts were discovered, naturalists and
antiquaries faced an increasing challenge to situate these objects within their conception of
human history and to understand what these objects might tell them about the earliest
conditions of human life.
The cultural and historical meaning of ceraunia
The paramount problem confronting naturalists and scholars with the discovery of stone
artefacts right across the continent of Europe was to explain why early Europeans made
implements from stone instead of metal. This was a reasonable question given the
superiority of metal for this purpose and the fact that, according to the Bible, the use of
metal had been introduced in the earliest ages of the world. The presence of stone artefacts
conjured troubling images and disturbing questions about the earliest Europeans and even
about the history of mankind. The use of ethnographic comparisons in the interpretation
of prehistoric stone artefacts opened the way for more general cultural comparisons to be
made between the earliest Europeans and the recently discovered peoples of the New
World and the Pacific islands. Jussieu imagined that before the ancient peoples of France,
Germany and northern Europe had discovered the use of iron they resembled the
Americans and Pacific islanders in their way of life. They would have used stone
implements to cut wood, hunt for food and defend themselves against their enemies. Since
stone does not corrode or decay, these same stone implements survived to be discovered
in modern times.%' The French Jesuit missionary Joseph Franc: ois Lafitau came to the same
conclusion after living among the Iroquois in North America between 1712 and 1717,
although he applied it in the opposite direction. He argued that the weapons used by the
natives of America were essentially the same as those used by all peoples in the earliest ages
(premiers temps).%(
The suggestion that the first Europeans had once been like the wild savages of America
was not only disconcerting to some, but it also required a rethinking of human history in
order to explain how ancient Europeans had reached such a state of existence. This is
because it was generally believed that the first Europeans had descended from Japheth, a
son of Noah, who had led the first migration of people into Europe after the Deluge.%) Since
Genesis clearly describes the invention of metallurgy by Tubal-Cain only a few generations
after the creation of Adam and since Noah preserved the knowledge and skills of his
ancestors then some account had to be given for how the descendents of Noah could have
lost the art of metallurgy. This problem was recognized and confronted by Michele
Mercati in his account of ceraunia and his solution may have provided the framework for
most subsequent discussions of the matter. Mercati suggested that, due to the catastrophic
45 Bertrand, op. cit. (37), 1356.
46 Jussieu, op. cit. (14), 9. Mahudel op. cit. (33), 169 expresses much the same opinion.
47 Joseph Franc: ois Lafitau, Moeurs des sauvages Ameriquains, compareT e aux moeurs des premiers temps,
2 vols., Paris, 1724, ii, 195.
48 For a general outline of these beliefs in Britain see Piggott, op. cit. (3), 5961.

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265

consequences of the biblical Flood, the sons of Noah who migrated out of the land of the
Hebrews to populate Europe, Africa and Asia gradually degenerated over time, even to the
point where they lost the knowledge of metallurgy, fire and other arts.%*
John Woodward expounded a very similar view. He accepted the tradition that TubalCain had invented metallurgy and that iron had been used before the Deluge. He also
believed, as many of his contemporaries did, that Noah retained the knowledge of
metallurgy after the Flood. But the devastation of the Deluge, Woodward argued, and the
change it wrought upon the earth subjected the survivors and their descendants to
conditions so harsh that they had to concern themselves almost solely with the necessities
of life. So much time had to be devoted to obtaining food and supplying the basic needs
of life that little time was left for the cultivation of the arts. In so calamitous a Condition,
Iron might be perfectly forgot, and the Knowledge of it quite worn out , Woodward
wrote.&! To make matters worse, he also believed that all metal implements existing before
the Deluge were destroyed by that event. Consequently, there followed a long period of
time when almost all humans had to use stone implements before metallurgy was
rediscovered. Woodward inferred from the most indubitably authentick Monuments
that the Use of Iron was not recovered in Asia till some Ages after the Deluge , and
from there this knowledge then passed to Europe and finally to America.&"
A somewhat more complex scheme was proposed by Nicolas Mahudel. He too accepted
the invention of metallurgy by Tubal-Cain and a degeneration of mankind after the
Deluge, but he introduced the idea that there had been two extended periods of time when
stone was the primary material for making implements. He began his account with the
commonly held opinion that Tubal-Cain lived nearly a thousand years after the creation
of Adam. If this is accepted then there was a long span of time after the creation of the first
humans when metal was not used. Mahudel noted, however, that scriptural writers and
other authors state that people prior to the invention of metallurgy tilled the earth, cut
trees, sheared sheep and hunted animals. All these activities, not to mention the building
of a city by Cain, would have required a variety of tools and weapons and since metal was
unknown then stone must have taken its place.&# For many centuries, then, the first humans
must have relied solely upon implements of stone, which were only later replaced by those
made from bronze and iron. After the Deluge people once again had to settle lands without
the aid of metal implements, and stone supplied that deficiency until such time as
metallurgy was rediscovered.&$
There is, in these historical schemes, no notion of a vast period of human prehistory. A
fairly substantial period of time during which people relied upon a stone technology could
easily be made to fit into the brief six thousand years of accepted biblical chronology. It
is important to note that in these schemes there is no concept of a Stone Age as a stage of
cultural and technological development from which all peoples emerged or as a
49 See the discussion of this in Laming-Emperaire, op. cit. (6), 458. Don Cameron Allen, The Legend of Noah ;
Renaissance Rationalism in Art, Science, and Letters, Urbana, 1949 investigates this and other generally accepted
ideas relating to Noah and the Deluge.
50 Woodward, op. cit. (10), 412. Original italics.
51 Woodward, op. cit. (10), 41. Original italics.
52 Mahudel, op. cit. (33), 165.
53 Mahudel, op. cit. (33), 164.

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chronological period characterizing an epoch in human historical development. These

naturalists and antiquaries of the eighteenth century did utilize concepts and empirical
discoveries that would later play a role in the formulation of the idea of human prehistory
and of a Stone Age, but it is equally true that their interpretation of stone artefacts and the
reconstructions of early human history that they created from them contrast sharply with
a modern conception of human prehistory.&%
There were instances later in the century, however, where one can detect in the writings
of naturalists and antiquaries a dawning suspicion that these stone artefacts were far older
than had previously been thought. While considering the possible origin and use of the
stone axes found in Britain, Charles Lyttelton (171468), an antiquary and fellow of both
the Royal Society and Society of Antiquaries, remarked that there was not the least doubt
of these stone instruments having been fabricated in the earliest times, and by barbarous
people, before the use of iron or other metals was known .&& This appears to be a mere
reiteration of what Montfaucon and others had said earlier, but he added that stone axes
and arrowheads not only originated from a period before the early inhabitants of Britain
made weapons from metal, they originated from a time before these people even had a
knowledge of metal. Thus they must have been made at a very early period indeed. From
this, Lyttelton concluded that the stone weapons in question were the most ancient
antiquities of Britain and were probably coeval with the first inhabitants of the island.&'
Lyttelton did not claim an antiquity for these objects greater than the six thousand years
of biblical chronology, and it is difficult to judge whether those first inhabitants of Britain
of which he speaks were simply the ancient Britons or some hitherto unknown primordial
tribe.
There were other discoveries scattered throughout the century that keenly demonstrate
the difficulties early naturalists and antiquaries faced when interpreting the archaeological
and historical meaning of stone artefacts. The first occurred at the very beginning of the
century when John Conyers, an apothecary and amateur antiquary living in London,
discovered a flint weapon lying beside the Body of an Elephant while digging for gravel
in a field. In his account of this curious find John Bagford (16501716), a shoemaker and
avid collector of books and antiquities, found the remains of the elephant more difficult to
account for than the stone implement. How this Elephant came here ? is the Question , he
revealingly remarked.&(
Bagford acknowledged that many people would explain the elephant as a vestige of the
biblical Flood, but he proposed instead that it might have been brought to Britain by the
armies of the Roman emperor Claudius and killed in some Fight by a Britain . This
54 On the rather complex relationship between natural history, human history and Earth history in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries see Paolo Rossi, The Dark Abyss of Time : The History of the Earth & the
History of Nations from Hooke to Vico (tr. Lydia G. Cochrane), Chicago, 1984 and Rhoda Rappaport, When
Geologists Were Historians, 16651750, Ithaca, 1997.
55 Lyttelton, op. cit. (41), 118. This paper was written in 1765 and read before the Society of Antiquaries in
1766.
56 Lyttelton, op. cit. (40), 1212.
57 John Bagford, A letter to the publisher, written by the ingenious Mr. John Bagford, in which are many
curious remarks relating to the city of London, and some things about Leland , in Joannis Lelandi Antiquarii de
rebus Britannicis collectanea, 6 vols., Oxford, 1715, p. lxiv.

The meaning of ceraunia

267

conjecture would have appeared plausible since the Romans were known to have used
elephants in war, and because not far from the Place where it [the supposed elephant] was
found, a British Weapon made of a Flint Lance like unto the Head of a Spear, fastened into
a Shaft of a good Length, which was a Weapon very common amongst the Ancient
Britains, was also dug up, they having not at that time the use of Iron or Brass .&) Bagford
thus creatively deployed the historical and scientific knowledge available to him to
construct a convincing and satisfying explanation of these discoveries.
A similar situation faced Johann Friedrich Esper (173281) near the end of the century
when he discovered human remains associated with fossilized animal bones in Gailenreuth
Cave, in the Bayreuth area of Germany. In his account of the discovery, Esper
acknowledged that the animal remains were of species that were not known and that might
have become extinct. From the position of the human bones he concluded that the event
that had deposited the animal bones there was also responsible for the presence of the
human remains. Although there were no stone implements present, Esper realized that the
remains were extremely old, but when he attempted to explain his discovery only three
possibilities seemed reasonable : either the remains were of a Druid, or of an antediluvian
man, or of a more recent origin.&* Espers conviction that the geology of the earths
surface was the product of a great catastrophe, his belief in the historical reality of the
biblical Deluge, and his confidence in the tradition that people had lived prior to that
catastrophic event, all led him to conclude that the human and animal remains were
from the antediluvian world. Like John Bagford, Esper explained an unusual discovery
using the accepted scientific and historical knowledge of his day.
Developments in the sciences of palaeontology and geology during the last half of the
century, however, created a situation where stone artefacts began to be viewed in new
ways. This is exemplified in the discovery of a stone axe in a quarry near Brussels, Belgium,
which came to the attention of the Dutch\Belgian geologist Franc: ois-Xavier Burtin
(17431818). Burtin was familiar with the geological literature on ceraunia and with the
generally accepted ethnographic and archaeological opinions surrounding them, and this
provided a framework for him to interpret this new discovery. What made this particular
discovery significant, however, was the attention Burtin gave to the geological context and
stratigraphic position of where the axe was found. Upon investigating the quarry, he found
that it consisted of three distinct stratigraphic layers, the geology of which he described in
some detail. He took great pains to ascertain that the axe had been found at the bottom
of the lower-most bed, near the fossilized remains of a tortoise, of oysters and of
nautilites.'!
Burtin was justifiably excited by this fact, for it carried quite profound implications.
Indeed, he was quick to note that this situation under three beds of such petrifactions is
58 Bagford, op. cit. (57), p. lxiv.
59 For a thorough discussion of Espers discovery and its significance in the history of prehistoric anthropology
and archaeology see Donald K. Grayson, The Establishment of Human Antiquity, New York, 1983, 8995. For
the relevant passages see Esper, AusfuW hrliche Nachricht von neuentdeckten Zoolithen unbekannter vierfuW ssiger
Tiere, 1774, 26. A French translation of this work appeared in the same year, which greatly expanded the influence
of the book.
60 Franc: ois-Xavier Burtin, Oryctographie de Bruxelles ou description des fossiles tant naturels quaccidentels
deT couverts jusquaZ ce jour dans les environs de cette ville, Bruxelles, 1784, 66.

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Matthew R. Goodrum

so interesting, it leads to consequences so singular , that he felt it necessary to take great

pains to verify this fact with the workmen who were present when the axe was
discovered.'" The fact that the axe was found in that geological context indicated not just
a very great historical age for the object, with human history still considered to extend
about six thousand years, but also a geological antiquity that certainly must exceed the
limits of acknowledged human history. Burtin cautiously claimed only that the axe
appeared to be a monument so respectable of the most remote antiquity that nothing
regarding it can be indifferent, or treated lightly .'# But he did allude to the bearing that
this find could have on the question of human antiquity and on the relationship between
human history and Earth history when he referred to the singular relation (rapport
singulier) that stone artefacts have to the physical history and the moral history of the
Earth (lhistoire physique et morale de notre globe).
Burtins comments are important because he was one of the first geologists to observe
the stratigraphic location of a prehistoric implement and to infer from this a relative age
for an artefact that exceeded the bounds of accepted biblical chronology. His interest in the
geological context of the discovery, and his recognition that the stratigraphic and
palaeontological evidence suggested an extreme antiquity for the artefact, reflect a new
attitude towards prehistoric artefacts and the way they should be studied. The rapid
growth of geology and palaeontology in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries
radically transformed the study of human prehistory. This was in part because of the
discovery of more stone implements and in part because more of these implements were
found in association with extinct fauna or in geological strata that indicated a very great
age for them. The well-known discovery of a hand-axe in Hoxne by John Frere in 1797
marks in many ways this transition from eighteenth-century interpretations of stone
artefacts to the approaches and attitudes that would prevail in the nineteenth.'$ In
addition, new geological theories were profoundly changing long-held opinions about the
age and history of the Earth. All these developments led geologists and archaeologists to
formulate the existence of a Stone Age, as well as argue for the coexistence of early humans
with the Ice Age fauna, later in the nineteenth century.'%
Conclusion
The investigations of eighteenth-century naturalists and antiquaries are not important
simply because they correctly interpreted ceraunia to be artefacts of human manufacture.
For the historian of science and the historian of archaeology there is much to be learned
61 Burtin, op. cit. (60), 66.
62 Un monument si respectable dune antiquiteT la plus reT culeT e, que rien de ce qui la regarde ne peut eV tre
indiffeT rent, ni traiteT leT geT rement . Burtin, op. cit. (60), 66.
63 Frere made this discovery in 1797 but his description of it was not published until 1800 (in the journal
Archaeologia). I have not discussed Freres ideas here because they mark the beginning of a quite new approach
to the study and conceptualization of stone artefacts, which sets Freres paper on the Hoxne axe apart from what
went before. The significance of this paper as a pivotal transition between two somewhat distinct periods or
traditions in the study and interpretation of prehistoric stone implements would demand a lengthier discussion
than is possible here.
64 These developments are discussed at length in Grayson, op. cit. (59).

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269

from the way ceraunia were transformed, during the eighteenth century, from poorly
understood geological specimens to archaeological artefacts. This process highlights the
role that natural history played in the early development of a science of archaeology and
reflects the close relationship that the natural sciences have often had with the human
sciences. The pivotal role of natural history cabinets and early museums in the process of
redefining ceraunia, where the comparison of such disparate items as fossils and rare
ethnographic material was made possible, offers a compelling illustration of the importance
of such collections in the history of science. The resolve of naturalists and antiquaries to
discover the origin of ceraunia and to interpret their broader historical and cultural
meaning led them to seek answers from a wide variety of sources. This provides us with
further insight into the nature of scientific practice in the eighteenth century. Ceraunia were
collected as curiosities, as rare geological specimens and as evidence of humanitys past. In
order to interpret their meaning, naturalists and antiquaries resorted to descriptions of
early Europeans in classical texts, to information reported about the savage peoples
inhabiting remote parts of the globe, to geological hypotheses about the age and history
of the Earth and to the biblical account of early human history. Such materials would in
turn provide a later generation with some of the basic ingredients for the making of a new
science of human prehistory.