Christian Jürgensen Thomsen (29 December 1788 – 21 May 1865) was a Danish historian who helped create early ways to study ancient objects. In 1816, he became the leader of a collection of old items that later became the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen. While organizing these items for display, he decided to arrange them in order of time using the three-age system. Other scholars had earlier suggested that history before written records had moved from a time of stone tools to times of bronze and iron tools, but these ideas did not help date objects clearly. Thomsen improved the three-age system by studying how different objects were found together in closed groups. This allowed him to divide prehistory into clear time periods based on evidence. Because of this, he is recognized as the person who started the three-age system for European history.
Thomsen also wrote one of the first detailed books about gold bracteates from the Migration period. His work at the Copenhagen museum focused on how styles, designs, and the places where objects were found changed over time. He understood the importance of studying objects from closed finds to connect common items to specific time periods (stone, bronze, iron). His findings were published in Ledetraad til Nordisk Oldkyndighed (Guideline to Nordic Antiquity) in 1836. An English version of this book was made in 1848.
Early life
Christian Jurgensen Thomsen was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1788 to a rich merchant family. When he was young, he visited Paris. After returning to Denmark, he became interested in collecting coins. This might have helped him notice how styles changed over time.
Contributions to archaeology
In 1816, Thomsen was chosen to organize the first exhibition for the Danish Royal Commission for the Collection and Preservation of Antiquities. Since the position did not pay a salary, Thomsen’s own money and his experience collecting coins were the main reasons he was selected.
Thomsen likely learned about the three-age model of prehistory from the writings of Lucretius, Vedel Simonsen, Montfaucon, and Mahudel. He decided to sort the collection’s items in order of time. Before Thomsen, people might have sorted artifacts based on their materials or how advanced they looked. However, because the origins of many items were known, Thomsen noticed that simple tools were sometimes found with more advanced ones, and metal items were found with stone items. Instead of focusing only on technology or how things changed over time, Thomsen understood that the goal was to determine when each artifact was made.
Thomsen studied which types of items were found together in the same places, as this helped him identify patterns that were unique to certain time periods. He discovered that stone tools were often found with amber, pottery, and glass beads. Bronze items were found with both iron and gold, but silver was only found with iron. He also noticed that bronze weapons were never found with iron items, which helped define each time period by the materials used for tools and weapons. Thomsen found that the types of items buried with people also changed over time: stone tools were found with unburned bodies and stone-chamber tombs, bronze weapons and lurs were found with stone-schist graves, and iron items were found with chamber tombs in barrows. Thomsen was the first to use the terms Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age. When others questioned why there was no "glass age," Thomsen explained that glass beads were found in all three periods, but glass bowls were only found in the Iron Age.
For Thomsen, the conditions in which items were found were key to determining their age. In 1821, he wrote to a fellow antiquarian, Schröder, that it was important to focus on what items were found together. The next year, he wrote that more research was needed about many artifacts, and that future archaeologists could not make accurate conclusions unless they studied what items were found together and improved the quality of collections.
Thomsen’s method of looking at what items were found together and paying close attention to the context of archaeological finds helped him create a timeline for the artifacts in the collection. This allowed him to classify new discoveries based on the established timeline, even without knowing where they came from. In this way, Thomsen’s system was a true chronological system, not one based on technology or evolution. By 1825, his timeline was complete, and museum visitors were taught his methods. Thomsen also wrote articles and pamphlets that stressed the importance of studying how items were found for accurate dating. In 1836, he published an illustrated book called Guide to Northern Antiquity, where he described his timeline and noted which items were found together.
Like earlier scholars such as Winckelmann, Thomsen studied how styles changed over time. However, he used his timeline as evidence that stylistic changes occurred, not the other way around. Thomsen’s ability to develop early methods in archaeology may have been helped by the large number of artifacts he had to study, which came from a relatively uniform cultural area. He was the first to turn these observations into a chronological system rather than a guess-based model.
Thomsen influenced many later archaeologists in Scandinavia, including J. J. A. Worsaae, Bror Emil Hildebrand, and Oscar Montelius. He also had a strong connection with Swedish scholars like Sven Nilsson.
Thomsen’s book Ledetraad til Nordisk Oldkyndighed (Guide to Nordic Antiquity; 1836) was translated into English in 1848. Worsaae’s book The Primeval Antiquities of Denmark was translated in 1849. These works greatly influenced the development of archaeology in Great Britain and the United States.
In 1862, Thomsen was chosen as a member of the American Philosophical Society.
Influence on art
Thomsen worked with Niels Laurits Høyen to greatly influence the arts in Copenhagen. He was a member of the board of the important Kunstforeningen (Art Society) during the 1830s, when the group had the most members and the highest status. In 1839, Thomsen was named inspector of the Royal Painting Collection, working alongside Niels Laurits Høyen. Many private collectors also asked Thomsen for advice.