There is a general system of archaeological ‘ages’, the first of which begins with the first stone tools in the Palaeolithic, or ‘old’ stone age, which ends with the Pleistocene. The Holocene begins with Epi-Palaeolithic societies, which largely continued Palaeolithic lifeways, and Neolithic societies, which adopted agriculture. Bronze and Iron Age societies are recognized by the capacity to produce these metals and concomitant shifts in societal scale and complexity.
