Edward Burnett Tylor (1832–1917), leading voice of British Victorian anthropology, significantly contributed to the sciences of prehistory by theorising the universality of the Stone Age in his work entitled Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization (1865). In meeting this challenge, Tylor offers a comparative overview of extra–European archaeology, linguistics and ethnography, as well as of data on European prehistory, languages and folklore. Focusing on the first edition of the Researches, this essay analyses Tylor’s generalizations about the Stone Age, their methodological and theoretical issues, their key–notions and data as well as their reception at the third session of the International Congress of Prehistoric Anthropology and Archaeology (1868).
