In this chapter I briefly discuss some of the consequences of the Three Age System for the development of archaeology, especially prehistoric archaeology. I shall only peripherally engage in an assessment of the widespread notion, typified by (Rodden, Daniel (ed), Towards a History of Archaeology, Thames and Hudson, London, 1981), that the Three Age System represented archaeology's first paradigm. My primary interest is in investigating whether the foundation of the Three Age System was the most significant spur to the writing of prehistory, or whether it was at least as much the result of the development of inquiry into human culture and physique that, by the end of the first quarter of the nineteenth century, had begun to coalesce as ethnology.