Editing Three-age system (section)

=== Eurocentrism ===
Another common criticism attacks the broader application of the three-age system as a cross-cultural model for social change. The model was originally designed to explain data from Europe and West Asia, but archaeologists have also attempted to use it to explain social and technological developments in other parts of the world such as the Americas, Australasia, and Africa.<ref name="anything">{{harvnb|Browman|Williams|2002|p=146}}</ref> Many archaeologists working in these regions have criticized this application as [[eurocentric]]. Graham Connah writes that:<ref name="Graham 2010 p.63" />
<blockquote>... attempts by Eurocentric archaeologists to apply the model to African archaeology have produced little more than confusion, whereas in the Americas or Australasia it has been irrelevant, ...</blockquote>
Alice B. Kehoe further explains this position as it relates to American archaeology:<ref name=anything />
<blockquote>... Professor Wilson's presentation of prehistoric archaeology<ref>A predecessor of Lubbock working from the original Danish conception of the three ages.</ref> was a European product carried across the Atlantic to promote an American science compatible with its European model.</blockquote>
Kehoe goes on to complain of Wilson that "he accepted and reprised the idea that the European course of development was paradigmatic for humankind."<ref>{{harvnb|Browman|Williams|2002|p=147}}</ref> This criticism argues that the different societies of the world underwent social and technological developments in different ways. A sequence of events that describes the developments of one civilization may not necessarily apply to another, in this view. Instead social and technological developments must be described within the context of the society being studied.