(1740-1807). English antiquary famous for his precocious recognition of the antiquity of man. In 1797 he wrote to the Society of Antiquaries reporting on the discovery of flint implements found in association with bones of extinct animals in a brickearth pit at Hoxne, Suffolk. Frere recognized that the implements were man-made, ‘fabricated and used by a people who had not the use of metals’, and suggested that they should be referred to ‘a very remote period indeed; even beyond that of the present world’.
The Macmillan dictionary of archaeology, Ruth D. Whitehouse, 1983Copied