NEOLITHIC AXE

-3500

Polished stone tool, probably an axe of Neolithic date. The tool is roughly trapizoid in plan and rectangular in section with slightly convex sides. The surface is covered in peck marks remaining from the shaping process and the blade and parts of the larger sides are polished. The butt is rough and broken suggesting the axe was once longer, in keeping with the proportions of other polished axes of this period. The blade is sharply angled in from the sides at c.60 degrees and meets in a 120 degree angle in the centre; it has a slight convex curve. The angle of the blade is much sharper than is commonly seen on polished axes and means it cannot be used for wood working. It maybe the blade was damaged and resharpened or it may always have been used as a chopper, as a weapon and/or for ceremonial purposes. Polished hammers from this period are constructed as having a joint weapon/ceremonial purpose. Polished tools were items that required a great deal of investment to create and were often curated even after breakages.The axe is 98.8mm long, 78.9mm wide at the blade and 59.1mm wide at the butt; it is 43.7mm thick and weighs 593 grams. It is ale orange in colour with paler and darker mottled areas.It has been examined by Dr Gerald Legg of the Booth Museum, Brighton who comments: "It is a very compact quartxite rock possibly true metamorphic quartzite, known as meta quartzite. In this the individual quartz grains have recrystalised along with the former cementing material to form an interlocking mosaic of quartz crystals making it a much tougher material... It is not of any recognisable UK original. There are areas in Europe where such tools are found/were made including the SE, Serbia/Bosnia etc"Metaquartzite tools are known from elsewhere in Britain including, for example, a hammer from Tynycelyn motte, Pennant, Wales. It is known stone tools were traded or brought from Southern Europe to Britain in this period. The site where this example was found is Late Iron Age in date, much younger than the likely production date of this item. The prescence of this tool at the later used site could be co-incidence, relate to reuse of a prominent landscape feature or be deliberate. Older stone tools were collected and kept by later people. We also cannot rule out later antiquarian activity.