AXE

Part-polished axe, of mottled grey and black flint, now patinated mid-brown. The axe is bifacially knapped to form a sub-trapezoidal plan with a rounded butt and a thin, lenticular cross section, a hollow of thin, worn cortex remains to the dorsal face to one side, near to the butt, this is surrounded by black flint. The entire axe is bifacially worked with well struck, confident invasive and overlapping flake scars apart from the cortex, the only unmodified surface extant. The broadest point has been ground and polished to a sharp cutting edge, this is in good condition with only a few tiny chips apart from a recent, small flake that has removed one corner, this recent damage shows the original colour of the flint to have been a shade greyer than the rest of patinated surface. A few similar flakes have come off one side of the butt, though this has had little effect to overall original shape.

An unusual feature of this axe is the thickness of the butt compared to the relative thinness of the rest of the axe, another being the very straight lateral edges are not abraded and blunted to any great degree, all these aspects would have made it almost impractical as a work-a-day axe, the thickest part to most Neolithic axes is at the mid-point, making an effective wedge point when inserted into the socket in the wood handle. The edges are usually ground to remove the sharpness and to ensure the flint doesn’t cut into the top and bottom of the socket in the handle and initiate a longitudinal split of the grain of the wood, this example is still relatively sharp, though they are very lightly blunted. The last feature is the thinness of the axe towards the cutting edge, this would have been a weak point when in use and it wouldn’t have taken much to break it in half, a slight twist to the use-impact would have been enough to overload this thin axe.

It is therefore very likely that this represents a copy of one of the early copper/copper alloy flat axes, but made in flint, of likely ceremonial function over practical use. Other examples recorded are: NMS-D38255, NMS-62DC05, NMS-92F628 and a very elongated example CORN-BA9E64.

Recorded examples of early copper (alloy) axes these were likely copies of are: NMGW-AD63BF, NMGW-0670CA,  LANCUM-566167 and  ESS-7D18D8.