AXE

Incomplete stone axe head, trapezoidal in plan, lozenge-shaped in profile, and sub-circular in section. The axe is made of a meta-igneous, siliceous or silica-rich rock. The axe has been broken at its butt end and there is some damage in the form of several nicks in the bevelled edge of the blade, at the opposite end. Similar examples can be found in the Royal Institution of Cornwall's collection from Accra, Ghana, West Africa which were brought back by collectors to Cornwall in the 19th century. The axe would have most likely been brought over after 1850, and before 1950, as it was buried at quite a depth when found in the 1970s. But it is difficult to determine its date of manufacture. "Oliver Davies, in his book West Africa Before the Europeans, 1965, gives evidence of their manufacture and use in Sekondi, on the coast of what is now Ghana, about 150 miles west of Accra, as late as c.1500. But the axe could also date from the earlier Neolithic period in West Africa. Davies (1965) illustrates similar examples on pages 200-201, in figures 55,56,57,59,60,62 and 74, after a formal description and an indication of geographical spread, in Ghana and the Ivory Coast with a range of similar items of different materials, including sandstone and greenstone. Davies goes on to say “until modern times they have been collected for magical purposes and can still be bought in the market in Kumasi” [the capital of the Asante confederacy in central Ghana]. This is supported by the website by Phil Bartle on herbal medicine (Akan Studies – Gods III; Health and Fertility) in which mention is made of the short stubby axe heads known in Twi (the language of the Akan/Asante) as ‘nyame akuma’ (god axe) being ground up and used as medicine. There is an article by R.P.Wild, who worked for the Gold Coast Geological Survey in the 1920s and 30s – “Nyame Akuma as God axes” in the Gold Coast Review, Vol. 5, No. 2, 1931. It is quite likely that Cornish mining engineers and other Europeans working in West Africa would have brought these souvenirs back with them to the UK." (Len Pole pers comm)