PALSTAVE

A complete, looped, Middle to Late Bronze Age palstave axe with medium/high flanges, and a high stop ridge, dating to c.1350 to 1150 cal BC.

The butt of the axe is flat, c.18.6mm wide and 3.8mm thick. It is slightly worn having lost one small sub-rectangular chip on one of its wide surfaces. The septum measures 66.4mm in length and grows in thickness from 3.8mm at the butt to c.10.9mm adjacent to the stop-ridge.

The flanges of the axe begin 15.3mm after the butt and smoothly widen up the remaining length of the septum before narrowing again to the blade quite quickly after the stop-ridge. This gives the upper and lower surfaces of the axe a sub-triangular form before the blade. After this point the blade narrows slowly towards the cutting edge.

The blade is c.19.5mm thick just before it meets the stop-ridge, which is slightly thicker. At this point it is 20.8mm wide. From here, the blade begins to shallowly expand outwards for about four fifths of its length to a width of 29.4mm. It also narrows to a thickness of 10.8mm. After this the blade flares more quickly to its maximum width of 45.8mm. It also narrows to its blade edge which is 2.4mm thick. The wings of the blade are not quite perfectly curved with each tip being flattened. This looks to have been deliberate rather than as a result of later damage. The body of the blade is decorated on each surface with an ornamental impressed design placed just after the stop ridge. This takes the form of three shallowly impressed triangles projecting from the base of stop ridge which converge to form a larger impressed triangular impression.

There is a single loop on one of the narrow edges of the palstave. The loop begins before the stop and is 23.4mm long ending slightly after it. The loop is an oval shape in cross section and projects 7.1mm from the body of the axe leaving a loop that is c. 3.6mm high and 9.4mm wide. 

The axe is a very dark green colour with the patina chipped away to reveal a medium dark green colour beneath. This has been the result of the axe originally being coated in oil following its discovery. The axe blade narrows more extremely one side than the other this may be the result of sharpening although the remaining patina on the object make this difficult to be certain of. Traces of a casting seam can be seen running along the length of each narrow edge although it is quite shallow such that it might have been filed slightly.

The axe measures 149.5mm long, 45.8mm wide (at the blade's maximum width), 30.1mm thick (at the flange) and weighs 336 grams.

The axe is almost identical to a palstave within the Ashmolean collection (Catalogue number AN1927.2571) which is described as a transitional palstave by Smith (1959, fig 7.2). This parallel was part of the Crediton Hoard, Devon (HER Reference No: MDV13977). O'Connor  attributed this Palstave to the Norman type (1980, 320 no 5, List 7B, 3) and has suggested the hoard therefore fits a Penard phase date (c. 1350-1150 cal BC following Roberts et al 2013). Another comparable example is a single find from Ashburton, Devon (Pearce 1983, 432-3, No.184, pl.23).  Further similar examples on the database include  DEV-01DDC5 which shares the same form and decorative motif and potentially LEIC-35A67A and DEV-8907FD which share similar forms. More recently a large hoard in Bais, northern france, has been published containing 14 similar palstsave forms (Mélin and Nordez 2019) which are argued to represent a new form of palstave terrmed the Bais type.