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Shattered handaxe rebuild

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  • Shattered handaxe rebuild

    This has to be one of the most exciting finds I have had. The plough (plow) had shattered this handaxe and when I found the first piece I wasn’t convinced it was worked. I took a gamble and settled down to work through the soil and after two hours of digging and feeling through each piece of clay by hand I had amassed the parts you see in the photos; although at that stage I still wasn’t sure I had the entire artefact. At best I thought I had a partial axe.

    It wasn’t until I began to wash the bigger bits (with my reading glasses on !) that I knew for sure that it was worked and even when the whole lot lay on a towel drying I considered there was too little there to make anything near a complete axe. Cellotaping the many fragments together it slowly took shape and although I am still missing some pieces I am bloody pleased with the outcome. I beautiful Lower Palaeolithic ovate biface.... made by a species of hominid that roamed the earth hundreds of thousands of years ago, when Britain was populated with rhino, elephant and lions...awesome :0)

    The next stage was to glue it, which is where I managed to get to so far. But before I start to fill the cracks with a colour matched flexible filler I intend to return to the field and try for those pieces still missing

  • #2
    Another photo of the reverse side (cellotaped) and end-on (glued)

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    • #3
      Look's like it was broke 5, no, 6 different times.
      http://joshinmo.weebly.com

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      • #4
        That's alot of work and patience! Very admirable job and awesome artifact!
        Josh (Ky/Tn collector)

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        • #5
          Originally posted by JoshinMO View Post
          Look's like it was broke 5, no, 6 different times.
          17 major bits and about 10 tiny fragments

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          • JoshinMO
            JoshinMO commented
            Editing a comment
            Well, it's neat to be pieced back together and i hope it comes out ok.

        • #6
          Very cool. The only stone relics I've seen over here shattered like that are some Turkey Tail points that were smashed. (Those are only 3000 or so years old, so a bit of difference in age.)

          Do you think farming did that?
          Hong Kong, but from Indiana/Florida

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          • #7
            Originally posted by clovisoid View Post
            Very cool. The only stone relics I've seen over here shattered like that are some Turkey Tail points that were smashed. (Those are only 3000 or so years old, so a bit of difference in age.)

            Do you think farming did that?
            Yeah, a plough (plow) strike or the dreaded roller without a doubt. I think the plough causes a lot of chips to the edge of artefacts, but the worst damage is caused by the rollers. I see rolled fields covered in shattered flint, with the pieces laying next to each other broken freshly in half. The big difference with artefacts of this age is the frost damage they exhibit, with masses of very hair fine cracks caused by subsequent ice age temperatures. You have to remember that these were made, used and discarded by hominids during warm inter-glacials (in Britain). The next ice age arrives and these are on or near the surface of the ground and are then subject to artic tundra like conditions, so frost fracture and damage is inevitable. For every complete axe I find I find 20-40 fragments of frost shattered ones. If a plough/roller hits a frost fractured artefact they simple explode into many pieces....which is the story of my handaxe.

            If I had not found it this year then the pieces would have been dispersed by the next and subsequent seasonal ploughing and it would have been lost forever

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            • #8
              Started to fill the cracks and gaps....more to be done before I start painting though. The filler I have used is a flexible decorators filler, blending magnolia and brown to produce a brownish-grey colour. This is easily removed if needs be without any damage to the object.

              I am planning on using water-colours so once again nothing permanent or damaging to the object

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              • #9

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                • #10
                  Very nice job on the filler.

                  The frost damage is interesting. I wonder if I just haven't noticed it here because it absolutely shatters the relic, if there is some difference in the quality of material that makes yours more prone to it, or if it is the result of hundreds of thousands of years vs simply thousands of years... I have lots of material from Montana & North Dakota that spent thousands of years going through extreme freeze & thaw cycles (shallow finds in an area where the temps can hit -40 in the winter.)
                  Hong Kong, but from Indiana/Florida

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                  • #11
                    Originally posted by clovisoid View Post
                    Very nice job on the filler.

                    The frost damage is interesting. I wonder if I just haven't noticed it here because it absolutely shatters the relic, if there is some difference in the quality of material that makes yours more prone to it, or if it is the result of hundreds of thousands of years vs simply thousands of years... I have lots of material from Montana & North Dakota that spent thousands of years going through extreme freeze & thaw cycles (shallow finds in an area where the temps can hit -40 in the winter.)
                    The quality of the local flint in thei area is very high and you don't get this effect with Mesolithic or Neolithic artefacts. The frost shattering is a characteristic of protracted freezing and thawing. Some of these handaxes have seen 200-400+ thousand years and thus several ice ages and interglacials. The patination suggests that some were exposed to the sun for a considerable period with no soil covering them to provide insulation; producing extreme freeze and thaw cycles.

                    I guess that it takes hundreds of years of such weather to produce this frost crazing. The handaxes from the same period - in the same area - that ended up buried in gravel deposits (deep underground) get stained reddish, but are very robust with no crazing.

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