Neolithic Axe head and scrapers found this morning!

[Sam James]

Here is the best of this mornings finds in particular the axe.... if thats what this is ?

[clovisoid]

That's a really cool find!

[Hal Gorges]

Cool..where did you find it Sam ?

[Hal Gorges]

[Ron Kelley]

We do have a section of the forum for items like this: International (Non-North American) Artifacts

Hey Sam, I will move it to the other section of the forum. Perhaps you will get an answer there. This is an interesting artifact.

[oldrocks2]

1st pice looks like a well used hoe. That is if they did any agriculture

[painshill]

Nice find. It is indeed a small Neolithic wood-working axe, which would have been hafted. Note that the bit is polished (by hand and not from usage), which is a general characteristic that distinguishes such items from those made in the preceding Mesolithic. Experiments have shown that polishing reduced the incidence of breakage in use. Ultimately, fully polished items were produced, but for aesthetic reasons rather than practical ones. Once people began sourcing their food by agriculture and animal husbandry, they had more time to spend on this kind of refinement.

The above dates taken from Wiki have been quoted out of context and are wrong for Britain. Those are the generalised dates, but they vary from country to country and region to region. I detailed this already on your other recent thread but, to reiterate:

Our Mesolithic period is generally taken to have begun around 11,000 years ago, immediately after the last mini-ice age in Britain, and lasted until about 6,300 years ago. We then entered (or rather, transitioned to) the Neolithic, which lasted until about 4,000 years ago. Even in Britain, those dates have some variations from region to region and we are talking about a transition which doesn't necessarily have a clear cut-off. The Mesolithic has a more definite start since Britain had been uninhabitable for long periods until about 11,700 years ago, when the climate here improved to the extent that permanent occupation was possible.

[Ron Kelley]

Thanks Painshill, I realized that the ground bit would be less apt to break but was wondering why they would grind the side of an axe or celt.

[painshill]

See below Ron.

[painshill]

PS: the last picture is rather small such that it's difficult to see the other items clearly. It's also not possible to see the profile on items when they are only pictured from above, but the last two items look like they might be discoidal scrapers.

[painshill]

Axes like this were usually polished on a hardstone platform using a longitudinal rocking/scooping motion. That often results in the area beyond the bit itself becoming polished, sometimes extending further along the sides as well.

Here’s one that was in the process of being bit-polished, together with a polishing platform found in association with it.



It’s possible that the axe posted was on its way to being fully polished, which would be accomplished initially using a platform like that and then further finished using a mixture of grit and animal fat and/or wet sand. We don’t see fully polished axes until the Mid-Late Neolithic, but they’re usually made from metamorphic hardstones rather than flint. Notably what we generically call ‘greenstones’ and ‘hornfels’. Many of these show no use-wear to indicate they ever saw use as tools, and are presumed to have been items of prestige which were used in trade or as offerings.

[Ron Kelley]

I have some axes or celts of this type from Africa. The entire length of the axe is ground to a polish. I have never seen that kind of grinding on a chipped axe in the U.S.

[Sunny]

A lovely semi-polished axe Sam. I have one that is very similar that I found a few years ago.....you walk back to the car with a beaming smile when you get one that nice :-)

My expereince has been that most Neolithic flint axes were simply flaked; they vastly out-number the polished variants. There is no defined reason for this; but clearly the cost in time or cost in traded value was high. I have a pal in Suffolk, who is a farmer and field-walks for lithics. he diced last year to make a fully polished flint axe, to see what it took. He is quite handy and so far is 50 hours into the polishing process; so not yet finished !!!
He rejected the idea of using a wooden rig (Scaninavian style) in preference for the method proven to have been used in Britain at the time....by hand pressure alone !!!

Most of my used-and-broken Neo' axes are just flaked variants. I have afew that are semi-polished and only one (complete) fully polished, in over 40 years of searching. I have though seen hundreds of Neolithic axes and as I say the vast majority were flaked and when it comes to polished ones yours is the most dominant level of working.

The pictures below are of an usual one...a fully polished axe tip I found that was in association with a cremation burial. You can see how the heat of the fire has created micro-shatter of the flint. It must have been an incredible peice before being placed in the funeral pile.

[painshill]

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a fully polished European Neolithic flint axe. Full polishing was usually reserved for more ‘exotic’ materials which, in some cases , can be traced to a lithic source far from where the artefacts are found. They’re usually what we collectively call ‘greenstones’: metamorphosed igneous rocks including jadeite and its varieties such as chloromelanite plus chlorastrolite, callais/callaite, greenschists, hornstones and a few others.

What is clear is that there was ‘trading’ of such materials as blanks or roughouts in the sense that these lithics had prestige value, and perhaps also trade as finished items (although that’s less certain). In some case, the axes show use-wear indications and in other cases (especially for highly polished items) no sign of it at all, such that they may have had ritual or ceremonial significance or were objects of status.

This one from Dol-de-Bretagne in Brittany, France is highly polished at the bit, which does have use-wear evidence, but less highly polished through the poll.




It’s a rare example made from jadeite for which the source is a small island called Groix on the opposite coast of the Brittany peninsula, over 150km away. The island is a few kilometres off the coast but has a distinctly different geology to the mainland. Although geographically isolated, there is no evidence that it had an island-specific lithic industry at any time in the Neolithic. Artefacts made from lithics not present on the island have been reported, so there was interaction in both directions. The inhabitants of both the island and the adjacent mainland probably considered themselves part of the same wider community.

Fully polished axes from prestige lithics showing no use-wear also turn up in grave contexts, and as groups of offerings in rivers and lakes, probably deposited over a number of years but at the same spot. In some cases, they have been ritually broken as votive offerings. That’s quite a commitment for something that would have taken many hours to make, over a period of several days.

This one, from Meaux on the river Marne in the Seine-et-Marne department in the Île-de-France is probably related to the Yonne and subsequent Neolithic cultures which began with a wave of migrants from the Danube region of Eastern Europe around 6,000 years ago.



Without the bit end it’s not possible to say if it ever saw use, but it has been ritually broken by a hammer blow to the side. I have another ritually broken one somewhere (can’t lay my hands on it at the moment) but just the bit end and it shows absolutely no use-wear evidence.

[Ron Kelley]

Hey Roger, I really like the first one. What a beautiful Axe.

[Sam James]

A lovely semi-polished axe Sam. I have one that is very similar that I found a few years ago.....you walk back to the car with a beaming smile when you get one that nice :-)

My expereince has been that most Neolithic flint axes were simply flaked; they vastly out-number the polished variants. There is no defined reason for this; but clearly the cost in time or cost in traded value was high. I have a pal in Suffolk, who is a farmer and field-walks for lithics. he diced last year to make a fully polished flint axe, to see what it took. He is quite handy and so far is 50 hours into the polishing process; so not yet finished !!!
He rejected the idea of using a wooden rig (Scaninavian style) in preference for the method proven to have been used in Britain at the time....by hand pressure alone !!!

Most of my used-and-broken Neo' axes are just flaked variants. I have afew that are semi-polished and only one (complete) fully polished, in over 40 years of searching. I have though seen hundreds of Neolithic axes and as I say the vast majority were flaked and when it comes to polished ones yours is the most dominant level of working.

The pictures below are of an usual one...a fully polished axe tip I found that was in association with a cremation burial. You can see how the heat of the fire has created micro-shatter of the flint. It must have been an incredible peice before being placed in the funeral pile.

Thanks Sunny, see this axe head polished broken front section I also found from my site similar to yours, also I think this is a rough made axe the (darker flint one), it has impact fractures on the blade end and has that classic rounded front section of an axe, I think this was passed off as just a worked large flake before but I think it is too much like an axe to be a rough worked flake, it may have been discarded but I certainly think someone had an axe in mind with this piece. Cheers Sam

[Sunny]

[QUOTE=painshill;n614832][SIZE=16px]I don’t think I’ve ever seen a fully polished European Neolithic flint axe. Full polishing was usually reserved for more ‘exotic’ materials which, in some cases , can be traced to a lithic source far from where the artefacts are found. They’re usually what we collectively call ‘greenstones’: metamorphosed igneous rocks including jadeite and its varieties such as chloromelanite plus chlorastrolite, callais/callaite, greenschists, hornstones and a few others.

I have seen a few now. My only complete one - from Dorset