#flint axe

Neolithic or Early Bronze Age thin-butted axe from Denmark (flint, c. 2400-1000 BC)

Neolithic or Early Bronze Age thin-butted axe from Lolland, Denmark (flint, c. 2400-1000 BC)

BBC – A History of the World – Object : Pre-historic hand-axe 700,000 years old

A History of the World is a partnership between the BBC and the British Museum that focuses on world history, involving collaborations between teams across the BBC, and schools, museums and audiences across the UK. The project focuses on the things we have made, from flint to mobile phone. — Read on www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/riRFjUQ5S_CX4VWEv4CzIQ

A pair of old friends have found the largest flint axes in Danish history in a drained bog area near Tastum Lake just south of Skive in Jutland.

Archaeologists at nearby Viborg Museum theorise that the axes were placed in the bog as part of a ritual sacrifice sometime during the early Stone Age around 3800-3500 BC.

“It’s fascinating that they could master the flint and produce such a perfect axe,” said Mikkel Kieldsen, an archaeologist and curator at Viborg Museum.

“A lot of effort has been put into the axes, so the sacrifice must have really meant something.”

One of the axes, where are being exhibited at Viborg Museum for the next three weeks, measures a Danish-record 50.5 centimetres.

Archaeologists from Museum Lolland-Falster have found a remarkably well-preserved axe with an intact shaft during their digs in connection with the construction of the Femern Belt Fixed Link.

The narrow-necked flint axe is evaluated to be about 5,500 years old and was found in what used to be the seabed during the Stone Age.

”To find such a well-preserved shafted axe is incredible,” Søren Anker Sørensen, an archaeologist with Museum Lolland-Falster, said in a press release.

Another fantastic find by archaeologists working on the Fehmarn Belt Tunnel scheme in Denmark. They have uncovered a Neolithic flint axe that is still held within its wooden handle. The axe was discovered within foreshore silts and these damp, relatively anaerobic conditions helped to preserve the organic handle. A number of other artefacts, including wooden paddles, were also identified at this location. Many of of the artefacts appeared to have been deliberately inserted into the seabed in a vertical manner and this has lead to speculation that they may represent some form of ritual activity.

To most people, a useless flint axe is just that. To archaeologist Sigrid Alræk Dugstad, it is a source of information about Stone Age children.

Whereas arrowheads, axes and other formal tools have traditionally received a lot of attention in research, the archaeologist Sigrid Alræk Dugstad now concentrates on what is at the bottom of the hierarchy, namely the production debris and the unfinished and discarded products.

In the article "Early child caught knapping: A novice early Mesolithic flintknapper in southwestern Norway," she has turned upside down the hierarchy of objects from the Early Stone Age.