|
Date: |
|
Description: | Incomplete metamafic greenstone axe which has been petrologically analysed by Dr. Roger Taylor as part of the Clodgy Moor Project. Sub-ovate in plan with parallel sides, which would taper slightly towards the butt if it remained, and lozenge-shaped in profile and in section. Less than half of the axe remains, mainly the blade edge, which has a shaped finish and has broken from a weathered cobble, possibly during manufacture, after some grinding on either side of the blade. The axe may have originally been at least twice as long, judging from similar ethnographic parallels, in order to balance it with the haft. The axe may look like an adze because its blade is slightly off-centre and its section not quite elliptical, or symmetrical either side of the mid-line. But this just shows that it was made from a cobble where one side maintains the original smooth surface that is due to the underlying crystalline formation over time, and the other has been pecked and ground, giving it a rougher, newly exposed surface which comes from inside the cobble (Dave Weddle pers comm). The greenstone is typical of that found in the west of Cornwall from known outcrops and contains pale felspars and dark amphibole inclusions (Dr. Roger Taylor pers comm - see notes below).Similar examples have been excavated from the Neolithic settlement at Carn Brea and are illustrated in Mercer (1981) on page 155, Fig.64, for example, No.S6.
Original Image | Publisher: | http://finds.org.uk | Source: | Portable Antiquities | Identifier: | http://finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/r... | Go to resource |
|
More Like this...
-
-
AXE
Incomplete gabbroic greenstone axe which…
-
-
ADZE
Greenstone or epidiorite adze, tear-shaped…
-
AXE
Incomplete greenstone or metadolerite axe…
-
ADZE
Incomplete metagabbroic greenstone adze, which…
-
axe
Incomplete greenstone or epidiorite axehead…
-
ADZE
Broken blade end of an…
-
-
|