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Description: | A small body fragment of a cast, copper-alloy Sompting socketed axe of early Iron Age date. Only a small sub-rectangular section of the main body of the axe survives with the breaks indicating its fragmentation in antiquity. The reverse is plain but the obverse displays remains of two parallel ribs terminating one pellet-in-circlet each. There are parallels in Pendleton (1999), no. 125 and 130. The axe is likely to date from the eighth century BC. The length is 20.14mm, the width is 16.79mm, the thickness is 2.67mm and it weighs 4.00g.Dot Boughton notes: 'Complete Early Iron Age socketed axes of Type Sompting are large, heavy specimens and characterised by, on occasion, highly elaborate decoration, such as rib-and-pellet or rib-and-roundel/circlet decoration, Omega- or box-shaped ornaments, sometimes with herring bone ornament between the individual ribs. They are often characterised by a thick double-mouth moulding and a back-to-front (=sub-rectangular) socket shape. The blades of individual finds such as this usually show signs of wear and resharpening whilst Sompting axes from hoards were sometimes deposited in as-cast condition. The Fen edges of Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire show one the highest concentrations of Sompting axes in Britain and in addition to the parallels mentioned above, some others can be listed for this fragment, for example an axe from Fordham, Cambridgeshire (University of Cambridge Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology Acc. No. 1903.147) and another from Newton, Cambridgeshire (British Museum: no. reg.). Two similar axes were part of the Early Iron Age hoards from the Kingston (Surrey) and Ferring (Sussex) hoards (British Museum: Acc. Nos. 1849, 3-26, 1; Worthing Museum, Acc. Nos. unknown).'
Original Image | Publisher: | http://finds.org.uk | Source: | Portable Antiquities | Identifier: | http://finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/r... | Go to resource |
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HOARD
Description: A hoard of 82…
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