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23rd January 2009, 03:27 PM
Don't know if anyone else saw the Antiques Roadshow the other weekend but there was a nice rough out axe. Neolithic, flint, I assumed correctly. Found somewhere in the rural south of England, can't remember where possibly Oxfordshire, apparently but said to be imported from Scandinavia. Then went on to suggest that such items were also used as plough shares, coming of agriculture and all that.
That wasn't something I had heard before - is that a serious suggestion made elsewhere? Also, the Scandinavian import. I've come across such things in the north of the country (that is the whole of Britain so including Scotland little Englanders) but assumed they didn't travel so far.
Any enlightenment, just curious?
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23rd January 2009, 04:04 PM
Didn't see the programme, but a Scandanavian origin does seem unlikely for the simple reason that there ain't a great deal of naturally occuring flint in Scandinavia.
Unless of course the expert was using Scandinavia in its geopolitical sense rather than its geological origins. So where would the boundaries of the Scando-Atlantic neolithic be?. Probably somewhere closer to Oxfordshire than in the modern day sense....
Um...still seems unlikely though.
PS Would it have been Lars Tharp who suggested that it came from Scandinavia. Wasn't his dad/grandad director of the National Museum in K?benhavn? I am sure he told me something like that once.... Oops too much inside info there...
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23rd January 2009, 04:24 PM
Quote:quote:Originally posted by kevin wooldridge
Didn't see the programme, but a Scandanavian origin does seem unlikely for the simple reason that there ain't a great deal of naturally occuring flint in Scandinavia.
Unless of course the expert was using Scandinavia in its geopolitical sense rather than its geological origins. So where would the boundaries of the Scando-Atlantic neolithic be?. Probably somewhere closer to Oxfordshire than in the modern day sense....
Um...still seems unlikely though.
PS Would it have been Lars Tharp who suggested that it came from Scandinavia. Wasn't his dad/grandad director of the National Museum in K?benhavn? I am sure he told me something like that once.... Oops too much inside info there...
I'm sure I've come across references to Scandinavian polished flint axes so I'm not sure - anyway, it was Mr Tharp who was looking at the item (the miracles of Google's image search allowed me to check that in seconds!) so it is perhaps not surprising he suggested a Scandinavian origin!
it was the thing about them being used as plough shares I was more surprised by - has that every really been suggested?
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23rd January 2009, 04:31 PM
http://www.flintsource.net/
...shows that flint sources in Scandinavia are plentiful!
Beautiful Danish flint axes, daggers and sickles come to mind. The really good flint was mined.
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23rd January 2009, 04:35 PM
I was in the Historical Museum in Stockholm the other month, and there were more polished Stone axes than you could shake a stick at, including one which was an adze at one end and an elk head at the other. It was opposite a cabinet illustrating the principle of typology with examples of brushes from all over Sweden. Some of these axe heads were massive, 0.15m wide and 0.5 m long.
Ploughshares: sounds like an early and out of date interpretation. Most of the cord rig/lazy bedding that I've seen looks to be spade dug.
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23rd January 2009, 04:49 PM
Wasn't convinced by the adze story either.
I understood it that the axe was imported as a curoisity during the 19th Century rather than being imported in antiquity.
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23rd January 2009, 05:44 PM
Quote:quote:Originally posted by Oxbeast
I was in the Historical Museum in Stockholm the other month, and there were more polished Stone axes than you could shake a stick at, including one which was an adze at one end and an elk head at the other. It was opposite a cabinet illustrating the principle of typology with examples of brushes from all over Sweden. Some of these axe heads were massive, 0.15m wide and 0.5 m long.
Ploughshares: sounds like an early and out of date interpretation. Most of the cord rig/lazy bedding that I've seen looks to be spade dug.
Hmmm, surprising what a variety of information you can get off a BAJR!
I was worried I was missing some new theory about stone axes being ploughshares, but it was Antiques Roadshow after all, not Time Team (oh my aching sides!).
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23rd January 2009, 05:46 PM
Quote:quote:Originally posted by Sparky
Wasn't convinced by the adze story either.
I understood it that the axe was imported as a curoisity during the 19th Century rather than being imported in antiquity.
I thought the owner said it had been found in a field on his land - that would seem a slightly careless way to treat your imported antiquities!
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23rd January 2009, 05:52 PM
I too had not heard the plough/adze thing before.
Would it be awful to admit that I thought ?200 was quite a bargain?
ML
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23rd January 2009, 06:22 PM
Whatever.
Still, lesson learnt in that we shouldn't take archaeological advice from antique dealers.
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