Neolithic Stone Axe

Stone axes were ubiquitous during the Neolithic, from about 5500 to 3500 B.C.E. Axes were essential to the clearing and cultivation of the European landscape as it was covered with thick forests that needed to be felled and tamed in order to plant crops and graze livestock. In addition, axes would have been used to build houses, boats, and fences.

Many of the Neolithic stone axes found in Europe show evidence of use, either from being chipped and flaked, or being worn down considerably on the blade end. These axes would most likely have been fitted into the hole of a "haft," a long wooden handle resembling that of a modern axe. However, this axe is incredibly smooth and without obvious signs of wear. As such, it was most likely a ritual or "prestige" axe, used for either religious purposes or to be interred in a grave.

The importance of prestige axes cannot be overstated: to create an axe with this level of polish would have taken days of grinding and finishing by a skilled craftsperson. And to use a stone of the quality of this diorite only shows how important this axe would have been.

This axe and its handwritten tags are remarkably similar to the cache of diorite axes found in the collection of Alexis Damour, now housed at the Muséum de Toulouse in France. Damour was a 19^th century French mineralogist and prehistorian of some renown who was president of the Société géologique de France and whose remaining collection can be found at the Toulouse Museum. Although it is unknown whether this current example passed through Damour's hands, the fact that diorite axes of this type and quality were of interest to Damour shows how important they were to prehistorians of the 19th century and early 20th centuries, which is when this example would have been collected.