Island Quarries, Island Axeheads, and the Neolithic of Ireland and Britain

Abstract

A notable feature of the Neolithic Period (4,000-2,500 cal B.C.) of northwest Europe is the exploitation of lithic sources on islands for the production of stone axeheads and other artifacts. This article focuses on three such islands: 1) Rathlin in the North Channel off the northeast coast of Ireland, 2) the island group of Shetland between the North Atlantic and the North Sea, and 3) the island of Lambay off the east coast of Ireland. This work provides support for the importance of insular axehead sources during the Neolithic. The quarries on these islands and the pattern of the distribution of their products provide evidence of quite different scales and organization of quarrying activity and extent of distribution of products from the quarries and hence types of social networks.

British Neolithic Axehead Distributions and Their Implications

“…A key question for many of the researchers that have so far considered British and other European stone axehead finds has been to understand what production, consumption, and exchange mechanisms might have led to the spatial distribution of axeheads that we see in the archaeological record today. Some axeheads clearly were moved long distances, including crossings by sea in the case of mainland British findspots of axeheads from Ireland and the Alps (Cooney et al 2013;Pétrequin and Pétrequin 2012), while it remains clear that many axeheads were local regional products (Darvill 1989;Pitts 1996). Cummins (1979) recognised that axeheads of particular materials are typically found close to their source and decline in frequency with increasing distance, although occasionally secondary concentrations might appear further away.…”

The Role of Stone in Island Societies in Neolithic Atlantic Europe: Creating Places and Cultural Landscapes

“…On the other hand, the reality is that islands and mainlands are linked by the movement of people and things across the sea (e.g., Broodbank, 2000;Van de Noort, 2011) and that landscapes are complemented by seascapes (Renouf, 2011a, b). The importance of stone from island sources is that they allow us to explore the complementary relationship between the notion of islands as fixed, bounded places and the fluidity and inter-connectivity of islands and mainlands created by the movement of people (see Cooney et al, 2013). In the case of the porphyritic andesite from Lambay, while small numbers of axes from this island source are found on the Irish mainland, the majority that we know of were actually deposited at the quarry itself.…”

“…This fact would have facilitated the spatial separation of this key stage of the performative relationship between people and the materials from the actual quarry sites. The current lack of evidence for grinding or polishing from the extensive North Roe quarry landscape suggests that riebeckite felsite preforms or roughouts were ground and polished at other locations (Ballin, 2013), while on Rathlin Island there is clear evidence that the working of porcellanite from the quarry at Brockley, including polishing and grinding, was spread across the island and appears to have been part of the activities of daily life (Cooney et al, 2012a). Porphyritic andesite, on the other hand, because of its medium to coarse grain, appears to have been worked in a less formally structured sequence of actions; grinding may have begun before the "primary" process of hammering and pecking was completed (Cooney, 2005).…”

“…For example, it would appear that one strand in the working of porcellanite was channeled toward the production of large axes with oblique butts (Cooney and Mandal, 1998). In his analysis of riebeckite felsite axes and knives from the North Roe quarry on Shetland, Ballin (2013Ballin ( , 2015 concludes that we can identify both functional and ceremonial channels in both types of object from the preform or roughout stage, through to the degree and care of polish and finish, to the function and context, and finally, in the patterns of deposition. In the case of porphyritic andesite at the Eagle's Nest quarry (Fig.…”

“…I have been engaged with understanding the significance of this phenomenon through work on three different islands ( Fig. 1): Lambay in the Irish Sea (e.g., Cooney, 2005Cooney, , 2009, Rathlin off the northeast coast of Ireland (Cooney et al, 2012a), and the Shetland Islands that stand between the Atlantic and the North Sea (Cooney et al, 2012b(Cooney et al, , 2013. Recently I have also had the opportunity to examine current theoretical approaches to material culture .…”