Traffic in Stone Axe and Adze Blades

Abstract

A basic condition for understanding the past is to avoid applying categories of thought and shades of meaning inappropriate to the period under review. This applies with special force to the study of the prehistoric past, by definition the phase of history most remote from the present and for this very reason most likely to be misunderstood. As Martin Jahn has well said,l much of the controversy between those who write about prehistoric trade and those who deny its existence is semantic: it arises from the different meanings they attach to the word trade. If one takes a definition of trade proper to a society with an advanced division of labour and an economy based on moneyif one chooses, for example, to define trade as an activity carried on by a class of traders for financial gain, it is understandable that no evidence for trade can be found in societies functioning at a simpler level, societies in which there is a bare minimum of specialization and to which the notion of profit in the sense we understand it may be quite foreign. Yet, if one sees it as, in the last resort, no more than the peaceful and systematic exchange of goods, one has no difficulty in recognizing that trade of a kind is practised among even the most primitive societies known to ethnologists; and, by implication, one is entitled to seek for traces of it in the archaeological record of prehistory.The present contribution, offered to a scholar whose lively mind ranges widely but penetrates at all times to the physical realities of existence, will concentrate on the interpretation of a specific archaeological phenomenon in terms of primitive trade, namely the manufacture and distribution over extensive territories of the blades of axes and adzes made from particular kinds of stone. The evidence will be reviewed under two main heads, namely that from north-western and northern Europe between the fourth and the second millenia B.C. and that from Australia, New Zealand and Melanesia down to the nineteenth and even, in the case of New Guinea, to the mid-twentieth century A.D. In conclusion some brief attempt will be made to collate these two sources of information and see how the prehistoric data appears in the light of ethnography.The principle of the adze was well established among the mesolithic hunterfishers for thousands of years before farming penetrated north-west Europe ; and these people had even begun to apply polishing, a technique devised long previously for shaping antler and bone, to stone tools.2 Yet archaeologists have surely been right to see in the polished axe or adze blade a very symbol of 1 Martin Jahn, 'Gab es in der vorgeschichtlichen Zeit bereits einen Handel?', Abh. d. sah. Akad. d. 2

Animate objects: a biography of prehistoric ‘axe-amulets’ in the central Mediterranean region

“…If any generalisation can be made in this way, then it is that stone axes are widely regarded as 'strong things' which help people with many of the jobs that they have to do (see, for example, Firth 1929, 389;Vial 1940-1;Clark 1965;Strathern 1965;1969;Hughes 1977;White & Modjeska 1978a;1978b;Phillips 1979). If any generalisation can be made in this way, then it is that stone axes are widely regarded as 'strong things' which help people with many of the jobs that they have to do (see, for example, Firth 1929, 389;Vial 1940-1;Clark 1965;Strathern 1965;1969;Hughes 1977;White & Modjeska 1978a;1978b;Phillips 1979).…”

“…The visually distinctive greenstone axe-pendants might have drawn into sharper focus meanings such as these (which may normally have occurred at a tacit or unconsolidated level), particularly when displayed about the person of particular individuals in special ceremonial or ritual contexts. As in Melanesia, the more elaborate, highly polished, and technically useless these axes became, the more effective they may have become in locking up and symbolising meanings (Clark 1965). As in Melanesia, the more elaborate, highly polished, and technically useless these axes became, the more effective they may have become in locking up and symbolising meanings (Clark 1965).…”

Larnite‐Bearing Rock—The Discovery of a New Source of Raw Material in the Production of Neolithic and Chalcolithic Bifacial Tools

“…), Central America (Shafer and Hester ), North America (Cobb ), the Pacific rim (McCoy ; Mills et al . ) and in Europe (Clark ; Claris and Quartermaine ; Mandal and Cooney ). Similarly to Har Parsa, the other workshops show a close proximity between the raw material outcrops and the initial modification of the roughouts for the bifacial tools, often resulting in large waste mounds containing numerous flaked waste artefacts as well as unfinished tools that were discarded at different stages of modification.…”

An Inka Offering at Yayno (North Highlands, Peru): Objects, Subjects and Gifts in the Ancient Andes

“…By the same token, gift exchange has featured productively in the archaeology of other world regions (e.g. Clark 1965; Fowler 2004, ch. 3; Morris 1986).…”