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Stone Axe Studies III

Stone Axe Studies III TEXT March2011:Layout 1 18/03/2011 13:25 Page i

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ISBN 978-1-84217-421-0

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 7The experienced axe. Chronology, condition and context of TRB-axes in western NorwayKnut Andreas Bergsvik and Einar Østmo

Chapter 2 21The Nøstvet AxeHåkon Glørstad

Interlude 1 37

Chapter 3 39The evolution of Neolithic and Chalcolithicwoodworking tools and the intensification of human production: axes, adzes and chiselsfrom the Southern LevantRan Barkai

Chapter 4 55Eclogite or jadeitite: The two colours involved inthe transfer of alpine axeheads in western EuropePierre Pétrequin, Alison Sheridan, Serge Cassen, Michel Errera, Estelle Gauthier,Lutz Klassen, Nicolas le Maux, Yvan Pailler,Anne-marie Pétrequin, Michel Rossy

Interlude 2 83

Chapter 5 85Power tools: Symbolic considerations of stone axe production and exchange in 19th century south-eastern AustraliaAdam Brumm

Chapter 6 99Social and economic organisation of stone axeproduction and distribution in the westernMediterraneanRoberto Risch

Interlude 3 119

Chapter 7 121The felsite quarries of North Roe, Shetland – An overviewTorben Ballin

Chapter 8 131Misty mountain hop: Prehistoric stone workingin south-west WalesTimothy Darvill

Interlude 4 147

Chapter 9 149Production and diffusion of axes in the Seine valleyFrançois Giligny, Françoise Bostyn, Jérémie Couderc, Harold Lethrosne, Nicolas Le Maux, Adrienne Lo Carmine, Cécile Riquier

Chapter 10 167A time and place for the Belmont HoardVin Davis and Mark Edmonds

Interlude 5 187

Chapter 11 189The prehistoric axe factory at Sanganakallu-Kupgal (Bellary District), southern IndiaRoberto Risch, Nicole Boivin, Michael Petraglia, David Gómez-Gras, Ravi Korisettar, Dorian Fuller

Chapter 12 203The ritual use of axesLars Larsson

Interlude 6 215

Chapter 13 217Primary and secondary raw material preferencesin the production of Neolithic polished stone toolsin northwest TurkeyOnur Özbek

Chapter 14 231Stone-working traditions in the prehistoricAegean: The production and consumption of edge tools at Late Neolithic MakriyalosChristina Tsoraki

Interlude 7 245

Chapter 15 247The Mynydd Rhiw quarry site: Recent work and its implicationsSteve Burrow

Chapter 16 261Graig Lwyd (Group VII) assemblages from Parc Bryn Cegin, Llandygai, Gwynedd, Wales – analysis and interpretationJohn Llewellyn Williams, Jane Kenney, Mark Edmonds

Contents

Stone Axe Studies III TEXT March2011:Layout 1 18/03/2011 13:25 Page iii

Interlude 8 279

Chapter 17 281Neolithic polished stone axes and hafting systems: Technical use and social function at the Neolithic lakeside settlements of Chalain and ClairvauxYolaine Maigrot

Chapter 18 295A potential axe factory near Hyssington, Powys:Survey and excavation 2007–08Nigel Jones and Steve Burrow

Chapter 19 309Does size matter? Stone axes from Orkney: their style and depositionAnn Clarke

Interlude 9 323

Chapter 20 325Neolithic ground axe-heads and monuments in WessexDavid Field

Chapter 21 333The twentieth-century polished stone axeheads of New Guinea: why study them?Pierre Pétrequin and Anne-Marie Pétrequin,

Interlude 10 351

Chapter 22 353Neolithic near-identical twins: The ambivalent relationship between ‘factory’ rock and polished stone implementsStephen Briggs

Chapter 23 361Flint axes, ground stone axes and “battle axes” of the Copper Age in the Eastern Balkans(Romania, Bulgaria)Florian Klimscha

Interlude 11 383

Chapter 24 385Stone axes in the Bohemian Eneolithic: Changing forms, context and social significanceJan Turek

Chapter 25 399Changing contexts, changing meanings: Flint axes in Middle and Late Neolithic communities in the northern NetherlandsKarsten Wentink, Annelou van Gijn, David Fontijn

Interlude 12 409

Chapter 26 411Old friends, new friends, a long-lost friend and false friends: Tales from Projet JADEAlison Sheridan, Yvan Pailler, Pierre Pétrequin, Michel Errera

Chapter 27 427The Irish Stone Axe Project: Reviewing progress, future prospectsGabriel Cooney, Stephen Mandal, Emmett O’Keeffe

Interlude 13 443

Stone Axe Studies III TEXT March2011:Layout 1 18/03/2011 13:25 Page iv

During the 5th and 4th millennia BC, the Neolithic extraction of stonearound Mont Viso and in the Mont Beigua massif in the north ItalianAlps resulted in the production of large polished axeheads in eclogite,omphacitite, jadeitite and amphibolite – raw materials which were not only rare but which also have remarkable mechanical and aestheticproperties. These axeheads circulated around western Europe over great distances and in particular, between the Alps, the Atlantic and the North Sea.

Among these Alpine jades, research suggests a tendency for differentraw materials to be represented in different geographic areas. Axeheadsand other items made from dark-coloured rocks from the family ofeclogites and omphacitites tend to predominate in north Italy andsouthern France. By contrast, light-coloured and often translucent rocks of the jadeitite family predominate in the Paris Basin, in Germany and in Great Britain and Ireland.

This paper documents the manufacture, circulation and deposition of different types of Alpine axeheads over time. More specifically, it discusses observed trends in relation to variability in the supply of raw materials and finished objects, the nature of regional traditionsand long-distance transfer, and ultimately, the changing significance of axeheads as socially valorized artefacts.

Pierre Pétrequin, Alison Sheridan, Serge Cassen, Michel Errera, Estelle Gauthier,

Abstract

Eclogite or jadeitite:The two colours involved in the transfer of alpine axeheads in western Europe

Lutz Klassen, Nicolas Le Maux, Yvan Pailler, Anne-Marie Pétrequin, Michel Rossy

Stone Axe Studies III TEXT March2011:Layout 1 18/03/2011 13:27 5

Introduction

During the 5th and 4th millennia BC, theNeolithic extraction of stone around Mont Visoand in the Mont Beigua massif in the ItalianAlps resulted in the production of large pol-ished axeheads in eclogite, omphacitite,jadeitite and amphibolite – raw materials whichwere not only rare but which also have remark-able mechanical and aesthetic properties. Theseaxeheads circulated around western Europeover distances up to 1700 kilometres as thecrow flies, and in particular between the Alps,the Atlantic and the North Sea. This phenom-enon involved not only Alpine jades (a termwhich will be used to cover the various rocktypes listed above) but also variscite and fibro-lite from Spain: groups of artefacts made of allthree materials have been found within thegiant tumuli of the Carnac region. There can belittle doubt that this phenomenon correspondsto the contemporary Chalcolithic production ofobjects of copper and gold in east-centralEurope.

Among these Alpine jades, the authors haverecognised the presence of different raw mate-rials in different areas. Axeheads and otheritems made from dark-coloured rocks from thefamily of eclogites and omphacitites tend topredominate in north Italy and southernFrance, while light-coloured and often translu-cent rocks of the jadeitite family predominatein the Paris Basin, in Germany and in GreatBritain and Ireland. We shall analyse the man-ufacture, circulation and deposition of Alpineaxeheads in terms of the chronological evolu-tion of individual axehead types; variability inthe supply of raw materials and finishedobjects; the choice of axehead types in theprocess of long-distance transfer; and finally byinterpreting axeheads as socially valorised arte-facts.

When Alpine axeheads first started to circu-late in a westerly direction, from the end of the6th millennium, the people who manufacturedutilitarian workaday axeheads of Alpine rockused a variety of stone types, mostly eclogitesand amphibolites. The use of jadeitite andomphacitite seems to be limited to the produc-tion of small and particularly hard tranchet axe-heads and stone rings. This episode ofproduction is contemporary with the EarlyNeolithic cultures in the southern Piedmont,with the Cardial and with the Villeneuve-Saint-Germain (VSG) Culture. During the first halfof the 5th millennium the use of eclogite,omphacitite and amphibolite continued to pre-dominate; at the same time we see the emer-

gence of remarkably large adze-heads, reachinga length of 35 cm in the case of the Bégude type.The people who produced these axe- and adze-heads can be identified as the inhabitants ofthe arc-shaped area around the foot of the Alpsin Italy, and also communities on the Frenchside of the Alps. In Italy, there are clear linkswith the Square-Mouthed-Pottery (Vases àBouches Carrées, VBQ) Culture, while in Francethe identity of the producing groups is harderto discern; they may belong to a pre-Saint-UzeCardial tradition.

Shortly before the middle of the 5th millen-nium, there was a complete inversion in the cri-teria used for the choice of raw material. Fromthis point, jadeitite dominates archaeologicalfinds to the west of the Alps as far as the Gulfof Morbihan, being used for up to 95% of allthe axeheads. In contrast, northern Italy – andespecially the plain of the river Po – seems tohave been excluded from the transfer of largejadeitite axeheads which extended elsewhereto the maritime fringes of Europe, reachingBritain, Ireland and Germany just before oraround the end of the 5th millennium. ThePiemontese axehead producers, with theirhands-on access to the source areas of thejades, seem to have privileged the transalpinediffusion of axeheads in a north-westerly direc-tion, well before the Saint-Uze and theChasséen Cultures. In the course of these trans-fers from Italy to Brittany, certain kinds of axe-heads would be selected – the large, thinDurrington type and the Puymirol type – andthen, at a distance of 500 kilometres from thesource areas, some of these would be re-pol-ished to change their shape to that of theAltenstadt-Greenlaw type. When the axeheadsarrived in the Gulf of Morbihan, 1000 kilome-tres away from the source areas, a good numberwould then be repolished a second time, to pro-duce axeheads of the Tumiac and Carnac types.

Such activities directly inform the socialinterpretation of the large axeheads of Alpinejades in Western Europe (excepting parts ofnorthern Italy, where other rituals and othersocially valorised objects seem to have been inuse). In the symbol-system in use during theMiddle Neolithic to the west of the Alps, certainjade axeheads would be diverted from their pri-mary function as tools for felling trees andworking wood and treated instead as sacredobjects, to be deposited at certain specific pointsin the landscape or in the tombs of exceptionalindividuals, as in the Carnac region. Theimmense importance of these axeheads in reli-gious rituals is amply demonstrated here andelsewhere on the southern coast of Brittany,

56 Stone Axe Studies III

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where representations of axes figure, along withother ritual-related signs, on massive stelae.Furthermore, certain of the Alpine axeheadsthat had been repolished in the Morbihan, theso-called ‘Carnac’-style axeheads, were re-injected into the circulation system, to traveltowards north-west Iberia, Germany, the Alps,Italy and Croatia, in some cases travelling as faras 2500 kilometres (in the case of the axeheadsfound in Croatia and southern Italy, for exam-ple). These ‘returning’ Alpine axeheads ofCarnac type would have been accorded excep-tional social value, and along the routes trav-elled, one finds imitations made in locally-available rocks. This re-diffusion would appearto have been accompanied by a spread of reli-gious and ritual concepts that originated in theMorbihan and which gave rise to the large,shaped and decorated stelae that occur in theAuvergne, in Burgundy, in western Switzerlandand in Valais, close to the heart of the Alps.

History of research

The petrography of the thousands of Alpinerock axeheads that circulated across WesternEurope from the end of the 6th millennium BCto the mid-3rd millennium BC, was first studiedby Alexis Damour in 1865. It was his analysisof axeheads that defined the use of the mineraljadeite, and identified a probable source in theMont Viso massif, 70 kilometres south-west ofTurin (Damour 1881). These Neolithic axeheadsin fine-grained rare rocks that are particularlydense, tough and resistant, are hard to work,and that take a long time to saw and polish,demonstrate remarkable mechanical and aes-thetic properties. It is not surprising that else-where in the world, in the highly stratifiedsocieties of ancient China and Mesoamericawhere nephrite-jades and jadeitite-jades havebeen used, they have been associated with reli-gious and temporal power, and with the notionof immortality.

In western Europe, the origin of eclogite,omphacitite and jadeitite in the Italian Alps wassoon confirmed by the work of GiovanniBattista Traverso (1898, 1901, 1909) on axeheadroughouts from the region of Alba (Cuneo,Piedmont, Italy), and by that of the geologistSecondo Franchi (1904). It was Franchi whoidentified potential source areas at the foot ofMont Viso and, in particular, the omphacititesand jadeitites of the the Bulè Valley, and in themassif of Mont Beigua, to the north-west ofGenoa. It was quickly realised that the axeheadsmade of these materials had a special status:

often translucent, catching the light of the sun,these magnificent polished objects, large andsmall, circulated in Europe over considerabledistances. By 1878 Damour and LeopoldHeinrich Fischer had recognised examples inBrittany, a thousand kilometres from the poten-tial source areas, and Denmark, 1200 kilometresaway (Fischer 1880; Meyer 1882). The idea thatthese Neolithic Alpine axeheads had held anexceptional value and social significance wasconfirmed by these long distance movements,which echoed those of Guatemalan andChinese jades. The geographical distribution ofaxeheads made of less prestigious stone, bycontrast, rarely extended beyond the regionalin scale, travelling only 200–250 kilometres asthe crow flies (Pétrequin et al. 1995).

Thus, it appears that all the elements of theresearch into Alpine axeheads were already inplace at the dawn of the 20th century. But toprogress matters further, what was needed wasfine-grained chronological information, typolo-gies of axehead development and examinationof the cultural context of the findspot: thesewere not attempted until the 1970s. In themeantime, the idea that axeheads could havecome from the Alpine interior was virtuallyabandoned by prehistorians, despite the factthat axeheads were often being discoveredthere as isolated finds. The interest in Alpineaxeheads was coming from geologists and pet-rographers, who were applying sophisticatedtechniques of analysis. The initial thrust of thiswork was an exemplary study by WilliamCampbell Smith of the Alpine axeheads ofBritain and Ireland (Campbell Smith 1963,1965, 1972), followed by the work by ValerieJones et al. (1977) and Alan Woolley et al. (1979).The techniques of determination throughpetrological thin sectioning, X-ray diffraction,specific density and microprobe analysis weresubsequently adopted on the Continent, withthe work of Pierre-Roland Giot (1965) inBrittany, of Charles-Tanguy Le Roux et al. (1974,1980) in the Loire Valley, of Monique Ricq-deBouard (1996) in the Midi of France and ofClaudio D’Amico et al. (1995, 1997, 2000a andb, 2003, 2006) in north Italy.

All these archaeometric approaches led tothe improved mineralogical and petrogrologicalcharacterisation of various Alpine jades. Theyalso revealed the immense geographical extentof the distribution of these precious axeheadsacross western Europe, as far as the LowCountries (Schut et al. 1987), Catalonia (Ricq-de Bouard 1996), southern Italy (Leighton &Dixon 1992), Austria (Prichystal & Trnka 2001),Croatia (Petric 1995) and Slovakia (Spisiack et

57Eclogite or jadeitite: The two colours involved in the transfer of alpine axeheads in western Europe


al. 2005; Hovorka et al. 2008). However, withthe adoption of these sophisticated and highlyspecialised analytical techniques, it wouldappear that the researchers rather lost sight ofthe archaeological questions. With most stud-ies, the chronological factor was neglected,despite the fact that the phenomenon of Alpineaxehead use spanned an estimated 2000 years.It is as though the social, cultural and technicalevolution of Neolithic societies was regardedas negligible, and it was generally assumed(except with the work of Ricq-de Bouard, 1996)that any such evolution was gradual. Researchon raw material sources in the Alpine interiorwas completely neglected. It seems as thoughit was assumed that fine-grained eclogites,massive omphacitites and large blocks ofjadeitite were to be found in all the torrent-bedsand all the moraines across the Alpine arc fromthe Val d’Aosta in the north to Mont Beigua inthe south-east. The published maps of geolog-ical prospections that feature in the petro-graphic studies of axeheads certainly imply thatthis was the case (Compagnoni et al. 1995;Fedele 1999; Ricq-de Bouard 1996; Ricq-deBouard et al. 1990).

These strictly petrographic studies, under-taken outside the context of archaeological con-cerns, naturally led to an extremely simple (andwestern-orientated) interpretation: Neolithicpeople would have selected thin, flattish cob-bles from among the moraines and torrent bedsleading down from the high Alps, where Alpinejades would be well represented. After a rapidinitial roughing-out using a hard hammer,these cobbles would be pecked and polished,in order to feed into the down-the-lineexchanges emanating from the Piedmont.Certain of these axeheads, the long andremarkably polished specimens, would havebeen regarded as prestige goods, as ‘ceremo-nial’ axeheads. Equally, according to this view,the especially high incidence of jadeitite axe-heads in certain regions of Europe, and the sim-ilar preponderance of axeheads made fromeclogites and omphacitites in other parts ofEurope, reflected ‘cultural choices’ (D’Amico etal. 2003). This term lacks heuristic value andexplains nothing because it fails to take intoaccount the historical trajectories of the soci-eties in question. (Regarding technical choiceand cultural choice with regard to axeheads, seeLemonnier 1986; Pétrequin 1993a; and Pétre-quin et al. 2006a.)

Finally, these interpretations were generallyaccepted by the scientific community whichhad delegated all responsibility for axeheadstudies to specialist petrologists. The remark-

able exhibition, organised in 1996 at theMuseum of Turin, and its fine accompanyingvolume The Ways of Green Rocks (VenturinoGambari 1996), constitutes the culmination ofthis phenomenon. It would now appear thatthe principal point of interest in this mono-graph was its bringing together of a large num-ber of roughouts and polished axeheads fromnorth Italy, many of which had not been pub-lished before or were dispersed in small articlesthat are hard to acess in libraries. It seems thatthe results of petrographic approaches were nottaken into account in that volume.

Axeheads, fieldwork and the social sciences: Programme JADE

In parallel with these strictly specialist petro-logical approaches, two of us (Anne-Marie andPierre Pétrequin) began, in 1984, to developethnographic models based on the systematicstudy of the last agricultural communities inNew Guinea to produce and use polished stoneaxe- and adze-heads. The aim of this work wasto understand the technical and social systemof these objects in its entirety. In other words,the approach encompassed not only the studyof production and polishing, but also consid-ered the modalities of circulation, of transfer, ofexchange and gift-giving; the use of theseobjects, ranging from their employment asworkaday tools to their deployment as symbolicobjects in compensation payments; the attri-bution of social standing to these items, andthe religious rituals relating to (or involving)them (for a summary of this New Guinea work,see Pétrequin & Pétrequin this volume and alsoPétrequin et al. 1993b; Pétrequin et al. 2006d).

A whole series of new ideas regarding theinterpretation of the technical and social systemof polished stone axeheads has emerged fromthese ethnographic investigations. These allowus to develop alternative working hypothesesto those of simple, conventional logic (that is,the sacrosanct Western notion of ‘commonsense’). We are not seeking to make like-for-like comparisons between the populations of20th/21st century New Guinea and NeolithicEurope; we are all too aware of the dangers ofundertaking such strict comparison-making.Rather, we are attempting to test indisputablepatterns that have been observed in contem-porary New Guinea against the evidence fromthe past. By applying models constructed usingthese insights – especially regarding theexploitation of primary sources of rock, where



the abundance of material permits both large-scale production and the transfer of technicalknowledge through apprenticeship – we rap-idly succeeded (from 1989) in discovering largequarries of pelite-quartz and of nodular schistin the southern Vosges, finding some 200,000cubic metres of roughouts and working debris.Hitherto, petrologists and prehistorians hadconcluded that production of axeheads of theserocks had been episodic and based on cobblestaken from river beds (Piningre 1974).

In order to test out these new interpretationsregarding the mode of production and thetransfer of axeheads, we undertook an initialprogramme of research on the production anddistribution of workaday axeheads in thesouthern part of the Vosges massif (Pétrequinet al. 1995). Some 30,000 such axeheads havebeen petrologically identified, and they arefound in the east of France, Switzerland andsouth-west Germany. We created a typologicalseriation, collated information about finds fromculturally and chronologically-diagnostic con-texts, and systematically mapped the distribu-tion of finished axeheads, roughouts andworking sites. It was clear, however, that onecould not understand this system of productionand distribution (which dated to the 5th mil-lennium and the beginning of the 4th) withouttaking into account other phenomena – in par-ticular the circulation of large Alpine axeheadsbetween the Alps and the Morbihan – andwithout applying a kind of reasoning that isrooted in ethnology and in the social sciences.Thus, our regionally-based interpretation of theVosges quarries of Plancher-les-Mines (Haute-Saône) and Saint-Amarin (Haut-Rhin) tookinto account higher-level hypotheses that per-tained to the whole of western Europe(Pétrequin et al. 1995:103–20). In other words,we had to call upon the phenomenon of thelong-distance transfer of ‘ceremonial’ Alpineaxeheads in order to account for the social con-ditions that applied to the regional productionof axeheads in the southern Vosges. This studylaunched the idea that Alpine axeheads couldbe regarded as a bell-wether, showing howsocieties functioned during the 5th millennium.

Around the same time, Serge Cassen, alongwith Christine Boujot and Gérard Bailloud,developed the hypothesis that the Gulf ofMorbihan, on the southern coast of Brittany,was where the earliest megalithic architecturein Europe emerged (in the form of giantmounds, carved stelae and alignments of stand-ing stones). Within the belief system that wasexpressed in these monuments, and amongvarious ‘object-signs’ that were carved on the

stelae such as the crosse (throwing weaponshaped like a hockey stick) and the cachalot(sperm whale), the Alpine axehead played aprominent role as a particularly significantobject, at least from the middle of the 5th mil-lennium (Boujot & Cassen 1992; Bailloud et al.1995; Cassen 2000). Furthermore, a symmetrybetween Carnac and the Gulf of Morbihan onthe one hand, and Varna on the other, was seri-ously envisaged.

The foundations for a collaboration withCassen et al. were rapidly established in 1996and a small team was formed to undertake ageneral study of Alpine axeheads across west-ern Europe. This involved a systematic typolog-ical and chronological review of all axeheadslonger than 14 cm (in order to avoid the exam-ples that had been re-used as tools or reshapedat a much later date). The idea of creating a gen-eral map of the various types of Alpine axeheadhad already been proposed by Pierre-RolandGiot (1965) but without success, because it soonbecame clear that this would be a colossalundertaking. Our initial small team was soonjoined by Michel Roissy, who undertook toexamine the petrological thin sections of rawmaterial samples from the Alps (Pétrequin etal. 2006c). From 2000, Michel Errera added hisexpertise in the field of spectroradiometricanalysis, a technique that is totally non-destructive and cheap to undertake and whichhad not hitherto been used to analyse prehis-toric artefacts. The use of this technique, alongwith the reading of petrological thin sections,the measurement of specific gravity and X-raydiffraction (XRD) analysis (the last undertakenat Laboratoire GeaDue in Bologna, by MassimoGhedini and Claudio D’Amico), proved to beextremely useful in comparing axeheads withraw material samples, in particular as far asjadeitites are concerned (Errera et al. 2006, 2007,2008; Pétrequin et al. 2005, 2006b). It is clearthat if we had not used the non-destructivetechnique of spectroradiometry, museum cura-tors would not have allowed us to analyse theiraxeheads, bearing in mind the damage inflictedon certain very beautiful examples over the last40 years through sawing, breaking off or coringpieces to make thin sections.

Other colleagues joined the team:Christophe Croutsch undertook a study of thetechniques of sawing Alpine rocks inSwitzerland (2005); Lutz Klassen brought hisknowledge of the earliest use of copper andgold in Europe and was in charge of gatheringmaterial from Germany and Denmark (Klassen2000, 2004); Alison Sheridan and Yvan Paillercovered Brittany, Great Britain, Ireland and the



Channel Islands (Pailler 2007; Pailler &Sheridan 2009); Guido Rossi, Eugenia Isetti andPatrizia Garibaldi covered Liguria (Gaggero etal. 1993); Nicolas Le Maux (2007) and FrançoisGiligny dealt with the Paris Basin, RamonFabregas Valcarce (1982), and Arturo DeLombera Hermida and Carlos Rodriguez Rellancovered Spain and Portugal. Finally in 2007, thisteam – which started off as a completely infor-mal grouping – was formalised as part of aProgramme “Blanc” of the Agence Nationale de laRecherche, under the name ‘JADE’. EstelleGauthier joined this multi-disciplinary group asa GIS specialist, responsible for the mapping ofaxeheads across the whole of western Europe.

An initial article about Programme JADE waspublished in 1997 (Pétrequin et al. 1997d). Theprincipal aim of the project was to present adefinitive statement about axeheads made fromAlpine rock, including a comprehensive photo-graphic record and database of every axeheadover 14 cm long in Europe (the current total ofwhich stands at 1623). This database records thecontext of discovery, typological characteristics(recorded systematically as line drawings),dimensions, the quality of the polish, the natureof the rock (recording both macroscopic iden-tifications and those obtained through spectro-radiometry), the origin of the raw material (asdetermined through comparison with rawmaterial samples), the current location and bib-liographic references. Thus, Programme JADE setout to create a major research tool. In parallelwith this work – and making a break with pre-vious hypotheses that had proposed that theraw material had simply been gathered in cob-ble form in torrent beds at the foot of the Alps– Anne-Marie and Pierre Pétrequin undertooktwelve consecutive seasons of field prospectionin the high Alps, in order to establish a repre-sentative collection of raw material samples. (Todate, this reference collection comprises over2000 specimens.) This systematic, valley by val-ley prospection led, in 2002, to the discovery ofthe first free-standing boudins (blocks shapedlike a blood pudding) of jadeitite, in either pri-mary or secondary positions, in the MontBeigua massif. Thereafter, in June 2003 and June2008, the first evidence for the Neolithicexploitation of blocks of jadeitite, eclogite andamphibolite was found in the Mont Viso massif(Pétrequin et al. 2005, 2006b and c, 2007a andb). The blocks had been exploited using fire-set-ting to detach thermal flakes. Notwithstandingthese spectacular results, it has still not yet beenpossible to discover the location of all the rawmaterial sources that were exploited during theNeolithic. Many more years of prospection will

be necessary to cover the Mont Viso and MontBeigua massifs, let alone any other source areas.

Research into Alpine axeheads is thereforecurrently situated within well-defined param-eters. It is very different from the research thathad previously been undertaken, which hadfocused on isolated axeheads, on regional min-eralogical studies, or on creating typologicalclassifications within a geographically-restric-ted area (Thirault 2004). This previous work hadnot related the axeheads to the source areasthat were exploited, nor had it considered theconventions of the reduction process asrevealed clearly in the axeheads themselves. Intheory, thanks to the standardised recordingundertaken by Programme JADE, it is now pos-sible to approach the study of Alpine axeheadson a Europe-wide scale (while not ignoringtheir regional peculiarities), examining everyaspect from the high-altitude extraction andworking of the raw material to the depositionof axeheads in a hoard or an exceptional grave,or planted in the ground at the foot of a stela,on a mountain col, or in a wetland context. Itwould appear that this research tool finally pro-vides us with the best way to test the hypothe-ses that are thrown up by the social sciences,by ethnoarchaeology (and here let us not forgetthe conceptual power of the discovery of thequarries on Mont Viso) and by experimentation.The rest of this contribution will attempt todemonstrate this through several examples.

Jadeitite versus eclogite: myth or reality in the choice of colours

In a preliminary study (Pétrequin et al. 2002),we observed the considerable variety in theAlpine eclogites, omphacitites and jadeititesused to make the large Neolithic axeheads. Thisvariability can be seen with the naked eye (Fig.1) and is confirmed through petrological analy-sis; indeed, this variability makes it difficult todetermine the precise origin of these rocks onthe basis of thin sections or XRD analysis. (See,for example, Ricq-de Bouard 1996; andCompagnoni et al. 1995, 2007). Equally, weobserved that in certain parts of Europe, notablysouthern France and Italy, large axeheads madeof dark-coloured eclogite/omphacitite (andalso, probably, several dark green fine-grainedjadeitites that have otherwise been labelled‘chloromelanite’) are in the majority, whereasin the Paris Basin and Britain and Ireland, bycontrast, axeheads of eclogite/omphacitite arein the minority and light green and generally


Fig. 1.

Examples of large,

intensively polished

axeheads of Alpine rocks.

The great typological

diversity implies a long

chronology of production,

covering most of the

5th millennium and

part of the 4th.



PEYRIAC-DE-MER(Aude, France)Jade 2008-814

CARNAC / SAINT-MICHEL(Morbihan, France)

Jade 2008-511

LATERZA(Italy)

Jade 2008-1264

MONTREDON(Aude, France)Jade 2008-755

WROOT(Grande-Bretagne)

Jade 2008-78

LANGSUHR(Germany)

Jade 2008-255

0

10cm


translucent jadeitites predominate. The bound-ary between these two patterns falls on eitherside of a notional line between Geneva and LeHavre, with Brittany and the Loire Valley con-stituting an exception, having a roughly equalnumber of dark- and light-coloured axeheads.Furthermore, by and large this oppositionseems to correspond to different typologicalgroupings, with southern axehead types beingmade predominantly of eclogite/omphacititeand northern types being made predominantlyof jadeitites.

These observations, which were based onthe examination of 600 large axeheads, werenot entirely new, even though the number ofaxeheads investigated far surpassed those ofprevious studies. On the basis of examiningseveral museum collections, Edouard (M.)Desor (1873) had already remarked upon thisdifference in colour and texture between theAlpine axeheads found in Germany andBelgium on the one hand, and in the south ofFrance on the other. Working with a similarlysmall number of axeheads from Britain and theContinent that belong to museums in Britain,but this time having much more detailed min-eralogical information to hand, Woolley and hiscolleagues (1979) reached the same conclusion,noting a global opposition between southernaxehead types (long, narrow, thick-sectionedand dark green in colour) and northern types(broad, thin and light green in colour).

Thus, these three studies produced near-identical results, whether they were based onmacroscopic examination, as in Desor’s work,or on petrological, mineralogical and/or com-positional analysis (Woolley et al. 1979;Pétrequin et al. 2002). An initial and tentativeexplanation was offered in the last two studies,proposing that different quarries had beenexploited. At the time when these studies wereundertaken, no Neolithic working sites had yetbeen found, although several groups of rough-outs had been found on the periphery of theMont Beigua massif (Traverso 1898, 1901, 1909;D’Amico et al. 2000, 2006; Venturo Gambari1996).

In a synthetic study of axeheads of Alpinerock in Italy and elsewhere in Europe, D’Amicoet al. (2003) offered an alternative view. Havinganalysed a large set of small axeheads from Italy(from petrological thin sections and XRD analy-ses) and small sets of axeheads from France andLuxembourg (by macroscopic examination), theauthors adopted a view that contrasted withthat put forward in the three other studies:

“The general trend of an increase in jadeimplements with respect to eclogites, gradu-ally moving away from the sources, is a clearcultural selection already noticed in Italy…Clearly, the importation strategy is hereprevalently oriented towards obtaining rit-ual/prestige objects of exotic materials, possi-bly made more precious by their long-distanceprovenance and therefore even aestheticallymore selected (more jades than eclogites)...Many problems remain open and any con-clusion should be considered premature, dueto still insufficient petroarcheometric studieson stone axes. For instance, there is an appar-ent discrepancy between the preliminary datareported here and the Geneva–Le Havre line(Pétrequin et al. 2002) dividing areas withprevalent ‘eclogite vert foncé’ and with preva-lent ‘jadeite verdâtre saccharoïde’.”

These two positions are contradictory, not onlyin the nature of the observations but also in theinterpretation of spatial variability. One pro-poses an opposition between dark- and light-coloured rocks, probably associated withdifferent types of axehead (and consequentlywith an evolution over time); the other rejectsthis idea of an opposition even though itemphasises the cultural selection of light-coloured rocks over dark-coloured rocks andnotes an increasing use of the former withincreasing distance from Italy, towards theAtlantic coast of Italy, ignoring the chronolog-ical dimension. The fact that the first positionis based solely on the examination of large axe-heads, whereas the second is based on largeand small axeheads, might indeed lead to cer-tain distortions. However, this cannot accountfor the opposition. Now, with the ProgrammeJADE database at our disposal (comprising over1600 records as of November 2007), it is easierto examine the picture more clearly at a pan-European scale.

Alpine quarries and Europe-widedistribution patterns

The map showing the overall distribution ofaxeheads made from all the Alpine rock types(eclogite, omphacitite, jadeitite, amphiboliteand nephrite) across Europe (Fig. 2) allows usto see clearly, and at a glance, its geographicalpatterning and extent. This remarkable concen-tration in western Europe contrasts with zoneswhere Alpine axeheads are rare or totallyabsent: Spain, the Iberian peninsula and east-central Europe. In these areas, the ways in


Fig. 2.

General distribution of all

the axeheads of Alpine

rock longer than 14 cm.

The stars indicate the

main raw material sources

(eclogite, jadeitite

and nephrite).

Cartography by

Jonathan Desmeulles

and Estelle Gauthier,

November 2007,

using Programme JADE

data collected by

Pierre Pétrequin.


which society functioned and rituals were con-ducted relied upon other ways of indicating sta-tus and power and other objects, such as thepottery of Serra d’Alto in Italy, copper and goldin the region of Europe that was the first toexperience the Chalcolithic (Pétrequin et al.2002; Klassen 2000; Klassen et al. forthcominga). There also seem to be blank areas and gapswithin the area where the axeheads circulated:among other examples, the lacuna in themountainous region of central France may beexplained in terms of the nature of the soil and

the limited opportunities they offer for cerealgrowing (excepting the Limagne and the PuyBasin). However the large blank zone betweenthe Pas-de-Calais and Lorraine is harder tounderstand; it corresponds in part to the majorbattlefield areas of the two World Wars and itmay also reflect the relative paucity of researchin that region.

As for the most important concentrations ofaxeheads, these correspond closely to theexploitation areas on Mont Viso and MontBeigua, where our prospections have found




VISO BULEpoint 69

0 10cm

VISO BARANTpoint A, Jade 2008-1168

VISO BULEpoint 108, rock shelter C

Fig. 3.

The Neolithic exploitation

on Mont Viso.

Top:

the source area on col

Barant at Bobbio Pellice

(2400 m above sea level);

the blocks exploited

by fire-setting are

located on the crest

towards the front.

Bottom:

roughouts and

hammerstones from the

quarries of Barant and

Vallone Bulè at Oncino.

Photos and information:

Anne-Marie and

Pierre Pétrequin.


thousands of roughouts (Fig. 3). These new dis-coveries overturn the previous distributionmaps of axeheads in the high Alps, which hadsuggested that there had been very little extrac-tion during the Neolithic, particularly on MontViso.

The second remarkable concentration is tobe found on the southern coast of Brittany, inparticular around the Gulf of Morbihan, whichconstituted an exceptional area of attraction forAlpine axeheads and for beads and pendantsmade from Iberian variscite (Cassen et al. 1999;Herbaut 2000; Herbaut et al. 2004). We shallreturn to this area.

At the broadest scale, it is clear that the cir-culation of large Alpine axeheads away fromthe source areas did not occur with the sameintensity in different directions (which wouldhave been the case had the social distancebetween Neolithic communities been the same:Pétrequin et al. 2003b). In contrast, with theexception of north Italy, the majority of Alpineaxeheads are to be found on the other side ofthe Alps, in the direction of Brittany, Scotlandand Denmark. Such an asymmetrical distribu-tion indicates that different social circumstancesobtained in different areas, and this needs tobe explained: such differences might be able toaccount for the marked differences in the petro-logical composition of assemblages in northItaly and in the rest of western Europe(D’Amico et al. 2000b, 2003).

All the evidence suggests that the largeAlpine axeheads had a relatively minor socialvalue in the Po plain, close to the source areasof the raw material. Similarly, downstream fromTurin, the majority of ground stone tools weremade from low quality eclogite, from relativelysoft omphacite schist, from coarse-grainedjadeitite-quartz, in very laminated amphiboliteand in serpentinite, while objects made fromtrue, high quality jadeitites are rare (e.g. at theworking site at Rivanazzano: D’Amico et al.2006). However, this spectacular map runs therisk of giving a false impression, because it rep-resents a palimpsest of all the large axeheads,irrespective of their chronological positionwithin the period c 5000–3000 BC. Nothing inthis document allows us to determine whetherthe circulation of large axeheads took place inthe same manner and at the same time though-out Europe, or indeed whether the same typesof axehead or the same relative proportion ofmaterials used were involved in all the areas ofEurope in question over these two millennia.

Eclogite-omphacitite andjadeitite in Europe

This general distribution map of large Alpineaxeheads in Europe (Fig. 2) which compactsdata spanning around two millennia, masks theuse of different materials. So, to assist ourproposition that we can oppose dark-colouredand light-coloured axeheads, we propose to usetwo complementary maps (Fig. 4, top). At theleft of this illustration we have grouped the axe-heads made from eclogite and omphacitite.Their distribution covers the whole of westernEurope, but the zone of densest concentrationlies in northern Italy and southern France, witha northern limit falling roughly in a linebetween Berne in Switzerland and Rouen inFrance. The general tendency seems to be a cir-culation away from the Alpine quarries in thedirection of the Gulf of Morbihan, followingtwo routes: the Saône valley; the southern partof the Paris Basin and the lower valley of theLoire; the lower valley of the Rhône, Langue-doc, the Bordeaux region and the lower valleyof the Loire. In each case, the Gulf of Morbihanseems to be the point of attraction for theselarge Alpine axeheads made of dark-colouredrocks.

At the top right of Fig. 4, a second map showsthe distribution of axeheads made from light-coloured rocks of the jadeitite family. Oncemore, the distribution extends over the wholeof western Europe, but with a far denser con-centration aound the Gulf of Morbihan, in theParis Basin, in Germany and in Great Britain. Asouthern edge to this distribution can be tracedbetween Berne and Caen, with the Gulf ofMorbihan once more being the exception, hav-ing a large number of these jadeitite axeheads.

There is always an element of uncertaintyinherent in some macroscopic identifications.The same may have also been true in the past;Neolithic people did not have at their disposalany other means of identifying polishedjadeitites beyond the fact that the stone is muchtougher than other Alpine rocks. However,what can be said with some confidence is thatthere is an evident opposition between a south-eastern part of Europe dominated by dark-coloured axeheads and a north-western partdominated by light-coloured axeheads. Thereis of course a degree of overlap between thesetwo distribution areas, which probably corre-sponds to the principal route along which axe-heads travelled from the Italian Alps to theMorbihan, via the Saône, the Morvan, the cen-tre of the Paris Basin and the Loire Valley. Theconcept of a progressive cultural ‘selection’ of




VISO, Vallone Bulè

Eclogite, omphacitite Jadeitite

VISO, Porco


jadeitites along the course of the transfers fromItaly to the Atlantic fringe of Europe (D’Amicoet al. 2003) cannot therefore be sustained, giventhe overall distribution of the large axeheads.

In the extraction areas of Mont Viso (Fig. 4,bottom) one finds that fine eclogites, omphaci-tites and jadeitites belong to the same geolog-ical zones. Occurring as boudins and as blocksenveloped within a kind of ‘purée’ of soft, pastyserpentinite, these three types of rocks cancoexist within several dozen metres of eachother, with each block having its own specifichistory within the metamorphic process(Compagnoni et al. 2003, 2007; Pétrequin et al.2007a). Given this variability in the geologicalprocess that gave rise to these rock types, thereis consequently a considerable variability ineclogites, omphacitites and jadeitites in the pri-mary source areas (namely Viso/Vallone Bulè,Fig. 4 bottom left; Viso/Vallone Porco, Fig. 4, bot-tom right; Viso/Barant, Fig. 3, top; and Ponton-vrea in the massif of Mont Beigua: Pétrequin etal. 2006c).

The trial excavations undertaken inSeptember 2007 at Oncino/Bulè/Circle ofBlocks (Pétrequin et al. 2008b) showed that,amidst the hundreds of cubic metres of flakesand broken roughouts created by hard hammerknapping, pieces in eclogite/omphacitite werefar more common than those in jadeitite.However, the way in which the raw materialwas worked differed according to the raw mate-rial used. In effect, in Vallone Bulè and Barant,the length of the broken roughouts made ofeclogite is often in excess of 10 cm and can beas long as 20 cm; in contrast, the length of bro-ken jadeitite preforms and of the majority offlakes is most frequently less than 5 cm. In thesehigh-altitude working areas, this different com-position of the debitage tends to show thatjadeitite was of higher value than the otherrocks that were exploited. Consequently, pre-forms and roughouts in jadeitite – even thoseof quite small size – must have been systemat-ically taken down into the valley to be ham-mered, ground and polished, while the normsof abandonment meant that the other rocks, oflower value, were more wasteful of the rawmaterial. In other words, large roughouts ofeclogite would be rejected as soon as a crack oran imperfection was spotted in the raw material(Fig. 3, bottom left). Thus, the selection of rawmaterials, and in particular of jadeitite, probablyinformed the nature of the exploitation of theblocks and the preparation of the roughouts.This raw material selection was facilitated bythe fact that each of these rocks reacts in a dif-ferent way to the blow of a hammerstone and

that thin flakes of translucent jadeitite oftenhave a characteristic luminous pale greencolour.

Typo-chronological evolution of the relationship betweeneclogite-omphacitite and jadeitite

In attempting to resolve the problem of theopposing distributions of dark-coloured versuslight-coloured rocks (Fig. 4, top), we propose tointroduce two variables: the typological classi-fication of the axeheads and the chronologicalevolution of types. We have demonstrated else-where that the formal variability of large Alpineaxeheads (of which several examples are shownin Fig. 1) could relate to a long-term chrono-logical evolution (Pétrequin et al. 1997, 2002).An initial typological classification allows us toidentify the principal types of large axehead interms of their overall shape, the shape of theirblade and their shape in cross-section(Pétrequin et al. 1997, 2002). Each of these typeshas been given a name corresponding to thefindspot of the first axehead to be thus identi-fied (e.g. Bégude, Bernon, Puymirol: Fig. 5). Achronological ordering was then proposed,based on the study of hoards and funeraryassemblages, comprising between two and (inthe case of the tumulus of Tumiac at Arzon,Morbihan) 18 examples containing more thanone type of axehead. Another way of identifyingchronological changes was to observe the suc-cessive transformations in the shape of an axe-head as it underwent several episodes ofrepolishing (e.g. to convert an Altenstadt typeinto a Puy type). This typological seriation wasthen placed within a chronological order bytaking into account the examples that had comefrom dated or datable contexts (e.g. throughassociation with stone disc-rings, with pottery,or with radiocarbon or dendrochronologicaldates).

Figure 5 presents our current state of knowl-edge of the chrono-typology of Alpine axe-heads. It differs significantly from our earlierversions (in particular Pétrequin et al. 2002)because the classification has had to be revisedeach time a new hoard of axeheads has beenregistered in the Programme JADE database. Theversion published here, which presents theaverage dates along the axis linking the Alpswith the Morbihan, may have to be amendedin the light of new data. Nevertheless, itdemonstrates the complexity of typologicalevolution, while at the same time allowing usto identify when, during the period between


Fig. 4.

Map, at the scale of

western Europe, showing

that the distribution

of axeheads of

dark-coloured alpine

rocks (mainly from the

family of eclogites and

omphacitites, top left)

contrasts with that of

axeheads of light-

coloured rocks

(above all jadeitites,

top right).

Most of these axeheads

result from open-air

exploitation of raw

material sources at the

foot of the Mont Viso

massif, at Vallone Bulè

(bottom left) and at Chiot

del Porco (bottom right);

the products from col

Barant (Fig. 3, top) and

of the Mont Beigua

massif seem to be

less well represented.

Cartography by

Estelle Gauthier;

photos: Pierre Pétrequin.


4800 and 3700 BC, certain types of axeheadsappeared, reached their peak of use and thendeclined along this Alps – Morbihan axis.

Out of a total of 1600 large axeheadsincluded in the JADE database, 966 have hadtheir precise petrographic composition identi-fied (i.e. through spectroradiometry and/orother techniques) or have been identifiedmacroscopically by at least one member of theteam. Thus, we can now calculate the percent-ages of jadeitite use for each of the types of

Alpine axehead, and hence the intensity of useover time, since we have an idea of the chrono-logical position of each type (Fig. 6). Becausethe relationship between the use of eclogite/omphacitite/jadeitite in North Italy seems todiffer from that seen in the rest of westernEurope (e.g. D’Amico et al. 2003), we have splitour presentation into two columns in order toshow this difference. The left hand column cor-responds to 118 large axeheads in Italy, and theright hand column to 848 transalpine examples,


Fig. 5.

Proposed evolution of

the main types of large

Alpine axeheads.

This chronological

hypothesis is based on

the associations of

axeheads in hoards found

between the high Alps

and the Atlantic façade

of Europe. The average

dates correspond to the

axis Mont Viso – Gulf of

Morbihan. Elsewhere

in western Europe, in

Great Britain and Ireland,

in Germany and in

Denmark, certain types

of Alpine axeheads may

have been introduced

and used later, no earlier

than the end of the

5th millennium.

Drawing:

Pierre Pétrequin.


corresponding roughly to the rest of Europebetween the Alps and the Atlantic.

The criteria used in the choice of raw mate-rial for the large axeheads allow us to demon-strate that there were indeed significantdifferences between North Italy and the rest ofEurope. In Italy, large jadeitite axeheads are notcommon and show just a small increase overtime, from around 15% to 21% (according tothe JADE database). In contrast, on the otherside of the Alps, jadeitite is abundant, and with

some types of axehead (e.g. Tumiac andAltenstadt-Greenlaw) comprises as much as96% of all specimens. Furthermore, there seemsto be a chronological logic in the changing useof jadeitite over time. At the beginning of the5th millennium only around 28% of axeheadsare made of this material, whereas by around4500 BC the total has risen to an average of95%. By the beginning of the 4th millenniumit had fallen, stabilising at around 50% of allaxeheads. This trend, of an increasing then


Fig. 6.

Typology of Alpine

axeheads and raw

materials. The choice of

raw material (jadeitite or

eclogite and other rocks)

varied over the course

of the 5th millennium.

To the north-west of the

Alps, a predominance of

light green jadeitites can

be seen towards the

middle of the 5th

millennium,

corresponding to

axeheads of Tumiac,

Altenstadt, Greenlaw

and Chenoise types.

However, this

evolution in the use of

raw materials does not

seem to have occurred in

North Italy, lying much

closer to the extraction

areas of Mont Viso and

the Mont Beigua massif.

Drawing:

Pierre Pétrequin.


decreasing use of jadeitite, can be interpretedin terms of a changing pattern of exploitation:from its initial use, it became the preferred rocktype and was extracted until the sourcesbecame progressively exhausted. At the sametime, it is likely that this rarest of materials wasaccorded an increasing social value, and wasthen subject to a kind of progressive disaffec-tion as other types of socially valorised objectscame to be used. The overall pattern of rawmaterial use can be summarised, then, as fol-lows:

� At the beginning of the 5th millennium, net-works became established through whichaxeheads and other items circulated. Theseinvolved a wide range of rocks – we maythink in terms of an exploratory phase of rawmaterial use – with eclogites and omphaci-tites being the commonest rock types in use.These slightly laminar rocks are better suitedto the manufacture of long narrow axeheads(like those of the hoard at La Bégude-de-Mazenc, Drôme, for example: Thirault 1999)or to ring-discs (Rossi et al. 2008) than isjadeitite;

� Around the middle of the 5th millennium:we see the apogee of the use of jadeitite, cul-minating in the ‘Carnac phenomenon’ ofmonumental tombs, standing stones and rit-uals around the Gulf of Morbihan;

� Subsequently, the relative depreciation anddevaluation of jadeitite, and a renewedincrease in diversity of raw materials used,in particular in the frequent use of serpen-tinites.

This gradual diminution in the use of jadeititecould illustrate an adaptation of the norms ofexploiting the raw material sources, with thebest rocks becoming increasingly hard to find.Furthermore, during the second half of the 5thmillennium, the technique of sawing blocksusing thin pieces of wood (with crushed quartzand water) began to develop; this techniqueallowed the optimum number of axeheads tobe obtained from each block that was exploited(Pétrequin et al. 2002; Croutsch 2005).

The introduction of typology and chronologyinto our line of reasoning has therefore allowedus to explore in detail the question of the rela-tionship between dark- and light-colouredAlpine rocks. This has highlighted the dynamicnature of raw material selection at the high-altitude extraction sites and in the villages inthe valleys where large axeheads were pro-duced.

Three different axehead types

Three different episodes of Alpine axehead pro-duction can help to clarify matters. We shallcompare, at the scale of western Europe, thedistribution of Bégude type axeheads, the oldesttype according to our typochronology, mademostly of eclogite-omphacitite-amphibolite,with that of axeheads of the family Altenstadt-Greenlaw (which are partly contemporary withthe high point of axehead production andwhich are predominantly made of jadeitite),and finally that of Puy type axeheads (the mostrecent type, made from a variety of materialscomprising eclogite, omphacitite, jadeitite, ser-pentinite and amphibolite).

Bégude type polished axeheadsDuring the first half of the 5th millennium,Bégude type axeheads, which are in fact longadze-heads which would have been hafted inan elbow-shaped haft, have a distribution thatis what one would expect to see for workadaytools that are more or less heavy-duty (Fig. 7),namely:

� Two very important concentrations of rough-outs, coinciding with Mont Viso and, to alesser extent, the Beigua massif; the lattersupplying north Italy with products ofmediocre quality;

� A large, even area of distribution, centred onthe raw material sources, extending in alldirections up to 250 km away; the valleys ofthe Saône and Rhône form the western limitand the Alpine arc and the Apennines formthe northern and southern limits;

� Two very important hoards comprise tenaxeheads (at the eponymous site of Bégude-de-Mazenc, Drôme, France) and seven atVillach/Kanzianiberg (Austria), which lie atthe western and eastern confines respec-tively of the distribution pattern for users ofBégude-type axeheads. The location of thesehoards encourages us to interpret them ashaving had some particular social signifi-cance;

� Beyond 250 km from the source area thereare a few isolated examples (sometimesassociated with ring-discs of jadeitite or ser-pentine). These attest to transfers via thenorth and the south of the Massif Central,as far as the Gulf of Morbihan, where theyare found in the giant Carnac-type tombs,often in the form of long blades that havebeen thinned down by repolishing. Clearlythey had obtained a different status, associally-valorised objects: the polished toolhad been turned into an ‘object-sign’;


Fig. 7.

Distribution of large

axeheads of Bégude type,

corresponding to

production at the quarries

of Mont Viso and Mont

Beigua between

4800 and 4500 BC.

The use of jadeitite is less

common with this type of

axehead (Fig. 6, bottom);

eclogites, omphacitites

and dark amphibolites

dominate.

Cartography by

Jonathan Desmeulles



data collected by

Pierre Pétrequin.


� As for the very rare Bégude type axeheadsfound in Germany and Denmark, it may bethat these were individual specimens thathad been treasured over a very long time anddeposited during the 4th millennium(Klassen et al. 2005).

The distribution of Bégude type axeheads, dat-ing to the first half of the 5th millennium, con-forms well with a pattern of distributionobserved in a few cases in New Guinea, in par-ticular the glaucophanite axeheads of the

Wang-Kob-Me quarries (Pétrequin et al. 2002).Here there were one or two epicentres of pro-duction; an even distribution of productsamong the users of these workaday tools (theWano and Moni linguistic group); and a fewisolated outliers that signalled the existence oflong-distance circulations, where the technicalfunction of the tool was abandoned as theobjects took on a purely social function. Theexamples found furthest away from the sourcewere attributed to the world of status-marking,rituals and religion (among the Yali and Unagroups).



Culturally, the producers of Bégude-typeaxeheads certainly belonged to the Square-Mouthed Pottery (V.B.Q.) Culture in Piemontand to Cardial tradition groups in the valleys ofthe Rhône and Saône. The intermediaries in themovements towards Brittany were theVilleneuve-Saint-Germain (V.S.G.) and theCerny Cultures in the south of the Paris Basin,and the recipients in the Morbihan area on thesouth Brittany coast were the early CastellicCulture.

Finally, we should point out that the famousrepresentation of the hafted axehead on thestele that was subsequently re-used as the cap-stone of the Table des Marchands atLocmariaquer (Morbihan) shows in fact twostages of carving: the earliest is an axehead ofBégude type, which was then refigured in orderto portray a large axehead of Altenstadt-Greenlaw type (Cassen forthcoming).

Altenstadt-Greenlaw and Chenoise typepolished axeheadsJust as the Table des Marchands carving showedthat the Altenstadt-Greenlaw axehead post-dated the Bégude type, our typological seriationof large Alpine axeheads (Fig. 5) has shown thatthe Altenstadt-Greenlaw and Chenoise typesare indeed later than the Bégude type – at leastin the Morbihan.

Let us remember first of all that these twotypologically close groups had been the subjectof long-distance transfers and had reached theCarnac-type tombs from the middle of the 5thmillennium. In these tombs, they often take theform Tumiac type axeheads, which are Alpineexamples that had been thinned down and hadtheir shape modified by repolishing in theMorbihan; their blades are expanded. Theongoing spectroradiometric analyses of MichelErrera have shown that for all these types ofaxehead, the known sources of jadeitite (andprobably also some other Alpine sources thathave not yet been located) were used. The vari-ants of this rock from Mont Viso includejadeitite with lawsonite crystals, jadeitite withzircons and jadeitite with garnets ‘floating’ inatolls; those from the Beigua massif includejadeitite-quartz and glaucophane jadeitite. Intotal, Alpine jadeitite was used for over 90% ofall the axeheads of these types that we havestudied (Fig. 6). This implies that, in contrast tothe earlier raw material choices taken by themakers of Bégude-type axeheads, there hadbeen an intensive selection of potentially usableAlpine rocks in order to obtain the beautifullight-green translucent jadeitites. It remains tobe discovered how this selection was effected:

at or close to the sources, or in the course oftheir transfer towards the north and west?

The distribution (Fig. 8) is radically differentfrom that of Bégude-type axeheads and is fullof surprises. Some characteristic traits are as fol-lows:

� Axeheads of Altenstadt-Greenlaw andChenoise type, corresponding to the apogeeof the long-distance circulation of Alpineaxeheads, have been found as far away asnorthern Scotland, some 1700 km away asthe crow flies from the Beigua massif;

� The diffusion took place solely in a northerndirection (to Germany), a north-westerlydirection (to the Paris Basin, Great Britainand Ireland) and a westerly direction (to theMorbihan);

� No roughout of Altenstadt-Greenlaw type isknown among the thousands of brokenroughouts found in the Alpine extractionareas of Mont Viso. Indeed, the only rough-out for this kind of axehead is the partly-sawn block that was found, at Lugrin(Haute-Savoie), ritually deposited at the footof a large erratic block (Pétrequin et al. 2008);

� This type of axehead is practically absentfrom North Italy and rare in its initial area ofdiffusion to the north-west of the Alps,which extends up to 500 km (on average)from the jadeitite sources;

� Most axeheads in the Altenstadt-Greenlawcorpus have been found, either as individualfinds or in hoards, at distances between 500and 1700 km as the crow flies from thesource areas.

To summarise: axeheads of Altenstadt-Greenlaw and Chenoise type are essentiallymade of Alpine jadeitite (from Viso and Beigua,these source areas being separated from eachother by 100 km). No roughout has been foundin the high Alps – not even at Alba, a veryimportant working site at mid-distancebetween Viso and Beigua. These types of axe-head are rare up to at least 500 km from thequarries; in contrast, these remarkable objectswere accumulated in considerable numbersbeyond this limit of 500 km and up to theAtlantic margins of Europe. This distributionpattern is wholly atypical of the Neolithic – theonly phenomenon that approaches it is theaccumulation of copper objects in Denmark,the copper coming from Austria (Klassen 2000;Klassen et al. forthcoming a) – and which bearsno resemblance to a classic ‘down the line’ cir-culation (Clarke 1968; Renfrew 1975).

The hypothesis that seems to us to fit the



evidence best (but which might not necessarilybe correct, after all) is based on the followingobservations:

� There was no production of roughoutsspecifically for axeheads of Altenstadt-Greenlaw and Chenoise type;

� Since we can be certain that these axeheadtypes are definitely made from jadeitite fromViso or Beigua (among other possiblesources), these axeheads must have resultedfrom the transformation of roughouts thathad been created in the high Alps but whichhave been described, in our typology, asbeing of neighbouring types;

� The only known roughout, from Lugrin, is ablock of Viso jadeitite that has been partlysawn in half to produce, on one side, an axe-head of Altenstadt-Greenlaw type and onthe other, a Durrington-type axehead. Thisfact allows us to recognise that these two

types are linked not only chronologically butalso from a typological and technical pointof view;

� Therefore, Altenstadt-Greenlaw and Durr-ington belong to the same typological andtechnical family. This has been confirmed bythe co-occurrence of the two types in thehoards at Büßleben (Thuringia, Germany)and Glenluce (Scotland), for example; simi-larly there are numerous isolated finds ofAltenstadt-type axeheads that still show theancient section of the Durrington type, as inthe polished axehead of Römhild (Thur-ingia);

� Returning to the exploitation areas in theAlps, roughouts for Durrington type axe-heads, obtained from blocks by fire-setting,are very numerous. Most are of eclogite-omphacitite; jadeitite examples are in theminority.


Fig. 8.


axeheads of Altenstadt,

Greenlaw and Chenoise

type, mostly of light-

coloured jadeitite of

Mont Viso and, to a lesser

degree, of Mont Beigua.

The distribution of

these axeheads, whose

production took place

principally during the

second half of the

5th millennium, is

completely different from

that of Type Bégude

axeheads. The frontiere

between these two

typological families

can be traced along

a line lying between

Rouen and Annecy.

Cartography by

Estelle Gauthier,


data collected by

Pierre Pétrequin.


Taking these observations into account, we pro-pose that there was an initial selection of someroughouts and axeheads of Durrington type(which had been produced at the source areasand shaped in the nearby valleys, as at Alba:Traverso 1898, 1901, 1909) by people living inthe axehead-producing villages of Piedmont.This was undertaken in order to send selectedexamples across to the other side of the Alps,to communities who would use them both astools and as status symbols. (By contrast, theSquare-Mouthed Pottery Culture communitiesseem scarcely to have used axeheads as mark-ers of status; there, short axeheads predomi-nate, even in graves: Bernabo Brea et al. 2006.)A second process of selection took place at adistance of over 500 km from the source areas;this time, the particularly large and thin jadeititespecimens were singled out. A simple repolish-ing of the blade, in order to make it straighter,to conform with the criteria of northern axe-heads (Pétrequin et al. 1998), would have pro-duced an axehead of Altenstadt-Greenlaw type.In a similar manner, the Chenoise type wouldhave been the product of a reshaping of axe-heads of Puymirol type, for example. (For allthese types, see Fig. 6.) This would account forthe gap in the distribution of Altenstadt-Greenlaw and Chenoise type in the areabetween the Alpine sources and the line at 500km to the north-west of the Alps.

This hypothesis gains support if one com-pares it with the situation in the Gulf ofMorbihan, where a good number of Alpine axe-heads, particularly in jadeitite, were thinneddown and reshaped, ending up with anexpanded blade and, often, with a perforation(Fig. 1). This reworking was done in order tocreate an original, local type, the Tumiac type.This process of transforming an Alpine axeheadinto a ‘Carnac-type’ axehead would seem tohave been demonstrated perfectly clearly(Pétrequin et al. 1998; Herbaut 2000). Further-more, we can strongly suggest – from the pre-dominance of light and translucent jadeititeamong Tumiac type axeheads – that theseCarnac-type axeheads were made in theMorbihan by re-working Altenstadt-Greenlawaxeheads.

Thus, along the route of the long-distancetransfers from the Alps to the north west, onecan perceive a series of transformations of cer-tain Alpine axeheads that were undertaken inorder to respond to the desires of elites to createnew forms that were original and difficult toimitate – in particular the Carnac-style axe-heads with expanded blades.

A comparable ethnographic example in NewGuinea may be cited: the quarries of green-schists and amphibole schists at Wang-Kob-Mewere exploited by the Wano who hardly everused these rocks to make everyday tools.Instead, they sent thin tablet-shaped pieces andvery long roughouts to the Dani, who live at adistance of over two weeks’ march from thequarries. The Dani then worked on the rough-outs and polished them for a long time to createobjects (ye-yao) to use in compensation pay-ments. Further away still, the same large objectsin this magnificent green stone figured amongthe sacred objects (ye-pibit) among the Yali andthe Una (Pétrequin et al. 1993b, 2006d).

Polished axeheads of Puy typeWith the Puy type of axehead, which made itsappearance in Chasseen contexts at the end ofthe 5th millennium, it seems that Alpine axe-head production was in progressive decline(Fig. 6), while the range of Alpine rocks usedshows an increasing diversity (eclogite,omphacitite, amphibolite, jadeitite, serpenti-nite, greenschists). The pattern taken by thelong-distance movement of Puy-type axeheads– which includes examples found in GreatBritain, which must date to the period whenthe flow of Puy axeheads was already retreating(Fig. 9) (Pétrequin et al. 2008b) – the oppositionbetween the north (Altenstadt family) and thesouth (Bégude family) is at its stongest.

Since roughouts for Puy type axeheads areclearly present in the extraction areas of Visoand Beigua, the origin of their production (andtheir producers) seems to be a straightforwardmatter. Production probably included themovement of some raw blocks, in order to besawn, to the region of Pinerolo (for which see,for example, the assemblage from Balm’Chanto at Roretto: Nisbet et al. 1987) and alsoto Savoie (at Sollières-Sardières, Les Balmes,Thirault 2004). At a Europe-wide scale, the dis-tribution of these axeheads has a distinctivecharacter: there seem to be clusters of finds,fairly regularly spread along the axes of transfer(which passed along the south of the MassifCentral, the Paris Basin and the Rhine Valley).The number of axeheads does not seem todiminish with distance from the source and onecan suggest, without a great risk of beingwrong, that these axeheads played an impor-tant social role even though they are less spec-tacular-looking than the axeheads of thesecond half of the 5th millennium (cf. Fig. 7).


Fig. 9.


axeheads of Puy type,

in various Alpine rocks

(eclogite, jadeitite,

serpentinite

or amphibolite).

The distribution of these

axeheads, whose use lies

towards the end of the

5th millennium and at

the beginning of the 4th,

covers most of western

Europe; the previous

opposition between the

distribution of northern

and southern axehead

types (Figs. 8 & 9) has

disappeared by this stage.

Cartography by

Jonathan Desmeulles



data collected by

Pierre Pétrequin.


Sacred axeheads

Let us return to our initial premises. There aretwo opposing hypotheses concerning the dis-tribution of dark-coloured (eclogite, omphaci-tite) and light-coloured (jadeitite) Alpine rocksin western Europe over the course of the 5thmillennium and the beginning of the 4th. Thefirst (of Pétrequin et al.) proposes a partialnorth-south opposition between these twofamilies of Alpine rocks – one that corresponds,in all probability, to different historical trajec-

tories (i.e. population and cultures of theDanubian tradition in the north, and of theMediterranean tradition in the south: see, inparticular, Pétrequin, Cassen et al. 1998, 2002).The second hypothesis, belonging to D’Amico,Starnini et al., tends to deny this opposition andthese historical trajectories. Instead it favours aprocess of progressive, down-the-line typeselection of jadeitite axeheads, from the Alpinesource areas to the most distant users, notingthat their number increases with distance fromthe source areas. Thus, it is through ‘cultural



choice’ that the rocks that are the toughest,translucent and of pale green colour (jade-jadeite) came to be selected in north-westEurope.

The results of Programme JADE can be usedto test these two hypotheses. They show thatthere is some truth in both, but that neither issufficient to account for the complexity of thedynamic of production, circulation and use ofthe large Alpine axeheads, or of the socialprocesses that underlie this complexity. Thegeneral south-north opposition between dark-coloured and light-coloured axeheads has beenconfirmed; it is likely that this relates to differ-ent historical trajectories, linked to the estab-lishment of Neolithic currents of movement atthe end of the 6th millennium. But this oppo-sition is equally chronological in nature, withthe high point in the use of jadeitite fallingaround the middle of the 5th millennium inBrittany and the Paris Basin (before passing onto Great Britain, Ireland and Germany), at atime when highly stratified societies hademerged. In particular, around the Gulf ofMorbihan, certain individuals would have heldexclusive control over religion and rituals;Alpine jade axeheads would have occupied animportant place in this system of belief andpractice, among other signs of power (Pétre-quin et al. 2009).

Thus, it is due to their ‘consecration’ into theworld of power, of the sacred and of supernat-ural forces that the polished axeheads, mostlyof jade, achieved such a far-flung distribution,reaching 1700 km as the crow flies from theirarea of origin and crossing different languagesand cultures on their way. (For the fullest devel-opment of this concept, see Pétrequin et al.2009.) This suggests a certain sharing of ideasand of social functioning in the Morbihan, inthe Paris Basin, in Great Britain and Ireland andin Germany.

The point at which the selection of axeheads– and in particular, the preferential selection ofthose of jadeitite – was made in order to fulfila social (religious) need came at 500 kilometres’distance from the source areas. It is for thesesocial reasons that axeheads of Durrington type(essentially of light-coloured jadeitite) werechosen beyond this 500 km point, in order tomodify their form (into the Altenstadt type). Yetfurther away, at 1000 km from the Alps, theseaxeheads which no longer bore any resem-blance to their North Italian ‘ancestors’ wereonce more transformed, in both shape andthickness, in order to create the famous, and inseveral cases exquisite, Carnac-type axeheads(in particular the Tumiac type).

But the story does not end there. The Gulf ofMorbihan region had been the epicentre,around the middle of the 5th millennium, of anew system and new vocabulary of belief,expressed in terms of stones set up to pointtowards the heavens, of alignments of menhirs,of stelae, carved images (Shee Twohig 1981; LeRoux 1985; Cassen 2000, 2007), gigantic tumuliand sacred objects such as the Alpine axeheads.Over the course of the second half of the 5thmillennium, the influence of the Morbihan rit-uals began to be felt elsewhere, in the interiorof Continental Europe (Cassen 2000; Pétrequinet al. 2006a; Klassen et al. forthcoming a,b) andin north-west Spain and Portugal. The Carnac-type axeheads found here and there in westernEurope allow us to follow the expansion of this‘reflux movement’ (choc en retour) as far asGermany, Switzerland and even as far as south-ern Italy (Zimmermann 2004) and Croatia(Petric 1995). These Alpine axeheads, whichbecame Breton axeheads in the Gulf ofMorbihan, have specific characteristics such asexpanded blades or perforations close to thebutt.

Along the length of this ‘inverse trajectory’towards Germany and the Alps, these sacredobjects were imitated in local materials (Fig. 10):flint in the case of the area around Paris (asshown in an example from Paris) and in theSénonais (Fontaine-la-Gaillarde), linked to theextensive exploitation of mined flint; flint oncemore in north-east Switzerland, in Alsace andin the Pays de Bade, with Type Glis (Lausanne)(Speck 1988; Pétrequin et al. 1995); alpine ser-pentinite and nephrite in Switzerland and insouth-west Germany for the axeheads of TypeZug, with their perforated butt (Uerschauen)(Pétrequin et al. 2006a). Furthermore, elsewherein Europe there were also copies in fibrolite inSpain and Portugal, of Type Cangas, once morewith a perforated butt (Fabregas Valcarce et al.1982; Cassen 2000).

Finally, there is another story that could betold about the Neolithic societies in westernEurope during the 5th and 4th millennia, whichconcerns the use of particularly rare ‘object-signs’ whose significance has not been givenits due importance here. The tools and thehypotheses developed by Programme JADEhave, however, allowed us to create solid keysthat can be used to unlock further secretsregarding these axeheads of alpine jades andtheir late imitations. They also permit us to passbeyond the traditional kind of reasoning thatfocuses solely on petrography and mineralogy,and to integrate the results into the world ofsocial sciences and into issues relating to thefunctioning of societies.




Fig. 10.

Imitations of Alpine

axeheads made in local

rock types. From the end

of the 5th millennium,

as the production of

Alpine axeheads and the

selection of jadeite at

high-altitude source

areas was on the wane,

there appeared imitations

in local rocks.

These copies in flint

(Paris, Fontaine-la-

Gaillarde, Lausanne) or in

serpentinite (Uerschauen)

were, above all, copies of

Carnac type axeheads –

that is to say, axeheads

that had been repolished

in and around the Gulf of

Morbihan and re-injected

into the transfer of

axeheads back towards

the Alps and towards

Germany.

Photos and information:

Anne-Marie and

Pierre Pétrequin and

Nicolas Le Maux.

FONTAINE-LA-GAILLARDE(Yonne, France)

0

10cm

PARIS(Paris, France)

UERSCHAUEN(Thurgau, Switzerland) LAUSANNE

(Vaud, Switzerland)


Acknowledgements

Translated by Alison Sheridan

We thank Daniel Buthod-Ruffier, for having drawnour attention to the flint axeheads with expandedblades in the Sénonais; Jérôme Bullinger, Markus Egg,Urs Leuzinger, Dusan Horovka, Hartwig Löhr, GuidoRossi, Peter Schut, Gerhard Trnka, Jean Vaquer andGillian Varndell for their collaboration in the creationof the database of large axeheads and of imitations inlocal materials. We would particularly like to thankRamon Fábregas-Valcarce, Arturo De LomberaHermida and Carlos Rodriguez Rellan for their recentwork in creating an inventory of Alpine axeheads andcopies thereof in the museums of Spain and Portugal.

This work was undertaken as an Agence Nationale dela Recherche Programme ‘Blanc’ project, administeredby the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme et del’Environnement, Besançon (2007–2009): JADE‘Inégalités sociales et espace européen au Néolithique: la circulation des grandes haches en jades alpins’.

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