The widespread employment and acceptance of use-wear analysis on materials such as flint and bone has not been accompanied by a parallel development in archaeometallurgy. This article explores its potential and problems through the investigation of socketed axes in eastern Yorkshire, in England and south-east Scotland during the late Bronze Age. Experimental work on modern replications of socketed axes was compared with wear traces on prehistoric socketed axes. The results indicate that prehistoric socketed axes had been used as multi-purpose tools, but that the nature and extent of their uses before deposition varied considerably. By combining use-wear analysis with contextual information on socketed axes in the late Bronze Age landscape, ideas concerning their significance can be explored.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
ASHMORE, PATRICK, 1994. Neolithic and Bronze Age Scotland. London: Batsford .
2.
BARKER, GRAEME, ed., 1981. Prehistoric Communities in Northern England: Essays in Social and Economic Reconstruction. Sheffield: University of Sheffield .
3.
BARRETT, JOHN and RICHARD BRADLEY, eds, 1980. Settlement and Society in the British Later Bronze Age. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports (British Series 83).
4.
BARRETT, JOHN and ROBERT GOURLAY, 1999. An early metal assemblage from Dail na Caraidh, Inverness-shire, and its context . Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland129: 161–187 .
5.
BRADLEY, RICHARD, 1998. The Passage of Arms. Second edition. Oxford: Oxbow .
6.
BRADLEY, RICHARD, 2000. An Archaeology of Natural Places. London: Routledge .
7.
BRADLEY, RICHARD and KEN GORDON 1988. Human skulls from the River Thames, their dating and significance . Antiquity62: 503–509 .
8.
BREWSTER, THOMAS C.M., 1963. The Excavation of Staple Howe. Malton: East Riding Archaeological Research Committee .
9.
BRIDGFORD, SUE, 1997. The first weapons devised only for war. British Archaeology March 1997:7-7.
10.
BRIDGFORD, SUE, 2000. Weapons, warfare and society in Britain 1250–750 BC. Unpublished PhD dissertation: Sheffield University.
11.
BR‘CK, JOANNA, 1995. A place for the dead: the role of human remains in late Bronze Age Britain . Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society61: 245–277 .
12.
BURGESS, COLIN, 1968. Bronze Age Metalwork in Northern England. Newcastle: Oriel .
13.
CHALLIS, ANTHONY and DENNIS HARDING, eds, 1975. Later Prehistory from the Trent to the Tyne. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports (British Series 20).
14.
CHAMPION, TIMOTHY, 1990. Review of The Passage of Armsby Richard Bradley . Antiquaries Journal70: 479–481 .
15.
CHAMPION, TIMOTHY, 1999. The later Bronze Age. In John Hunter and Ian Ralston (eds), The Archaeology of Britain: 95–112. London: Routledge .
16.
COLES, JOHN, 1959–60. Scottish late Bronze Age metalwork: typology, distributions and chronology . Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland93: 16–134 .
FONTIJN, DAVID, 2002. Sacrificial landscapes: cultural biographies of persons, objects and ënaturalí places in the Bronze Age of the southern Netherlands, c. 2300–600 BC. Analecta Praehistorica Leidensia 33–34.
20.
GRƒSLUND, BO, ed., 1990. The Interpretative Possibilities of Microwear Studies. 7th international conference on lithic use-wear analysis, Uppsala 1989. Uppsala: Societas Archaeologica Upsaliensis .
21.
HARDING, ANTHONY, 1976. Bronze agricultural implements in Bronze Age Europe. In Gale de G. Sieveking, Ian H. Longworth and K.E. Wilson (eds), Problems in Economic and Social Archaeology: 517–521. London: Duckworth .
22.
HARDING, DENNIS, ed., 1982. Later Prehistoric Settlement in South-East Scotland. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press .
23.
HARDING, JAN and ROBERT JOHNSON, eds, 2000. Northern Pasts: Interpretations of Later Prehistory of Northern England and Southern Scotland. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports (British Series 302).
HODGES, HENRY, 1957. Studies in the late Bronze Age in Ireland . Ulster Journal of Archaeology20: 51–63 .
26.
JENSEN, JÿRGEN, 1973. Ein neues Hallstattschwert aus D‰nemark. Beitrag zur Problematik der jungbronzezeitlichen Votivfunde. Acta Archaeologica 43: 115–164.
27.
KIENLIN, TOBIAS, 1995. Flanged axes of the North-Alpine region: an assessment of the possibilities of use-wear analysis on metal artefacts. Unpublished MSc dissertation. Sheffield University.
28.
KIENLIN, TOBIAS and BARBARA OTTAWAY, 1998. Flanged axes of the North-Alpine region: an assessment of the possibilities of use-wear analysis on metal artefacts. In Claude Mordant, Michel Pernot and Valentin Rychner (eds), LíAtelier du bronzier en Europe du XXe au VIIIe siËcle avant notre Ëre: 271–286. Paris: CTHS (Documents prÈhistoriques 10).
29.
KRISTIANSEN, KRISTIAN, 1978. The consumption of wealth in Bronze Age Denmark: a study in the dynamics of economic processes in tribal societies. In Kristian Kristiansen and Carsten Paludan-Müller (eds), New Directions in Scandinavian Archaeology: 158–191. Copenhagen: National Museum of Denmark .
30.
LEVY, JANET, 1982. Social and Religious Organisation in Bronze Age Denmark: An Analysis of Ritual Hoard Finds. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports (International Series 124).
31.
MANBY, TERRY, 1980. Bronze Age settlement in Eastern Yorkshire. In John Barrett and Richard Bradley (eds), Settlement and Society in the British Later Bronze Age: 307–376. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports (British Series 83).
32.
MATHIEU, JAMES R. and DANIEL A. MEYER, 1997. Comparing axe heads of stone, bronze and steel: studies in experimental archaeology . Journal of Field Archaeology24: 333–350 .
33.
MEGAW, J., S. VINCENT and DEREK D.A. SIMPSON, eds, 1979. Introduction to British Prehistory: from the Arrival of Homo Sapiens to the Claudian Invasion. Leicester: Leicester University Press .
34.
NEEDHAM, STUART, 1996. Chronology and periodisation in the British Bronze Age. In Klavs Randsborg (ed.), Absolute Chronology – Archaeological Europe 2500–500 BC. Acta Archaeologica 67:121–140.
35.
NEEDHAM, STUART, CHRISTOPHER BRONK RAMSAY, DAVID COOMBS, CAROLINE CARTWRIGHT, and PAUL PETITT, 1998. An independent chronology for British Bronze Age metalwork: the results of the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator programme . Archaeology Journal154: 55–107 .
36.
OTTAWAY, BARBARA, 2003. Experimental Archaeometallurgy. In T. Stollner, G. Korlin, G. Steffens and J.Cierny (eds), Man and Mining: Studies in Honour of Gerd Weisgerber on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday: 341–348. Bochum: Der Anschnitt (Beiheft 16).
SANDS, ROBERT, 1997. Prehistoric Woodworking: the Analysis and Interpretation of Bronze and Iron Age Toolmarks. London: University College London .
39.
SCHMIDT, PETER K. and COLIN B. BURGESS, 1981. The Axes of Scotland and Northern England. Munich: Beck (Pr‰historische Bronzefunde IX, 7).
40.
SEMENOV, S.A., 1964. Prehistoric Technology: An Experimental Study of the Oldest Tools and Artefacts from Traces of Manufacture and Wear. London: Cory, Adams & Mackay .
41.
SHERIDAN, ALISON, 1999. Drinking, driving, death and display: Scottish Bronze Age artefact studies since Coles. In Anthony F. Harding (ed.), Experiment and Design: Archaeological Studies in Honour of John Coles: 49–59. Oxford: Oxbow .
42.
SPINDLER, KONRAD, 1994. The Man in the Ice. London, Weidenfield & Nicolson .
43.
SPRATT, DONALD, and COLIN BURGESS, eds, 1985. Upland Settlement in Britain: the Second Millennium BC and After. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports (British Series 143).
44.
SWISS, A. and BARBARA OTTAWAY, in press. Investment or Investment: casting and using a bronze mould. In Peter Northover and Chris Salter (eds), Founders, Smiths and Platers. Oxford .
45.
TAYLOR, MAISIE, 1992. Flag Fen: the wood . Antiquity66: 476–498 .
46.
TAYLOR, ROBIN, 1993. Hoards of the Bronze Age in Southern Britain. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports (British Series 228).
47.
VAN GIJN, A.L., 1995. The wear and tear of flint: principles of functional analysis applied to Dutch Neolithic assemblages. Analecta Praehistoria Leidensia 22-22.
48.
VAUGHAN, PATRICK, 1985. Use-wear Analysis of Stone Tools. Tucson: University of Arizona Press .
49.
WRIGHT, EDWARD, 1990. The Ferriby Boats: Seacraft of the Bronze Age. London: Routledge .
