Hobbyist Metal Detectorists Find Hoard of 3000-year-old Axes in Farmer's Field in Norway

Ancient Origins

Some 3,000 years ago, 24 axes were cached in Stjørdal municipality, about 44 km (27.3 miles) east of Trondheim. They're now seeing the light of day once again.

 In late April, a sensational discovery was made in a field in the village of Hegra, not far from the Trondheim International Airport in Værnes. Numerous axe heads, a knife blade and some fragments were lifted out of obscurity. The objects date back to the Late Bronze Age, approx. 1100-500 BC. 

Archaeologists from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology's (NTNU) University Museum and Nord-Trøndelag County Council unearthed the findings with the help of with six private metal detector hobbyists from the area.

 Found with metal detectors
Brothers Joakim and Jørgen Korstad from Stjørdal municipality made the first discoveries on this field in January this year. They found nine socketed axes (also called Celts), a spearhead, a casting mould, and a fragment of a possible bronze lur. The metal detector hobbyists contacted county archaeologist Eirik Solheim, who says that the brothers did everything right in the process of informing him about the finds.

One of the axe-heads after it was dug up. Credit: Eirik Solheim Between the two searches, the Hegra find now consists of 30 Bronze Age artifacts.

 "The 24 axes are a particularly special part of this discovery. There have never been so many axes in a single deposit before in Norway, and they're rare in the Scandinavian context," says archaeologist and researcher Merete Moe Henriksen in NTNU's Department of Archaeology and Cultural History

Hidden or sacrificed?
Archaeologists call this kind of find a hoard, when they uncover objects that have been hidden away or buried in the ground. It is still too early to say why the axes and other objects were buried 3000 years ago.

"There may have been religious reasons linked to a sacrifice, or they might have been cached temporarily, with the intention of recasting the metal later. This was a known practice in the Late Iron Age," says Henriksen.

The whole hoard of 24 axe heads and 6 other Bronze Age articles (Credit: Thehistoryblog)

Stjørdal municipality is one of the areas in central Norway that has a concentration of ancient rock art and rock carvings. Solheim has wished for a museum to showcase the rock art of the area.

"We know that there's been a lot of activity in this area, but we've lacked artefacts. Now this shows up and it's infinitely more than we could have asked for. It's so spectacular and totally cool," he says.

Archaeologists hope to get in one more excavation of the Hegra field this fall. This would help them to better understand the context of the findings, which would hopefully reveal more about why the objects were cached.

Top Image: Some of the original 9 axe heads or “Celts’ plus the spearhead found by the Korstad brothers. Source: Jorgen Korstad

The article, originally titled ‘Three-thousand-year-old axes found in farmer’s field in mid-Norway’ was originally published on Science Daily.

Source: The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). "Three-thousand-year-old axes found in farmer's field in mid-Norway." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 2 May 2017.

Secrets of Stone Age Jade Axes Revealed in Scotland

Ancient Origins

A new exhibition at the National Museum of Scotland showcases a rarely seen collection of Stone Age jade axeheads. Most of them were brought to Scotland around 4,000 years BC. In those times they were at least 100 years old.

The display that opened on May 20 contains a collection of jade axeheads which were created over 6,000 years ago. The artifacts were made in the Italian Alps, far from Scotland. The axeheads were brought to Scotland by pioneering farming groups from the northern region of France. The history of the axeheads was discovered by a French-led group of researchers involved in National Museums Scotland ''Projet [Project] Jade''.
Dr. Alison Sheridan, Principal Curator of Early Prehistory in the Department of Scottish History and Archaeology, said that the Museum hopes to ''inspire and fascinate'' modern people with the unique history of the ''extraordinary jade axeheads''.

A Greenlaw axehead. (National Museum of Scotland)

The jade axes are polished and it would have taken many hours to make one. They were probably used as ritual or ceremonial objects; however these artifacts were important for the expansion of a civilization as well. The polished stone axes transformed society after the Ice Age. They allowed people to clear space in forests and plant crops more effectively than ever before. However, it is unlikely that the jade axes were used to cut large quantities of wood.

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Moreover, the researchers have argued that the axes were status symbols - a luxurious confirmation of the power and prestige of the owner. Jade is not found in Britain, the rock comes from Mont Viso, located south-west of Turin and Mont Beigua above Geona in Italy.
Apart from the jadeitite, omphacitite, nephrite, and eclogite stones were also discovered. However, for many decades archaeologists used the term ''jade'' for all of them. The axeheads were made near high mountains. People who made these axeheads climbed to heights of over 2,000 meters (6561.68 ft.) in the Italian Alps.

Block of raw jadeitite from the Oncino valley with Mont Viso in the background. (Projet Jade)

According to the researchers, the people who lived there during the Neolithic period associated mountains with the realm of the gods. The Neolithic people probably also believed that pieces of the mountains had powers which could heal and protect.
Jade axeheads are in collections of some other museums as well. According to Gillian Varndell, Curator of the British Museum (which owns a jade axehead discovered in Canterbury):

''The axe has been a powerful symbol for thousands of years in many parts of the world. It means different things to different societies. To the early farmers the everyday working axehead was an essential tool for clearing land for cultivation. Objects like the Canterbury jade axehead, however, were not used for farming, they were symbols of status. Ownership of one was undoubtedly restricted. The green color of jade might itself have been significant, as copies were made using local greenish rock. More than a hundred axeheads made from jade have been found in Britain and Ireland. Most of them have been accidental and isolated, so there is no sense of a pattern.''

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Jade axe, Canterbury, Kent, England, Neolithic, about 4,000-2,000 BC. (Public Domain)

Nowadays, over 1,600 large axeheads made from jadeitite, omphacitite, nephrite, and eclogite are known in Europe. Excavations in Ireland suggest that they are not very popular artifacts. There, only four out of over 21,000 stone axeheads were found to be made of jadeite.
Archaeologists began to analyze the jade axeheads for the first time in the 1940s. They examined the stone axes of the South-Western Group of Museums. In the 1960 and 1970s, a few researchers tried to explore the secrets of the jade axeheads, but the real progress in researching the origins of these artifacts was made Pierre and Anne-Marie Pétrequin, with their team known as Projet Jade.
They have taken a Europe-wide approach, locating axehead sources high in the mountains of northern Italy. On Monte Viso they discovered the quarries dated back to 5,200 BC. When people brought the jade axes to Brittany, they started to copy them in local fibrolite. In Ireland, copies were made in local stone sources too.
The rituals and ceremonies connected with the jade axeheads are still unknown. The team of researchers hopes that future work will bring about more information on this area.

Fragment of deliberately-broken axehead, found near Douglas Castle, South Lanarkshire. The straight line along the bottom is due to the removal of a slice to make a petrological thin section during the 1960s. (National Museum of Scotland)

Top image: A Stone Age Jadeitite axehead. Credit: Projet Jade
By Natalia Klimczak