The Wroot Axe

Highly polished Neolithic Jadeite axe. The slightly curved cutting-edge is 3 3/4in across, and the slightly curved sides taper to a pointed butt. British Museum gives it as typical Breton axe. Axes made from Jadeite seem to have had a special significance as status symbols, exchanged and bartered as high status objects of power. About 2000 Jadeite axes have been found across northern Europe, with about 100 in England. Recent research has found that all were made from Alpine Jadeite, sourced from high up in the North Italian Alps. In fact, we now know that the Wroot Axe came from a boulder in the Porco Valley, below Mount Viso and 1500 km from Wroot. Just over 6000 years ago, around 4300 BC, a Neolithic person sourced the Jade in the Alps, which was shaped and polished over months into an axe plumper than it is today. The finished axe was traded and gifted across Europe between community leaders to the Paris Basin. There it was reshaped in the local fashion, becoming a much thinner blade. Then later it travelled, perhaps with a group of migrating farmers, to Lincolnshire arriving around 3900 BC. The axe was re-found at some point in the early 1900s and acquired by local historian and archaeologists Ethel Rudkin.

NOLMS:2009.140.001

AXEHEAD

4300 BC

Neolithic

Jade (Stone)

WROOT