At the cutting edge in Orkney – axes from the Ness of Brodgar

Thursday, February 13, 2025 (11:57 AM)

Mark, Aimée and Patrick contemplating a polished stone axe from the Ness of Brodgar.

My name is Dr Patrick Nørskov Pedersen and I’m an archaeologist from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.

I recently travelled to Orkney, where I spent a month or so as part of my postdoc project. The project is called At the Cutting Edge (‘ACE’): The Biographies of Orcadian Neolithic Axes, with a specific focus on the assemblage from the Ness of Brodgar.

The project, which started in October last year at the University of Copenhagen, is funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark and will be hosted by the Department of Archaeology at the University of York from April this year. In the project I’m working closely with Professor Emeritus and Ness of Brodgar co-director Mark Edmonds and Dr Aimée Little, director of the Centre for Artefacts and Materials Analysis (CAMA) at the University of York.

Stone axes have been studied in Britain for well over a century, with research focused on locating dramatic stone sources and extensive axe distributions across Britain, Ireland and the European continent. The results of all that work have been remarkable. However, we actually know relatively little about how axe-heads were used, or how their use and treatment changed over the course of their lives. This gap in our picture is what my project aims to tackle.

Though axes are often thought to have been tools for tree-felling, diversity in size and shape and raw material all suggest that they may have served far more varied purposes, a point made by Ann Clarke in her review of Orcadian axe-heads a few years ago.

A variety in use and treatment has also been shown in use-wear studies of polished stone axes from continental Europe and beyond. The ACE project wants to build on these observations by taking a regional approach to traditions of making and using axe-heads in Neolithic Orkney. Through a combination of archaeologically informed experiments and qualitative macro-/microscopic use-wear analysis, we will hopefully be able to establish a more holistic “biography” of the axes from the Ness of Brodgar and from other contemporary sites in the archipelago.

In the field

My work in Orkney over the last month has seen me getting to know the stones. I’ve focused on documenting raw material choices, axe morphology and macroscopic traces of use. I’ve concentrated on the Ness of Brodgar axe assemblage, but thanks to help from Dr Antonia Thomas, Dan Lee and Dr Siobhan Cooke-Miller, of the UHI Archaeology Institute, I’ve also been looking at axes from other Orcadian Neolithic sites, including Stonehall, Crossiecrown, Wideford Hill and Braes of Ha’Breck.

I have been examining traces of wear at the cutting-edge and elsewhere on the axes, through naked-eye observation and via a low-power stereo-microscope. Inspired by recent work elsewhere, this initial analysis has aimed at providing an impression of the range of possible activities these tools were used in, such as the striking or scraping of different materials. Working different materials like wood, meat, stone, bone and hide, leaves significant and sometimes distinctive traces like fractures and edge rounding, that are all observable on axe-heads at a macroscopic level.

This current macroscopic analysis forms the basis of the upcoming experimental program, which will take place at the York Experimental Archaeology Research centre in York, later this year. There I will use axe replicas, made of local raw material and manufactured into axe forms common in the Orcadian Neolithic. These will be used in different activities and the macro- and microscopic traces left on the replica axes will be used to compare with the traces we find on the archaeological examples.

This trip has thus been essential in documenting the range of traces and their inferred uses.

We also want to know how these tools were treated over the course of their lives. Were they repaired, re-shaped, hafted, re-hafted and re-used, or not used at all? What can traces left on the surface tell us about an axe’s life? So, I’ve been looking beyond the cutting edge, to explore the biographies of these tools in all their wonderful complexity.

In collecting data on the shape, style and morphology of the axes from the Ness (and beyond) I’ve been building on the detailed work of Ann Clarke. As she has noted, many axes from the archipelago are small and generally made of local materials, in particular sedimentary siltstone/sandstone and the igneous camptonite. In light of her work, I have focused my attention on specific features of morphology that are particularly useful in the telling of each axe’s biography and use-life.

These features relate to the re-shaping, repair and maintenance of the axe. Things like the remnants of previous cutting-edges near erased by subsequent blade grinding, the presence of pecking, or flaking scars that ‘pierce’ previously ground surfaces. Evidence for the repeated abrading of new ‘facets’ (flat abraded zones on the sides and butt of the axe) is also being recorded and is revealing multiple phases of shape alteration. The analysis of these features, in conjunction with use-wear analysis, will allow me to get closer to the complex use-life of each axe, telling of the curation of both axe-heads and hafts.

So far

The initial analysis of the project has already revealed a few interesting trends.

Some of the larger axes (axes generally more than 70 mm in length) appear to have been used ‘more’, or rather in more intensive/extensive work. This includes percussive activities like chopping, cutting, splitting wood, bone or stone. Such activity results in macroscopic wear traces like step and hinge fractures, flaking/chipping and edge crushing. Another trend with these larger specimens is that they show frequent evidence of ‘re-use’, i.e. being used for other activities not limited to using the cutting-edge.

One prevalent example is the presence of concentrated zones made up of pecking pits and scratches. These traces could suggest that the axes were ‘re-used’ as lithic anvils in bipolar flaking (see an example in Fig. 3).

Fig. 3 An axe made of Gneiss (sf. 36396) from Structure Ten at the Ness of Brodgar featuring two concentrated zones of pits and scratches, possibly indicating use as a lithic anvil. On the opposite face there is another such zone. — **Fig. 3** An axe made of Gneiss (sf. 36396) from Structure Ten at the Ness of Brodgar featuring two concentrated zones of pits and scratches, possibly indicating use as a lithic anvil. On the opposite face there is another such zone.

In contrast, the smaller axes (less than 70 mm long) show more frequent ‘re-shaping’, i.e. altering and modifying the morphology of the tools.

This suggests they may have been continually re-hafted, or at least re-shaped to fit into something (see Fig. 4).

Fig. 4 Side of Miniature Axe (Camptonite) showing several phases of ‘faceting’, i.e. abrading the side into a flat surface. — **Fig. 4** Side of miniature axe (camptonite) showing several phases of ‘faceting’, i.e. abrading the side into a flat surface.

They also have fewer traces of intense, repeated percussion, instead feature frequent re-faceting, abrading and re-pecking. The lack of intense percussive traces does not necessarily indicate that these ‘miniature axes’ were used less, nor for a shorter period. Instead, they may simply have been used for working softer materials (e.g. animal or plant matter), or less ‘heavy’ work (e.g. finer carpentry), or scraping.

Such activities are less likely to leave extensive macroscopic traces like fracturing and flaking damage. Furthermore, the small axes also rarely appear with traces of ‘re-use’ like the wear from anvil use. This is in marked contrast to the larger axes, which instead were re-shaped less and re-used more.

Some of these small blades may originally have been large axes reduced in size through use, a result of repair and maintenance, removing previous fractured and broken cutting-edges and re-grinding the edge and tool into a new, smaller shape. Once they reached such a diminutive size, they may have been used in the ‘less’ intensive percussive activities or not used at all. Others, however, were likely manufactured small and were never intended for heavy percussion. So, when it comes to use, so far it seems that size does sometimes matter.

The general trends observed so far are not exclusive. My initial work also involved some comparisons with other contemporary sites and here I observed that some ‘miniature’ axes of siltstone found at the Braes of Ha’Breck in Wyre, have large fractures, indicating quite intense percussion.

Fig. 5 A miniature axe of siltstone from Braes of Ha’Breck, Wyre, showing evidence of extensive use. — **Fig.** 5 A miniature axe of siltstone from Braes of Ha’Breck, Wyre, showing evidence of extensive use.

In addition, some axes (almost exclusively of quartzite) appear to have been intentionally manufactured blunt, and presumably used in scraping rather than percussion, possibly processing hides and skins (see the picture below).

Fig. 6 Blunt end of Quartzite axe from Stonehall. — **Fig. 6** Blunt end of quartzite axe from Stonehall.

So, what have I learnt so far?

Percussion against hard materials, like wood, stone and bone, is common on the larger axes, though some saw use on softer materials, possibly in carcass processing, or finer woodworking, on the smaller axes, there appears to be a tendency towards the two latter activities.

Some may have been used in scraping hides or the like, while others may not have been used at all or very little or were perhaps deposited after their edges were re-ground but not used. No trend is exclusive, and these preliminary observations need further substantiation from the analysis of the microscopic use-wear traces and the experimental work.

Initial observations indicate that use-wear analysis should not limit itself only to the blade end of the axes. Though this may tell us much about the use, it is quite evidently, not the whole story. Their use-lives it seems, did not start nor end at the cutting-edge. Rather, the consistent re-shaping and re-use of the entire tool surface reveals a much more complex story.

Future plans

All of the observations described here will be further explored in the second part of the research project, which will take place at the Centre for Artefacts and Materials Analysis (CAMA), at the University of York, with the guidance of Dr Little.

Fig. 7 Discussing the “Cloud axe” with Prof Mark Edmonds. — **Fig. 7** Discussing the Structure Fourteen ‘cloud axe’ with Prof Mark Edmonds.

The next step will be subjecting the Ness of Brodgar axes to further analysis using high-power microscopes documenting the microscopic traces, including the ‘micropolish’, left by the processed material that the axes were in contact with. Like macro-traces, microscopic wear traces resulting from repeated contact with different materials all leave different and distinctive ‘micropolishes’ on the axe surface.

Combining these methods with analysis of the traces left on the replicas used in the experiments, will allow us to more confidently suggest exactly what these contact materials were. When we bring together all these lines of evidence, we will be better placed to understand the biographies and significance of axes in Neolithic Orkney.

It’s been a great start, and I’m grateful to Nick and Anne for all their help, and to Gary Lloyd, Dr Martha Johnson, Chris Gee, Dr Ben Elliott, from the UHI Archaeology Institute, for good conversations and insights.

I am excited about what our future research will reveal about this remarkable assemblage, and I look forward to sharing updates on the progress of the ACE project as things progress.