Neolithic banded macehead

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A Neolithic stone polished, banded perforated object or 'mace-head' dating c. 2,900 - 2,100BC. The mace-head is rectangular in plan with rounded ends and an oval cross-section. There is an hour-glass perforation located approximately one third along its length. The carving of the mace-head has been worked so the natural banding of the stone forms transverse stripes. When the mace-head was discovered it was covered in, as the finder describes it, a limescale concretion which came off as he rubbed his thumb over it. This was probably Thames 'race'. There is a patch of black near the distal end of the mace-head where there was no concretion and the stone has been stained.

Dimensions: length: 147.63mm; width: 58.06mm; thickness: 36.55mm; diameter of perforation at widest point: 20.71mm; weight: 587.8g.

Dr Alan Saville suggests the stone is tertiary metamorphic rock and he speculates that the origin could be the Orkneys or Norway as a result of ice drive erratics, meaning the rock was pushed by ice possibly from Norway to Orkney.

Jon Cotton writes:

This is a splendid example of a mace-head of finely-banded olive-grey 'sandstone' with gently convex sides and a slightly obliquely-orientated hour-glass perforation drilled towards one end. The piece is otherwise symmetrical in plan and long-section. Although found covered in a 'limescale concretion' (brushed away by the finder but probably analogous with what the old antiquaries called Thames 'race'), the piece is in pristine, undamaged, condition. (A small imperfection at one end appears to represent an original minor flaw on the surface of the original nodule.)

Further to earlier work (e.g. Evans 1897; Smith 1911; 1924-5), Fiona Roe (1968) defined three classes of mace-head: Cushion, Ovoid and Pestle. The present piece is closest to Roe's amorphous Proto-Cushion form, the latter metrically (and notionally morphologically) intermediate between her Ovoid C and Cushion forms (1979, 30). However, pieces within the small Proto-Cushion group tend to be shorter and squatter than the present example, whose overall length is closer to the more elongated Cushion form.

Cushion mace-heads were described in detail by Gibson (1944), who noted their 'extraordinary fineness and accuracy of craftsmanship' (ibid, 17), the deliberate choice of 'hard crystalline rocks', and 'a preference ... for green of various shades from grey to olive ... with natural colour-banding used to the best advantage for ornamental effect' (ibid, 19). All of these observations could be applied to the Hammersmith piece with equal justification.

Metrically, however, the Cushion mace-heads are more slender than the present piece, and have straight or tapering sides and cylindrical (rather than hour-glass) perforations. (NB. Gibson (1944) traced 39 examples of Cushion mace-heads, while Roe (1968, 146) identified 'rather more than 50 specimens ... together with about a dozen possible prototype forms'. There are at least five of these fine Cushion mace-heads from the Thames, of which the MoL has three: from Kingston (49.107/159); Old England, Syon (O744) and Mortlake (A14578); two others, from Twickenham and Hammersmith, are in the BM.

Associations are few and dating is therefore difficult to pin down. However, exotic mace-heads are usually linked with Grooved Ware, the latter dated to c. 2900 - c. 2100 BC. Grooved Ware is associated with major Wessex henge monuments and with Stonehenge, but in the London area is invariably found in small shallow pits. A few sherds have also been recovered from the river, including several from the Hammersmith reaches (e.g. MOL Acc Nos A23398; C946; C948-9). Other Grooved Ware associations include elongated bone pins, and there are two of these from the river at Wandsworth and Putney a little downstream.

References
Evans, J, 1897, The Ancient Stone Implements, Weapons and Ornaments of Great Britain. London: Longmans, Green & Co (Second edition)
Gibson, W J, 1944, 'Mace-heads of "Cushion" type in Britain', Proc Soc Antiq Scotland 78, (1943-44), 16-25
Roe, F, 1968, 'Stone mace-heads and the latest Neolithic cultures of the British Isles', in J M Coles & D D A Simpson (eds), Studies in Ancient Europe: Essays presented to Stuart Piggott. Leicester University Press, 145-172
Roe, F, 1979, 'Typology of stone implements with shaftholes', in T H McK Clough & W A Cummins (eds), Stone Axe Studies. Archaeological, petrological, experimental, and ethnographic. CBA Research Report 23, 23-48
Smith, R A, 1911, British Museum: A Guide to the Antiquities of the Stone Age, Second edition
Smith, R A, 1924-25, 'The Perforated Axe-hammers of Britain', Archaeologia 75, 77-108

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Attribution-ShareAlike License version 4.0 (verified 13. November 2020)

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CC BY-SA 4.0

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https://finds.org.uk/database/ajax/download/id/387813
Catalog: https://finds.org.uk/database/images/image/id/387813/recordtype/artefacts Archivkopie
Artefact: https://finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/record/id/500107

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