View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by National Museums Scotland Research Repository Sheridan, J A (2011) Old friends, new friends, a long-lost friend and false friends: tales from Project JADE. In: Stone Axe Studies III. Oxbow Books, Oxford, pp. 411-426. ISBN 9781842174210 http://repository.nms.ac.uk/679 Deposited on: 14 July 2015 NMS Repository – Research publications by staff of the National Museums Scotland http://repository.nms.ac.uk/ Alison Sheridan, Yvan Pailler, Pierre Pétrequin, Michel Errera Old friends, new friends, a long-lost friend and false friends: Tales from Projet JADE Abstract Our understanding of the production, distribution and use of Neolithic axeheads, adzeheads and chisels made of jadeitite and other rare Alpine rocks has been transformed by a major international French-led research project, Projet JADE. This has systematically recorded and mapped all such objects longer than 135 mm across Europe – extending its coverage to all artefacts of Alpine rock in Britain, Ireland and the Channel Islands, irrespective of length – and collating information about contexts, dating and depositional practices at a pan-European scale. The research has involved a remarkable amount of work ‘behind the scenes’ in museums and private collections across the continent. This has led to new discoveries and to the challenging of old provenances and associations. Focusing on the results for Britain and Ireland, this paper highlights the new information that has been obtained on well-known examples and shows what else has been learnt from the project: the additional specimens, the remarkable stories of individual objects, and the need to be able to recognise ‘false friends’ – ethnographic objects and Neolithic specimens from elsewhere in Europe, collected by antiquaries. Introduction Since 2006, our understanding of the produc- tion, distribution and use of Neolithic axeheads, adzeheads and chisels made of jadeitite and other rare Alpine rocks has been transformed by a major international French-led research project, Projet JADE. Directed by Dr Pierre Pétrequin (of the CNRS and the Université de Franche-Comté at Besançon until 2009), and funded by the Agence Nationale de la Recher- che, Projet JADE has systematically recorded and mapped all such objects longer than 135 mm across Europe – extending its coverage to all artefacts of Alpine rock in Britain, Ireland and the Channel Islands, irrespective of length – and collating information about contexts, dat- ing and depositional practices at this pan- European scale. This has allowed it to compile 0 3cm a ‘materio-typo-chronology’, showing which types of axehead were manufactured of what material, and when each circulated between the late 6th millennium and the mid-3rd millen- axeheads include Pétrequin et al. 2008; Fig. 1. nium BC in different parts of Europe. The res- Sheridan et al. 2007; and Sheridan et al. 2010. Jadeitite axehead olution provided by Projet JADE makes it The final results of the Project are due to be of Puymirol type possible to track patterns of production and published as two large volumes, and it is antic- from Canterbury. individual artefact biographies and itineraries ipated that the results for British, Irish and Photo: as axeheads were roughed out, finished, and Channel Islands objects will also be more fully P Pétrequin/JADE (in many cases) subsequently re-shaped and published in the Proceedings of the Prehistoric re-polished (see Pétrequin et al. this volume). Society. In the meantime, this brief contribution The Project has also successfully located the is intended to highlight some of the many fas- source areas, which are almost all to be found cinating discoveries that have been made, and high in the Mont Viso and Mont Beigua massifs insights gained, from investigating British and in the Italian Alps, not far from Turin and Genoa Irish objects that have been claimed to be, or respectively (Pétrequin et al. 2007; 2008), and confirmed as being, of Alpine origin. has applied the non-destructive analytical tech- nique of spectroradiometry, adopted from the field of remote sensing, to establish a geological Old friends provenance for individual artefacts and to check whether they really are of Alpine rock (Errera Axeheads (and other objects) made from et al. 2008). The exceptional nature of the source Alpine rock have long exerted a fascination over areas cannot be over-emphasised: we are deal- antiquaries, archaeologists and mineralogists ing with mountains that may well have been in Britain and Ireland. Fine engravings are to deemed to belong to the realm of the super- be found in numerous nineteenth century pub- natural and divine (see Pétrequin et al. this vol- lications (e.g. Evans 1872: fig. 1), and attempts ume). Furthermore, the Project has clarified the to map and list British and Irish examples have chaîne opératoire and spatial organisation of axe- been made since Lily Chitty prepared a distri- head manufacture and, through experimental bution map for Sir Cyril Fox’s Presidential work, has demonstrated that it would take well address to the Prehistoric Society of East over a thousand hours’ work to create a jadeitite Anglia, published in 1933 (p 154). By 1949, axehead with a glassy polish as seen, for exam- when Stuart Piggott and Terence Powell offered ple, in Figs. 1 and 3–5. An extensive bibliography their updated map and list in discussing a frag- relating to the Project, along with abstracts of ment of an axehead which they had found at presentations from the international Project Cairnholy chamber tomb in south-west conference held in Besançon, September 2009, Scotland (Piggott & Powell 1949: 121, fig. 9.1, can be found at http://mshe.univ-fcomte. fr/docu- 137–9 and Appendix A), the total had risen to ments/Jade/Jade_congress_abstracts.pdf; publica- 50 examples. In 2010, that figure has more than tions relating to its work on British and Irish doubled, to around 118 (Fig. 2). Analysis of 2 Stone Axe Studies III Fig. 2. Distribution of artefacts Typology and location of Alpine rock in Britain varia and Ireland as of 2009. varia (region) (Open symbols indicate that findspot is known Large axehead only to county) Large (region) Map: Frédéric Prodéo Small axehead Small (region) N 0 100km specimens in order to identify the raw material thin-sectioning and other types of analysis, has been undertaken since the late 1930s, when reporting his results not only in Piggott and thin sections of several axeheads were made by Powell’s article but also in a set of three of influ- the Sub-Committee on the Petrological Identi- ential reports in the Proceedings of the Prehistoric fication of Stone Axes of the South-Western Society (Smith 1963; 1965; 1972), in which he Group of Museums (Keiller et al. 1941). Walter revisited and corrected some previous identifi- Campbell Smith, of the then-named British cations. Others were to continue with the list- Museum (Natural History), undertook further ing and/or analytical work (Bishop et al. 1977; Old friends, new friends, a long-lost friend and false friends: Tales from Projet JADE 3 Jones et al. 1977; Woolley et al. 1979), and indi- vidual finds of axeheads believed to be from the Alps have continued to be published (e.g. Cotton & Green 2004; Edmonds 2005; Field & Woolley 1983). A major task of Projet JADE, as regards the British and Irish material, was to revisit the work of previous researchers who had been list- ing and mapping Alpine artefacts and to collect as many of these artefacts as possible for spec- troradiometric analysis. This has been achieved for over 90% of the objects, with most of the remainder being unavailable for analysis or unlocatable, in private hands. The Project has confirmed that most of the axeheads and other artefacts that had previ- ously been claimed to have an Alpine origin are indeed of Alpine jadeitite, omphacitite or eclog- ite. In particular, the thin, flat, triangular axe- heads of so-called ‘Altenstadt’ and related ‘Greenlaw’ type, which are the commonest type to be found in Britain and Ireland (Fig. 3), all seem to be made from the finest, and rarest, type of jadeitite and many, if not most of these had originated in a restricted area high in the Mont Viso massif. Furthermore, by comparing each individual spectrum obtained from the spectroradiometric analysis with every other of the thousands of spectra obtained by the suggested by the fact that at least 20 axeheads Fig. 3. Project (from axeheads, raw material samples (c 17%) have been found in wetland contexts, Examples of and working debris), it has been possible in including in rivers. Others have been found in Altenstadt (top) and some cases to trace the origin back to an indi- topographically-distinctive locations, such as Greenlaw (bottom) vidual free-standing block of jadeitite. Thus, in near the top of Ebbor Gorge in Somerset (Fig. type axeheads. the case of a fragment of a Greenlaw type axe- 5.6). The best-known of these ‘special’ locations Top: head from Dunfermline, Fife, it has been pos- remains the Sweet Track, also in Somerset, Cunzierton, sible to demonstrate that it had most probably beside which a Glastonbury-type axehead of Scottish Borders; come from the same block on Mont Viso as quartzo-feldspathic jadeitite (whose origin is Bottom: three similar axeheads that have been found in thought to be the Mont Viso massif) had been Greenlaw, northern Germany (Fig. 4). deposited, alongside an axehead of mined flint Scottish Borders. Other insights provided by the Project (probably from a south coast mine) in pristine Photos: NMS include confirmation that some axeheads, like condition, plus several carinated bowls (Coles the Dunfermline example, must have been et al.