Find Spot record MDO3743 - Prehistoric grooved axe head, Hawkecombe Lane, Compton Abbas

An unusual grooved axehead of sarsen was found in a field near Hawkecombe Lane, Compton Abbas.<1>

It was thin-sectioned by the implement petrology group which confirmed it was made of sarsen. <2>

ST 865183. A Neolithic or Early Bronze Age axehead found on the surface of a field close to Hawkecombe Lane. The axe is made of sarsen stone and has a groove round the centre for hafting. Now in Salisbury Museum (66/1966). <1>

<1> Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 1967, Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society for 1966, 102-103 (Serial). SDO66.

A Grooved Axe-head from Compton Abbas, near Blandford

The unusual axe-head illustrated in Fig. 1 was brought to Salisbury Museum by Mr. Bate on behalf of the finder, Mr. Chick of Blandford Farm, Fontmell Magna. It had been found on the surface of a field close to Hawkecombe Lane between Twyford and Compton Abbas (approx map ref. ST 865183) and appears to have been brought up by ploughing. As the rock was suspected to be Sarsen, the axe was submitted to the Implement Petrology Committee for the South-West.

This was confirmed, and the rock (thin section serial number 1327) compares closely with Sarsen from Clatford Bottom near Marlborough.

The axe has a groove all round for hafting, similar to many from Polynesia. No satisfactory English parallels can be cited at present, but it may be that similar axes in the past have been disregarded as being strays from ethnological collections. The butt end of the axe has either been used as hammerstone, or hammered against, and as the cutting edge cannot have been very sharp, it is more likely that its main use was as a splitting wedge.

Apart from the apparently unique shape, it is the first known axe to be made of Sarsen [Footnote 1: F. S. Wallis, ‘Petrological Examination’, in The Scientist and Archaeology (ed. Pyddoke, 1963), p. 80. Also ‘Fourth Report of the South-Western Group on the Petrological Identification of Stone Axes’, Procs. Prehist. Soc., Vol. 28 (1962), pp. 209-266]. This stone has been used most notably in megalithic monuments such as Stonehenge and Avebury, and also for hammerstones, rubbers and querns. At the moment it can only be tentatively suggested that the axe was made during the Neolithic or Early Bronze Age.

C. N. Moore

<2> Evens, E D, Smith, I F and Wallis, F S, 1972, The petrological identification of stone implements from South-Western England. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, Serial number 1327 (Article in serial). SDO12419.

<3> National Record of the Historic Environment, 205970 (Digital archive). SDO14739.

Record last edited

Dec 21 2022 7:11PM