Nearly 200 polished jade axe heads, dating to around 4500–4000 BC, have been found across the British Isles, including one example, now in the British Museum, thought to have been found near Canterbury. The Canterbury axe head is long (219mm) and thin. It is highly polished, and is a ‘Puymirol’ type, which are thought, based on their shape, to have been finished in southern Brittany. Like many of the jadeite axes, the Canterbury example shows few signs of wear. Nor does it appear to have ever been hafted or used as an axe. Rather, it seems these axes were ceremonial objects, highly valued and perhaps used for religious purposes, or even as a form of long-distance currency. It is likely these axes conveyed one or more symbolic meanings, meanings that may have been given added power by the knowledge that the axe head came from a distant, exotic and difficult to access source, above the clouds and close to the heavens. Unfortunately, little is known about the Canterbury example before it came into the possession of the British Museum, and its exact findspot remains a mystery.

The jadeite from which it is made is one of two silicate minerals (the other being nephrite) that is commonly recognised as the gemstone ‘jade’. Extremely rare in Europe, the precise quarry sites for these axes, on Monte Viso and Monte Beigua, have only been located by archaeologists within the last two decades. Although jadeite could have been much more easily obtained from flakes which had washed down the mountainsides, stone for the axes was obtained much higher up, at its geological source. Fire was used to detach large thermal flakes from boulders, large enough to rough out an axe head. Incredibly, the actual boulder from which the Canterbury axe, as well as another example found in Dorset, was taken has been identified, still sitting on the mountain slopes in northern Italy. This precise identification was made possible using Spectro-radiometry, a non-invasive form of petrography which analyses the exact chemical composition of the stones.

The Canterbury jade axe is in the British Museum (Museum Number 1901,0206.1; see  https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_1901-0206-1 ). It was donated to the museum in 1901 by Major Frank Bennett Goldney. In 2014, the axe was featured in the acclaimed BBC Radio 4 series ‘A History of the World in 100 Objects’, narrated by Neil MacGregor, at that time Director of the British Museum;  https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00qb5xz .

French archaeologists Dr Pierre and Anne-Marie Petrequin spent 12 years searching through the mountains of northern Italy before they located the jadeite quarry sites on Monte Viso and Monte Beigua in 2003. Together with Dr Alison Sheridan, Pierre subsequently led Project Jade, which sampled 1700 jade axes from 12 countries and confirmed their geological origins. (see Petrequin P., Sheridan et al., (2015). ‘Project JADE 2. ‘Object-signs’ and social interpretations of Alpine jade axe heads in the European Neolithic: theory and methodology’ in : T. Kerig et S. Shennan (ed.), Connecting networks . Oxford, Archaeopress : 83-102).

People

The jadeite quarries were in use for over two thousand years, with production probably peaking around 5000 BC. In this period, across Piedmont and western Emilia-Romagna, there was a Neolithic culture that archaeologists refer to as the Square-Mouthed Pottery culture. These early farmers seem to have subsisted through a mixture of agriculture, growing domestic crops and rearing animals, alongside a continued reliance on hunting. It may be from amongst their number that some people climbed high into the mountains to quarry the jadeite; indeed, evidence for the working up of axe head rough outs has been found on their settlement sites, although polishing and finishing may have taken place elsewhere. In any case, many of these axes were then traded or exchanged as gifts with neighbouring groups, eventually reaching locations as distant as Britain, Ireland or Scandinavia.

It is also possible that the source of the jadeite was known over a much wider area, and that people from a range of different ethnic or cultural backgrounds would have undertaken long distance journeys across Neolithic Europe to obtain it, earning considerable prestige upon their return, and garnishing the axe with stories of their adventures in obtaining it.

In either case, it is likely that axe heads made from this exotic material possessed a very high value, and their circulation may have been restricted to elite groups within Neolithic European society. The quarries themselves were at high altitude, and only accessible in the warmer months of the year. Thus, whatever their origins, those who sought the jadeite had to dedicate considerable time and energy to reach the outcrops, quarry the stone, return, and shape and polish these highly prized axe heads. Perhaps this act alone was enough to greatly enhance the social status of those who achieved it.

The people who made and exchanged these axes across Europe may also have had a shared belief system and cosmology, in which the axes carried widely understood and accepted symbolic or religious meanings. Alternatively, perhaps the attractive appearance and cool, tactile polished surfaces, together with the great difficulty in obtaining their raw material, made them appealing to a wide range of different, only loosely connected, groups across the Continent, for whom the axes may have held very different meanings?

Journey

Some 1700 jadeite axe heads from Northern Italy have been found across Western Europe, from Scandinavia, to Ireland, and to the southern Iberian Peninsula. The precise route taken by the Canterbury axe head from the mountains of Northern Italy to Kent is not certain, but the most likely journey is across the Alps into southern France, and thence to southern Brittany, where it was probably reworked. And then from Brittany north across the Channel to southern Britain, and Kent. How long the journey took, and how many hands the axe head passed through on the way, it is impossible to say. But the very specific geological origins of such axe heads, together with their widespread distribution, highlights the reality of long-distance travel and exchange in early Neolithic Europe, long before the advent of metal working.