Jade Axes from Sites in the British Isles

Abstract

Several years ago during the investigation of neolithic chambered tombs in Galloway a fragment of green jade polished on two opposite flat faces was found in the floor of the ante-chamber to Tomb I at Cairnholy in Kirkcudbrightshire. It was only about 3 centimetres square and 1.5 centimetres thick but, nevertheless, Professor Stuart Piggott and Mr T. G. E. Powell recognized that it had once formed part of a flat triangular axe of a type already known from several places in Scotland. A fine collection of such axes in jade existed in the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland in Edinburgh. In an appendix to their paper on the chambered tombs Piggott and Powell listed the jade axes recorded from British and Irish sites and republished the map compiled by Miss L. F. Chitty and published by Sir Cyril Fox in 1933. This appendix also contained brief notes supplied by me on thin microscope sections of the Cairnholy fragment and of five other British axes reported to be made in jade. Some of these identifications were only partly correct, and have now been revised (see below, pp. 145, 158, 159 and footnote 2, p. 153).Some years later the question of the identification of the material of reputed British jade axes arose again and it was decided to examine as many of the axes in Piggott and Powell's list as could be borrowed and to utilize in their examination determinations of density and refractive index, and, where possible, to obtain X-ray powder photographs and to have thin sections prepared.