Found: One prehistoric axe, not much used
Last updated 05:44, Friday, 22 August 2008
The customs and beliefs of our most ancient ancestors present some of the most impossible challenges for archaeologists.
It has long been apparent that watery places such as peat bogs must have been viewed as entrances to the ‘other world’ and were valued in ways that are not easy for the modern mind to grasp.
The great advantage of peat deposits is their capacity to preserve things buried within them by stopping natural processes of decay – whether offerings or sacrifices.
Cumbria sadly missed an opportunity to have its own equivalent of Lindow Man when a ‘bog-body’ of prehistoric age was found nine feet down on Scaleby Moss near Carlisle in 1845. Unfortunately the expertise and resources of modern forensic archaeology were not then available, and most of the find did not survive discovery.
At the time, both hair and skin were present.
Objects made of stone have no such problems of course, and there have been several discoveries of very fine axes of the Langdale type from peat mosses around the Solway.
Usually these are in pristine condition, and probably unused, suggesting that what must have been of very high value were considered fitting objects to become some sort of gift to the ‘spirits of the bog’ – and not simply lost by their owners.
The one pictured here also came from Scaleby Moss and is one of the largest of its type ever found.
