Flint ax from Wodarg
The flint ax from Wodarg in the Demmin district in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania was found in 2003 as part of the route excavations for the federal motorway 20 west of Wodarg . It was on the bank of a silted pond. It is a strikingly large, undamaged stone ax made of flint .
description
The ax blade has a length of 26.5 cm (with average values around 15 cm) and a cutting width of 5.75 cm. The rectangular neck is 1.9 cm thick and 3.5 cm wide. The unusually slim object belongs to the group of so-called “thick-nosed axes”. From a technical point of view, the unpolished ax is not ready for use at all. It has a light brown patina due to the storage in ferrous water .
The raw material for the hatchet made from a large slab of flint probably comes from an area richer in flint than Wodarg. Wodarg is located in the area of a soft ice age ground moraine , where flint stones larger than fist size and of good quality are rare. During the Neolithic Age, it was common to only transport roughly cut blanks. It cannot be determined whether the Wodarg blade came to the region as raw material and was completed on site.
The ax shows the handwriting of a professional. The course of the edges is even, the perfectly crafted cutting edge merges into slightly curved broad sides without a step. In these pages a small unprocessed surface is visible, which are still the original surface of the Flint tuber, called the bark comprises (cortex). This detail shows that the hatchet was struck from a sheet of flint that was no thicker than the final product.
Dating
The ax can only be dated from comparative finds. Thick-nosed axes appear in the Middle Neolithic III (around 3000 BC) and were made until the Late Neolithic (around 2000 BC). Within this period of time, however, both their form and the type of processing changed, which makes rough dating possible. The shape, the slight curvature of the blade and the small narrow side angle allow the assignment to the thick-nosed axes of type I B, which are to be connected with the older corded ceramics and were made between 2800 and 2600 BC. BC originated.
Location
The stone ax was found in the silted up area of a 170 m long pond. The location on the edge of a bog or body of water and the unusual size of the ax are typical features of a deliberately laid down depot or hoard. The Neolithic dumping of larger-than-average axes, but also of other objects, is known in large numbers from northern Germany and southern Scandinavia . While marked hoards can also be interpreted as custody finds, unmarked buried hoards and water finds were probably sacrificed for religious reasons. The custom of sacrificing objects, animals and occasionally even people in wetlands is probably related to a fertility cult of the Neolithic population. The Wodarger ax cannot have been lost due to its size. Laying it down in the bank area of a body of water, where the blade could only be recovered with difficulty, excludes a safe deposit. So the most likely interpretation remains that this was an ax offering for the gods.
literature
- Klaus Hirsch: A hatchet for the gods? The flint ax from Wodarg, Lkr.Demmin. In: The A20 motorway - Northern Germany's longest excavation. Archaeological research on the route between Lübeck and Stettin. Schwerin 2006, ISBN 3-935770-11-1 , pp. 41-42.
- Manfred Rech : Studies on the finds of the funnel beaker and the single grave culture of the north (= investigations from the Schleswig-Holstein State Museum for Prehistory and Early History in Schleswig, the State Office for Prehistory and Early History of Schleswig-Holstein in Schleswig and the Institute for Prehistory and early history at the University of Kiel. New part 39). Neumünster, Wachholtz 1979, ISBN 3-529-01139-8 .