Object: Adze (Bronze Age)
Period: Bronze Age to BRONZE AGE (-1500 to -1300)
Material: Copper alloy 
Found: Llantrisant, Rhondda Cynon Taf, Rhondda Cynon Taf (Wales)
Discovery method: Metal detector
Length: 164 mm
Height: 15.6 mm
Thickness: 11.7 mm
Weight: 157.8 g
Description: Middle Bronze Age bronze tool, probably an adze of Acton Park 2 or Taunton Metalworking Industries of Needham's (1996) Period 5 and probably dating to c. 1500 - 1300BC.



The axe is near-complete with peripheral damage but is heavily corroded and with a fragmentary butt (with a length of 164mm and a weight of 157.8g). The fractured butt has a rounded point and is thin (6mm wide and 2mm thick) but has suffered some erosion. The sides are moderately straight and divergent to the side protrusions or trunnions (giving the tool a width of 30.5mm). The corroded trunnions are rounded and of oval form (11mm long, 7mm wide and 3.0mm high). Below the trunnions, the sides of the blade are also straight and gently divergent before curving more sharply at the blade edge, although the blade tips are lost (with a surviving blade width of 34.5mm). The surface corrosion has mostly eradicated any casting seams, although there is the suggestion of a fettled seam on one side near the trunnion but no suggestion of a loop. The faces are of differing form, one is flanged, the other is ribbed and of chisel-like form. The flanged face has a median bevel (87mm from the blade where the adze has a thickness of 11.7mm) and short flanges, spanning the bevel (25mm long and 3.6mm high giving a maximum overall depth of 15.6mm). The blade is without any ribs and is flat across both its length and width and with no discernible blade facet. The other face is without flanges and the slightly domed curvature appears to incorporate the trunnions. There is the suggestion of a transverse moulding, running between the trunnions. The face has a prominent midrib, beginning well above the trunnions (35mm from the butt) and continuing along the blade (ending 26mm from the blade edge). The face is convex across its width but flat across its length, with no discernible blade facet. The surface is heavily-corroded and pitted. Remnants of the surface with a dark-green patina is preserved, largely on the septum of the flanged side.



The tool is unusual and difficult to closely parallel. The side trunnions and ribbed face can be broadly paralleled with 'Trunnion Tools', while the flanged face is best paralleled with flanged axes, perhaps closer to slender axes of Later Short-Flanged type. The tool may have been hafted with the handle abutting the flanged face and with binding over the ribbed face, rather than within a split handle, in the way flanged axes were secured. The method of hafting may imply the blade would be perpendicular to the axe direction suggesting the tool functioned as an adze. The tool may share similarities in form with 'palstave adzes', as published by Evans (1881, p. 85, gigs 70-1) and with recent examples recorded with PAS from Gisburn, Lancashire , Swithland, Leicestershire , Crosby Ravensworth, Cumbria , Brokenborough, Wiltshire and Tanworth-in-Arden, Warwickshire . It is tempting to see this example as a 'flanged-adze' predecessor of the palstave adze. Trunnion Tools have a long-lived production, spanning the Arreton Tradition at the end of the Early Bronze Age and continue into the Late Bronze Age (c. 1700- 800BC). If the flanged face is referencing and contemporary with axes of Later Short-Flanged type it is possible to suggest a date spanning Later Acton Park or Taunton metalworking, dating to perhaps c. 1500 - 1300BC.
Subsequent action: Returned to finder