page_title: Langdale axe industry
section_title: Context
hierarchical_section_title: Langdale axe industry / Context
caption_attribution_description: English: Hoard of Neolithic axes dating to 4,500-2,500 BCE, found at Danesfort, on the Malone Road, in Belfast some time between 1869 and 1918. 16 large porcellanite axes (a few very large examples too large to be used as tools). The largest axes are highly polished and unused a putative indicator of ritual deposition.When they were found during work on the land surrounding Danesfort House some were standing upright in the ground which also indicates ritual. The two main sources of porcellanite are Tievebulliagh Mountain, near Cushendall, Co. Antrim and at Brockley, on Rathlin Island, County Antrim.
context_page_description: The Langdale axe industry is the name given by archaeologists to specialised stone tool manufacturing centred at Great Langdale in England's Lake District during the Neolithic period. The existence of a production site was originally suggested by chance discoveries in the 1930s, which were followed by more systematic searching in the 1940s and 1950s by Clare Fell and others. The finds were mainly reject axes, rough-outs and blades created by knapping large lumps of the rock found in the scree or perhaps by simple quarrying or opencast mining. Hammerstones have also been found in the scree and other lithic debitage from the industry such as blades and flakes.
  The area has outcrops of fine-grained greenstone or hornstone suitable for making polished stone axes. Such axes have been found distributed across Great Britain. The rock is an epidotised greenstone quarried or perhaps just collected from the scree slopes in the Langdale Valley on Harrison Stickle and Pike of Stickle. The nature and extent of the axe-flaking sites making up the Langdale Axe Factory complex are still under investigation.
context_section_description: The Langdale industry was one of many which extracted hard stone for manufacture into polished axes. The Neolithic period was a time of settlement on the land, and the development of farming on a large scale. Maintenance of the forest cover was necessary in order to plant crops and rear animals, so axes were a staple tool, not just for clearance but also for wood working timber for houses, boats and other structures. Flint was probably the most widely used, simply because it was available from numerous flint mines in the downlands, such as Grimes Graves, Cissbury and Spiennes. Blades from roughing-out from flint and chert could also be used as small knives, arrowheads and other small sharp tools such as burins and awls.
  But other hard and tough stones were used, such as igneous rocks from Penmaenmawr in North Wales, and similar working areas to Langdale have been found there. Many other locations for production of axes have been suggested (but not always found) across the country including Tievebulliagh in County Antrim, sites in Cornwall, Scotland and the Charnwood Forest in Leicestershire. It is also likely that bluestone axes were exported from the Preseli hills in Pembrokeshire. The industry was also widely developed elsewhere in the world, such as in Australia at Mount William stone axe quarry which used a similar rock until relatively recent times.
  The variety of rocks used in polished tools and other artefacts is evident in museum collections, not all of the sources of the rocks having been positively identified. Taking sections is necessarily destructive of part of the artefact, and thus discouraged by many museums. Likewise, the rocks or anvils used to polish the axes are rare in Britain but common in France and Sweden.
  Radiocarbon dating at the Langdale stone axe factory site suggests that it was in operation for about 1,000 years during the Neolithic period.
  Current thinking links the manufacturers of the axes to some of the first Neolithic stone circles such as that at Castlerigg.
caption: The Malone hoard of polished axes from Tievebulliagh or Rathlin Island
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