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Summary

During the 5th millennium BC and at the begin-ning of the 4th, large axeheads made from Alpine jades circulated from the Italian Alps as far as the Atlantic and to the shores of the Black Sea, with many travelling 1700 kilometres as the crow flies. It has long been thought that this phenomenon of very long-distance movement (which in some cases con-tinued until the beginning of the 3rd millennium) was linked solely to the ‘prestige’ value of these large axeheads, made from rare and precious rocks.The authors propose that this hypothesis is not suf-ficient to account for the social importance of these ‘object-signs’ and for their findspot locations: they do not occur in settlements and are not found in graves, with some key exceptions. We argue that the-se Alpine jade axeheads participated in religious ri-tuals – and indeed this may have been their primary purpose – as objects that were destined to be conse-crated or sacrificed to Supernatural beings or, in the case of the Morbihan in Brittany around the middle of the 5th millennium, to powerful men who cont-rolled the ideological reproduction of society.

Keywords: Neolithic, Alps, polished axehead, jade, religion

Zusammenfassung

Während des 5. und zu Beginn des 4. Jahrtausends v. Chr. zirkulierten große Beile aus alpiner Jade von den italienischen Alpen bis zum Atlantik und den Ufern des Schwarzen Meeres. Dabei wurden sie über Entfernungen bis zu 1700 km (Luftlinie) wei-tergegeben. Traditionell wird angenommen, dass der Hintergrund dieser weiträumigen Zirkulation, der in einigen Fällen bis an den Beginn des 3. Jahrtausends andauerte, einzig auf den „Prestigewert“ der überdi-mensionierten und hervorragend geschliffenen und polierten Beilklingen aus edlem und seltenem Ge-stein zurückzuführen ist. Die Verfasser des vorliegenden Beitrages vertreten hingegen die Hypothese, dass der Prestigeaspekt dieser symbolischen Geräte allein nicht ausreichend

ist, um ihre soziale Bedeutung zu erklären. Das gilt auch für die Fundumstände, da die fraglichen Ob-jekte fast nie in Siedlungen oder Gräbern entdeckt wurden. Die Beile aus alpiner Jade spielten auch bei religiösen Handlungen eine Rolle – und hierin hat ihre eigentliche Funktion gelegen. Die Objekte wa-ren entweder übernatürlichen Kräften oder – im Fall des Morbihan (Bretagne, Frankreich) um die Mitte des 5. Jahrtausends – mächtigen Männern geweiht oder wurden ihnen geopfert; diese Männer kontrol-lierten die ideelle Reproduktion der Gesellschaft an-hand einer maskulinen (phallozentrischen) Machti-deologie.

Stichworte: Neolithikum, Alpen, geschliffenes Beil, Jade, Religion

Introduction

The exploitation of jades in the Italian Alps, and the circulation of the axe- and adze-heads made from these rocks, are major phenomena of the Neolithic in western Europe, on account of their very long du-ration (from 5300 BC to 2400 BC) (PÉTREQUIN ET AL. 2006, forthcoming 2011b) and the very long dis-tances travelled by certain long axeheads, up to 1700 kilometres as the crow flies. Indeed, in some cases Alpine axeheads travelled between 2200 and 2900 kilometres overall – as in the case of the ones that were repolished on the southern coast of Brittany and were then reinjected back into the exchange net-work, travelling towards Germany (KLASSEN/PÉTRE-QUIN/ERRERA 2009), Spain and Italy (PÉTREQUIN ET AL. 2007b, forthcoming 2011c). Of all the objects that were socially valorised in European Neolithic, the only examples to approach Alpine jade axeheads in their distance travelled are the spondylus shells of the Aegean and the amphibolite adze blades from the Jizera Mountains in the Czech Republic, which circulated between 5500 and 4700 BC, and the Chalcolithic copper objects from south-east Europe, which circulated from 4700 BC.

Alpine jades – rocks that are very fine and rare in nature, extremely tough, luminous and capable of taking a high polish – were exploited in the massifs

Consecration and sacrifice: long Alpine jade axeheads in Neolithic Europe

PIERRE PÉTREQUIN (BESANÇON), ALISON SHERIDAN (EDINBURGH), SERGE CASSEN (NANTES), MICHEL ERRERA (TERVUREN), LUTZ KLASSEN (HØJBJERG), ANNE-MARIE PÉTREQUIN (BESANÇON)

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of Mont Viso and Mont Beigua (PÉTREQUIN ET AL. forthcoming 2011a) (fig. 1). Here, fire-setting was employed to detach large thermal flakes and slabs from blocks of the raw material, for subsequent shaping by flaking and hammering, and sometimes by sawing (PÉTREQUIN ET AL. 2006, 2007a, 2008). Most of the production activity was concerned with the maufacture of tens of thousands of small axe- and adze-heads, with the rock being particu-larly prized on account of the mechanical strength of the blade in felling trees and working wood. But in addition to this large-scale manufacturing, which spanned almost three millennia (that is, almost the whole of the Neolithic), people were making a much smaller number of disproportionately long axeheads (between 13.5 and 46.5 cm long; see PÉTREQUIN ET

AL. forthcoming 2011b for the choice of 13.5 cm as a cut-off length). This activity essentially took place between 4700 and 3700 BC. In other words, a utilitarian tool – an axe- or adze-head – was being taken away from its primary function and was be-ing socially ‘over-written’ (‘surdéterminée’: see LEM-ONNIER 1986 for a definition of this term). People were choosing to use a rock that is particularly rare, tough and aesthetically pleasing in order to create an ‘object-sign’ that was highly valued within society. This was not an arbitrary choice (the famous ‘cul-tural choice’ which is so often cited but rarely dem-onstrated); instead, the tool that was being re-char-acterised was of major importance to the technical and economic reproduction of Neolithic societies and was an expression of virility, of force and of vio-

Fig. 1: Distribution of all axeheads of Alpine jade longer than 13.5 cm

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lence (CASSEN 2000; PÉTREQUIN ET AL. 2002, 2009, forthcoming 2011e). Thus it came to be that a ‘jade’ western Europe developed (fig. 1), to be opposed to a ‘copper’ eastern Europe during the second half of the 5th millennium (CASSEN 2000c; KLASSEN/CAS-SEN/PÉTREQUIN forthcoming 2011; PÉTREQUIN ET AL. 2002, forthcoming 2011e).

The general distribution of large jade axeheads (fig. 1) allows us to show that most of the movement was of axeheads from Mont Viso and was directed towards the western fringe of Europe. Complement-ing this was an eastward movement from Mont Beigua, extending as far as the Black Sea (ERRERA/PÉTREQUIN/PÉTREQUIN forthcoming 2011; ERRERA ET AL. 2006; PÉTREQUIN ET AL. forthcoming 2011b and 2011d). It must be emphasised that we are not dealing with ‘down the line’ exchange, with axeheads passing from group to group (RENFREW 1975) in the manner in which we assume many objects to have circulated during prehistory. Instead, and above all, we are dealing with exchanges between elites, since the number of objects does not decrease with dis-tance from their sources and since the axeheads oc-cur in regional clusters, separated by areas in which no such objects are found (fig. 1).

What, then, was the function of these large axeheads, these object-signs which had such a high social value that they crossed the boundaries of cultural groups in western Europe, particularly during the second half of the 5th millennium until the beginning of the 4th?

1. Traditionally-assumed functions

In the past, because they paid little attention to the precise findspot contexts of these axeheads (except in the Morbihan, as we shall see), prehistorians – and also those geologists who were interested in sourc-ing the jade – were content to use standard, poorly thought-out terms to account for the value attrib-uted to these ‘object-signs’ of jade. They focused on the finest axeheads that are especially regular in form and carefully polished, without taking into account the other axeheads of similar length which involved a lesser investment of time in their manufacture – that is, in particular, thermal flakes; roughouts that have been flaked, pecked or sawn and that show no sign of having been worked further; and axeheads with vary-ing but minor degrees of polish, be it partial or to a low sheen. All these numerous objects that had been abandoned during their manufacture could provide important counter-examples to the general interpre-tation applied to these objects of high social value,

but the prehistorians and geologists chose to ignore them, instead labelling the finest axeheads as ‘prestige items’, ‘display items’ or ‘status symbols’, describing their function as being ‘ceremonial’ or ‘ritual’. These diverse terms applied to a single object often varied from author to author, with no attempt being made to use a well-defined common vocabulary. However, one common demoninator among these five terms may be the idea that these rare objects – some of which had clearly been shaped through a lengthy process of polishing, ending with a mirror-like sheen – had never been used as workaday tools for felling trees, given the apparent fragility of their thin cutting edges. This assumption is in fact contradicted by the extreme toughness of certain jades, and also by the traces of post-polish pecking, undertaken to aid the hafting of certain large axeheads.

We must now return to the question of vocabulary. The Petit Robert dictionary (Paris, 1976) provides us with the following definitions for the first three terms:

- ‘Prestige object’: something that strikes the imagi-nation, commands respect and admiration; and, in a secondary sense: ‘illusion caused by supernatural powers’.- ‘Parade (display) item’: designed to be used as an ornament; something that is put on display in order to enhance its value;- ‘Symbol of power’: an object associated with pomp and solemnity.

It is interesting to note that for many prehistorians, it is the first term, ‘prestige axehead’ (‘Prunkbeil’ in German), which is most commonly used, in the sense of it being a display object, underlining the social status of an individual in a stratified society. There are so many bibliographic references in which this term is used that it is impossible to cite them all. One notes also the suggestion of there being super-natural element to the ‘prestige’, if one accepts the definition provided by the French dictionary.

Furthermore, concepts of the supernatural and the sacred surround the use of the terms ‘ritual’ and ‘cer-emonial’ as applied to the large axeheads:

- ‘Ritual’: ‘that which pertains to rites (as opposed to profane matters)’;- ‘Rites’: ‘set of cultic ceremonies used by a religious community; traditional form of organisation of such ceremonies; approved practices of a sacred or sym-bolic nature;- ‘Ceremonial’: ‘solemnity with which a religious cult is celebrated ; external expression of the solem-nity accorded to an act important to public life.’

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Thus, in these definitions, the distinction between profane and sacred is elided, with a continuum exist-ing between ‘prestige’ (which can have a supernatu-ral aspect) and ‘rites’ (which can be linked to public life). This semantic elision, where ‘prestige’ can be opposed to ‘ritual’, is characteristic of pre-industrial societies where there is only a vague separation (if any) between the domains of the sacred and the pro-fane.

In juggling with these words which previous re-searchers have not always defined clearly, our task of interpreting large jade axeheads is not simple. That is why we had, in the past, chosen to use the more general term ‘socially valorised objects’ to de-scribe them, in the absence of a more refined type of description (PÉTREQUIN ET AL. 2002). In discuss-ing New Guinea axeheads we have used the term ‘objects of power’ (PÉTREQUIN/PÉTREQUIN 2006) because, in the sense given by the dictionary defini-tion, this encapsulates the sense of ‘the potential to act on something or somebody (cf. authority, em-pire, power)’. This has allowed us to adopt a more anthropological approach to the question.

Finally, it seemed to us that in seeking to understand the meaning of jade axeheads in Neolithic societies, we should not limit our research to the axeheads themselves, but should also investigate their contexts of discovery, which offer a kind of final ‘scene-setting’ (through discard, deliberate deposition, destruction etc.), which must have had some significance for the Neolithic people who deposited the axeheads. We shall attempt to outline the salient aspects below.

2. Large axeheads kept separate from every-day life and from the world of the dead

With axe- and adzeheads that were made for use in tree felling and woodworking, their dimensions were modest, even when new, and their weight rare-ly exceeded 400g, since the makers were seeking to achieve an equilibrium between the overall weight of the tool (i.e. the haft and the blade) and the material to be worked (PÉTREQUIN/PÉTREQUIN 1993). These were tools for all men to use (and here we are indeed dealing with tools for men, like arrows and daggers), and were used almost every day, being resharpened regularly to maintain a sharp cutting edge, reshaped when they broke, and finally re-used for another purpose (such as a hammerstone or potter’s polish-ing stone) or else thrown away on the village mid-dens once they had become too short to be hafted (JEUDY ET AL. 1997).

This normal life trajectory of a polished axe- or adze-blade was sometimes interrupted when a house ac-cidentally burnt down. (These are the best condi-tions for evaluating the proportions and the degree of use-wear of tools during the course of their use: see PÉTREQUIN/JEUNESSE 1995). Equally, the techni-cal life of an axe- or adze-head could be cut short if it was buried in a grave, where it formed part of the personal possessions that accompanied the deceased in death.

In these two cases (settlements and graves), the ax-eheads of Alpine jade are almost invariably of mod-est length, or else are fragments of broken blades. Even in the richest graves – with the exception of the giant Carnac tumuli (for which, see below, sec-tion 4) – polished axeheads longer than 13.5 cm are extremely rare. The example from grave 4 at Varna I (Bulgaria), with its impressive array of grave goods in gold and copper (fig. 2) and its small jade axehead, is highly significant in this respect, especially given that large Alpine axeheads are well represented in the contemporary and relatively nearby hoard from Svo-boda (PÉTREQUIN ET AL. forthcoming 2011d).

In funerary contexts, the practice of depositing small axeheads is a regular feature of the Square-Mouthed Pottery Culture of northern Italy during the 5th millennium (BERNABÒ BREA ET AL. 2006), of the Malesherbes-type slab-covered graves attributed to the Cerny Culture in France towards the middle of the 5th millennium (SIMONIN ET AL. 1997), and of the Trench Grave (Sepulcres de Fosa) Culture in Catalonia at the 5th – 4th millennium transition, and is also attested in grave A of the cemetery at Fontaine-le-Puits (Savoie, France), in a particularly rich assemblage dating to the end of the 4th mil-lennium (REY ET AL. 2010). Later still, during the 3rd millennium, it is also found in the graves of the Remedello Culture (COLINI 1900). The evidence all points towards the fact that long axeheads tended to be excluded from the funerary domain. This could mean that these oversized tools were not necessarily personal possessions, even in the case of the minor-ity of people who were interred (as opposed to the majority of people who did not receive this kind of mortuary treatment).

The careful examination of several thousand frag-ments of axeheads found in village middens in Swit-zerland and the east of France displays a similar ten-dency to exclude large jade axeheads. Thus, out of 1764 long Alpine axeheads that we had recorded in Europe by the beginning of 2011, fewer than ten examples had come from settlements (as with the one from Grezzana/Lugo (Verona, Italy), dating to the end of the Early Neolithic: MOSER 2000).

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A clear example is also provided at Gaione (Emil-ia Romagna, Italy) where a flake from an axehead blade and a body fragment show that, in a settle-ment of the Square Mouthed Culture, occasional large axeheads (albeit of jade of medocre quality, we should add) were used for a technical purpose. Here we are dealing with an exception to a rule; but these fragments could equally be interpreted as the pos-sessions of a man whose power resided in his being a controller of rituals, as in the case of the Master of Gardens in the Trobriand Islands, who was in charge of the agricultural rites and whose badge of office was an outsized axe (MALINOWSKI 1935).

Among the other examples found in settlements, mention should be made of an extreme case. At Pozzuolo del Friuli/Sammardenchia (Friuli Venezia Giuli, Italy) (Pessina/D’Amico 1999), three remark-able axeheads of thin Durrington type, made of jadeitite probably from Mont Viso, were found on the surface of an Early Neolithic site. In addition to sharing petrographic and typological characteristics in common all three axeheads had, unusually, been heated for a long time at high temperature before being broken (fig. 3). It seems unlikely that these axeheads had served an ordinary, everyday purpose and had been burnt by accident. The mode of their

Fig. 2: Adze-head from tomb 4 at Varna I (Bulgaria). Second half of the 5th millennium. Photos: P. Pétrequin (top) and the Archaeological Museum of Varna (bottom).

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destruction reveals a deliberateness in the act, not seen among the hundreds of fragments of other workaday axeheads.

Two further examples of polished axeheads that had been broken, or else heated and burnt prior to breakage, can be cited. At Kamegg (Austria), a lon-gitudinally-broken axehead (fig. 4 top) comes from a circular enclosure of the Lengyel culture. This ditched enclosure cannot simply be regarded as an ordinary settlement, and a ‘ceremonial’ function has often been proposed for the axehead (PRICHYSTAL/TRNKA 2001). The same is true of the axehead from Golianovo (Czech Republic), where a Durrington type jadeitite axehead, burnt and then broken, was found on the surface of a large enclosure with con-centric ditches (fig. 4, bottom) (SPISIAK/HOVORKA 2005).

It is reasonable, then, to ask whether these remark-able discoveries – in particular the axeheads that had been deliberately broken and burnt – had been used in a cult-related context, as sacrifices. The region in which they have been found shows strong influences from the Balkans, where cult areas are well attested within settlement agglomerations (KLASSEN/CAS-SEN/PÉTREQUIN forthcoming 2011).

3. Large jade axeheads discovered as ‘stray finds’

If the large jade axeheads from domestic and funer-ary contexts are as rare as they seem to be in western Europe, then what about the overwhelming major-ity of Alpine axeheads in our inventory? From what kind of findspot do they come?

Most are isolated discoveries, almost invariably found by chance. This is doubtless the reason why prehistorians have generally been uninterested in them, since they are hard to date directly, leaving the field of study open to geologists, to characterise the raw material and, with luck, to pinpoint its source. Other axeheads have been found in groups of two or more, up to around 30, and these have consist-ently been regarded as constituting deliberately-de-posited hoards. Since the 1960s, a distinction has been made between single stray finds and groups of axeheads, whereby the former are regarded as hav-ing had a different (and lesser) significance than the latter. (See, for example, CORDIER/BOCQUET 1998). This view differs from an older attitude – expressed, for example, by LE ROUZIC (1927) – that regarded every Alpine axehead, whether it be found singly or

Fig. 3: Pozzuolo del Friuli/Sam-mardenchia (Italy): two ax-eheads of flat Durrington type, altered by heat and broken. Friuli Group (Fagnigola), end of the 6th millennium. Photos: P. Pétrequin.

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Fig. 4: Broken (Kamegg, Austria) and burnt (Golianovo, Czech Republic) adze-heads found in an enclosure with con-centric ditches. Lengyel Group, first half of the 5th millennium. Drawing and photos: G. Trnka and P. Pétrequin.

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in a group, as having been ritually deposited. The reticence of some archaeologists of the Neolithic to address the question of ritual and religion may well be responsible for the current view (at least in France, in contrast to the rest of Europe, and especially Scan-dinavia: KARSTEN 1994; KLIMSCHA 2009; LARSSON 2011; WENTINK 2008). This reticence relates to a way of considering Neolithic societies that sees them as being determined by climatic conditions and envi-ronmental change. We do not hold with this mecha-nistic view, which we regard as erroneous.

In contrast, we take the view that the numerous polished axeheads of Alpine jade (and other Alpine rocks) that have been discovered singly – and dis-missed by Neolithic archaeologists as merely being

‘stray finds’, a term that may be practical but which is also restrictive, if not also pejorative – were not simply objects that had been lost, or brought up from funerary contexts through agricultural earth-moving, as their large size might suggest. Rather, as with ‘conventional’ hoards of two or more axeheads, the deposition of these single axeheads represents a highly significant social act. People would deliber-ately have placed one or more axehead at specific points in the landscape, for reasons that are neither utilitarian nor funerary in nature. Furthermore, an axehead could have been deposited at any stage in its existence, from being an unworked thermal flake, to a partly-shaped roughout, or a partly-polished ax-ehead, or a finished axehead that is remarkable for its regular shape and the quality of its polish (including

Fig. 5: At the jade extraction sites around Mont Viso, roughouts were deposited in front of rocky overhangs and rock shelters. The example from Oncino/Alpetto-Murel (Italy) (top) had been planted in the earth, its blade facing upwards, and was associated with a vertical plaque of serpentinite. The roughout from Oncino/Puymirol shelter (bottom) had

been thoroughly heat-altered before its deposition. Second half of the 5th millennium. Photos: P. Pétrequin.

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Fig. 6: Examples of large axeheads deposited in front of a rock shelter at Vaie/Rumiano shelter (Italy) (top) and in front of a shallow cave at Saint-Pons-de-Thomières/Pontil cave (France) (bottom). 5th millennium

and beginning of the 4th millennium. Photos: P. Pétrequin.

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the ‘Carnac-type’ axeheads: HERBAUT 2000; PÉTRE-QUIN/CROUTSCH/CASSEN 1998). Once more it is clear that we have to abandon the earlier practice of separating out ‘prestige’ axeheads for attention, while failing to take into account others that seem less sophisticated (see above, section 1) but which have nevertheless been found in the same contexts.

A case-by-case examination of the environmental con-text of the large axeheads (irrespective of their stage of manufacture) whose findspots are accurately recorded reveals striking regularities. We shall present only a few examples here, referring the reader to a longer, more closely-argued publication for further details (PÉTREQUIN ET AL. 2009, forthcoming 2011e).

At the working sites of Mont Viso, we have observed that people had deposited axehead-making debris, in the form of slabs that have been tested, large ther-mal flakes and roughouts, in front of rock shelters and beside simple rocky crevices beneath immense blocks. At Oncino/Lu-Murel (Piemonte, Italy), a small flaked roughout of eclogite and a short flat piece of serpentinite had been planted side by side in the ground, at the foot of an enormous morainic boulder that dominates the valley of Bulè (fig. 5, top). These two objects do not seem to have been buried, but were instead left visible, partly project-ing from the ground. Not far from there, at Oncino/abri Puymirol, a large rouhgout had been placed in front of a shelter. Roughout, this object had been heated intensely and rapidly prior to its deposition (fig. 5 bottom; note the thermal hollows on the blade area). Once more in the Mont Viso massif, at Paesana/abri de La Madona del Fo, two large flaked roughouts were found, placed flat and side by side, on the stony floor of a rock shelter. The association between axehead deposition/ boulder /shelter/ dark-ness/ subterranean world would thus appear to be beyond doubt, with the axeheads in question being in their early stages of manufacture, flaked from an extraordinary primary material (jades). These arte-facts were certainly respected and were left in their original place of deposition from the 5th millennium onwards, although they represented a beautiful raw material that was coveted and alluring, and which had already started its process of transformation into a finished object, being ready to be pecked and pol-ished.

In western Europe, out of 97 findspot contexts whose location is reliably documented, 17 – in the Alps and in France – correspond to the kind of loca-tion described above. At Vaie/Rumiano (Piemonte, Italy), three large polished axeheads were discov-ered at different times in the scree running down from the entrance to a large rock shelter (TARAMELLI

1903); in this case the axeheads had been hafted and used as tools before being withdrawn from the utili-tarian sphere (fig. 6, top). At Saint-Pons-de-Thom-ières/grotte du Pontil (Hérault, France), a large ax-ehead attributed to the end of the 5th millennium or beginning of the 4th millennium was recovered from the scree in front of a shallow cave (fig. 6, bot-tom). The regularity of its form, the enlarged blade and the quality of the polish allow this exceptional object to be classed among what had traditionally be termed ‘prestige’ axeheads (see above, section 1). But here, there is nothing in the mode of deposition to indicate that this axehead had been the personal property of a person of exceptional status; a wholly different interpretation is required.

The commonest contextual association – with 68 ex-amples out of the 97 mentioned above, from the 5th and 4th millennia – is water, in various forms: river, floodplain, marsh, peat bog, lake, gorge, spring and waterfall. Some discoveries took place a long time ago and the precise position of the axehead/s is un-known, as is the case with a fine, mirror-polished axehead with a medial crest leading from the butt, found in the Thames at Mortlake (Surrey, Great Britain) (fig. 7, top). In the case of the Sweet Track near Glastonbury (Somerset, Great Britain), a long polished axehead had been laid flat on the surface of an inundated bog, beside a wooden trackway that has been dendrochronologically dated to 3807/3806 BC (Fig. 7, bottom) (COLES ET AL. 1974).

Many other axeheads have been found in wetland contexts. At Ostheim (Bas-Rhin, France), an axehead had been planted vertically, its blade uppermost, in marshy ground where it would probably have disap-peared rapidly, to be covered over by alluvium (fig. 8). This object was discovered in the wall of a trench and so we do not know whether it had been depos-ited singly or along with others (PÉTREQUIN/LOGEL 2009). At Vendeuil/La Prairie de Montigny (Aisne Valley, France), the circumstances of discovery were more favourable, as the discovery was made by a me-chanical digger during an archaeological evaluation (PÉTREQUIN ET AL. 2005): two axeheads, datable to the second half of the 5th millennium, had been planted in a permanently wet floodplain, beside the main course of a river (fig. 9, top). We cannot be sure that they had been deposited at the same time, since they were not found in the same stratigraphic layer; they were found in a zone where alluviation could have taken place rapidly.

The importance of depositing pairs of axeheads (BORDREUIL 1996) has, however, been underlined by a recent discovery of a remarkable hoard of two pairs of large axeheads at Saint-Pierre-Quiberon/

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Fig. 7: Large axeheads were most frequently deposited in wetland contexts: on the riverbank or flood-plain in the case of Ship Hotel, Mortlake (Great Britain) (top), and just beside a plank-built wooden trackway in the case of the Sweet Track, Glastonbury example (Great Britain). Early 4th millenium. Photos: Google Earth (top left), B. Coles (bot-

tom left), P. Pétrequin (right).

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plage du Petit Rohu (Morbihan, France) (CASSEN ET AL. 2010). Here, the axeheads – deposited vertically with their blades pointing upwards – are absolutely identical to those figured on some of the standing stones that had been re-used to build the monument of Gavrinis at Larmor Baden (LE ROUX 1985; SHEE TWOHIG 1981), situated several kilometres away as the crow flies (fig. 9, bottom).

It is therefore clear that a very strong link exists be-tween: i) the act of depositing large jade axeheads; ii) the symbolism of the axe/axehead representa-tions engraved on megaliths in the Morbihan, and iii) the mythological and religious expressions which developed around the Gulf of Morbihan shortly be-fore 4500 BC (CASSEN 2000a, 2006, forthcoming 2011a; PÉTREQUIN ET AL. 2009, 2011c, 2011e). This practice of depositing axeheads in specific, often wa-tery locations is attested throughout the western area

of distribution of Alpine jade axeheads (fig. 1, Mor-bihan and ‘jade Europe’), from at least as early as the second quarter of the 5th millennium until the be-ginning of the 4th. We do not know where the origin of the associated belief lay. The area where this kind of deposition is commonest is the Alps and France, although with the later spread of the use of Alpine axeheads we also find it in Germany, and then Great Britain and Ireland. It is tempting to regard the Car-nac area, around the Gulf of Morbihan, as the area of origin, given its high density of finds of long Alpine axeheads and its standing stones that bear axe/ax-ehead engravings. Equally, one could regard the area of origin as being the extraction areas around Mont Viso, and the zone where roughouts were worked up into axeheads, from the beginning of the 5th mil-lennium, since the people involved with this were responsible for the production of remarkably long roughouts. However, the chronology of production

Fig. 8: The axehead from Ost-heim/Birgelsgaerten (Haut-Rhin, France) had been planted vertically in the earth, its blade facing upwards, in a zone that had been wetland. Second half of the 5th millennium. Photos: T. Logel and P. Pétrequin.

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Fig. 9: The two axeheads from Vendeuil/La Prairie de Montigny (Oise, France) had been planted in wetland in a marshy area, with their blades uppermost, as shown in the engravings at Gavrinis (Morbihan, France). Second half of the 5th

millennium. Drawing : G. Billand and P. Hébert ; photos: H. Paitier and P. Pétrequin.

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is not sufficiently fine-grained for us to push the hy-pothesis any further.

To sum up, with regard to most of the large axeheads that have been discovered as ‘stray finds’ within ‘jade Europe’, we are dealing with a religious ritual, in which Alpine jade axeheads – irrespective of their state of manufacture or polish – were deliberately deposited at specific points in the landscape, away from settlements and graves. Most commonly we find that it was old, large axeheads that were depos-ited, having been removed from their hafts prior to deposition (fig. 6, top); and although the degree of polish may vary, the axeheads are always complete. (The one counter-example, of a burnt roughout at Oncino/abri Puymirol (fig. 5, bottom), is just an isolated exception which may well be related to the use of fire-setting to process blocks of jade.)

So, axeheads were deposited – singly, in pairs or in larger numbers – in front of boulders, rock shel-ters/overhangs and caves; it is notable that none has been discovered within the interior of a cave. Others had been placed in fissures or at the foot of standing stones, some of them engraved (as in the case of one with representations of serpents or of lightnings: cf. CASSEN ET AL. forthcoming 2011a). By analogy with ethnographic examples from New Guinea (PÉTREQUIN/PÉTREQUIN 2006) or from the

Sami people of northern Europe (BALLMER 2010; BERGMAN 1991), these special locations in the land-scape, be they natural (boulders, cavities, fissures) or humanly-made (standing stones), would have repre-sented both thresholds between this world and the world of supernatural powers, and privileged loca-tions where communication with these supernatu-ral powers could take place. The axehead deposits would, at one and the same time, have acted both as a threshold marker – a signal, a barrier, a ‘no entry’ sign – between the two worlds, and as a vector for communicating with supernatural powers. Thus, the large axeheads would not have been sacrificed (since they were kept intact), but instead consecrated for use in denoting a sacred site, access to which was restricted to ritual specialists. This kind of consecra-tion would have transformed the status of the jade axehead into a sacred and taboo ‘object-sign’. This accounts for the planting of large axeheads in the ground, some of which would have remained clearly visible and were left in place, respected by all for many centuries.

The second type of context discussed above – and by far the commonest – is the association between con-secrated axeheads and water, with rivers, river banks and bogs being the commonest locations. Ethno-graphic comparisons (see above) would seem to lead to the same interpretation: in one sense, water and

Fig. 10: Certain buried hoards can comprise up to 30 axeheads, with the axeheads being laid out in particular ways, as depicted elsewhere on engravings in the Carnac region. This was probably the case at Arzon/Bernon (Morbihan,

France). Photos: Musée d’Archéologie Nationale and S. Cassen.

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watery locations are a material expression of limits, of frontiers and of potential danger (in liquid form); and in another sense, they may represent passages, privileged points for communication and mediation between different worlds.

The same spirit seems to have prevailed in the case of hoards of flint axeheads in northern Europe, even though they are much later in date (see for example KARSTEN 1994; RECH 1979). And it may well have been a similar preoccupation with establishing links between humans and ‘divinities’ that led to the dep-osition of spectacular hoards in Mesoamerica during the first millennium BC, which brought together large quantities of objects made from Guatemalan jade (including many axeheads), and interred them in the heart of monumental sanctuaries, associated with wetlands and with water (REILLY 1994; ROD-RIGUEZ/ORTIZ 2000).

Across time and space, the same idea of consecration and of communication with other worlds could well have applied, with jade being reserved for the most powerful individuals in this world and for the super-natural beings who ruled the cosmos. (See LAUFER 1906 regarding China.)

We feel that this hypothesis is of heuristic value in explaining the deposition of axeheads, and should enrich the debate about social ‘object-signs’. All too often such objects have simply been taken as read or else interpreted (in the case of multiple-axehead deposits) as ‘trading hoards’. This hypothesis does not claim to account for every deposit of Alpine ax-eheads; the topographic situation of some hoards, such as the one from La Bégude-de-Mazenc (Drôme, France) (THIRAULT 1999), remains hard to explain. It is likely that regional variations had occurred. The Gulf of Morbihan offers a good example of this.

4. Consecration or sacrifice: axehead deposi-tion and Carnac mounds

The Gulf of Morbihan, the area where the practice of constructing megalithic monuments in western Europe originated (BAILLOUD ET AL. 1995; BOU-JOT/CASSEN 1992), represents not only the most important concentration of jade axeheads in west-ern Europe outside their Alpine area of manufacture (fig. 1), but also a remarkable exception to the Eu-ropean pattern in terms of the numbers of axeheads that were deposited together. Naturally there are also small hoards of consecrated axeheads there (CASSEN ET AL. 2010), but the two dominant traits are: i) the

existence of very large Alpine axehead hoards, buried outside of a settlement or funerary context; and ii) the presence of numerous polished Alpine axeheads in the giant Carnac mounds that date around the middle of the 5th millennium.

As an example of a large Carnac area hoard (CASSEN ET AL. forthcoming 2011b) we could cite, among many others, that of Arzon/Mouillarien (Morbi-han, France). It is one of the best known hoards, as we have a precise description and the axeheads have survived. There were no fewer than 17 jade ax-eheads (fig. 10, right), and they had been arranged vertically, with their blades uppermost, in an artifi-cial hollow. They all rested against each other and formed a kind of oval shape, with the axeheads ap-parently leaning towards the centre. Once again this brings to mind the assemblages of axeheads depicted on the walls of Gavrinis megalithic tomb (fig. 10 left). The hoard of Sarzeau/Largueven (Morbihan, France) shows the same kind of disposition: here, 24 jade axeheads had been set in a circle (CASSEN ET AL. forthcoming 2011b). The originality of the Car-nac area hoards lies in the large number of Alpine axeheads which are involved, in the strict choice of raw material (with the finest jadeitites dominating: PÉTREQUIN ET AL. 2011), and in the extraordinary nature of the consecrated axeheads, being of a type specific to Carnac and with a magnificent polish (PÉTREQUIN/CROUTSCH/CASSEN 1998).

These hoards of consecrated axeheads in the Carnac area (if one wishes to accept our hypothesis as out-lined above in section 3) could well lie at the origin of a ritual practice that continued to develop:

- in Brittany, with axeheads made of non-Alpine sto-ne, as at La Chapelle-Basse-Mer/Le Vigneau (Loi-re-Atlantique), Saint-Lyphard-des-Eaux/La Bèze (Loire-Atlantique) and Saint-Pavu/Bois d’Avangour (Côtes-d’Armor) (CORDIER/BOCQUET 1998);

-but also in Scandinavia, with the flint axehead hoards of the Trichterbecher and Corded Ware Cul-tures, between c 3500 BC and c 2500 BC: here, the axeheads were laid out in a circle, a semi-circle, a tree shape, a star shape or a wheel shape (RECH 1979). The hoard of Bjurselet (Norrland, in northern Swe-den), dating to the middle of the 3rd millennium, is an extreme case with around 70 axeheads placed vertically in a circle around 1 metre in diameter (MALMER 1962).

The west of France, and above all, the Gulf of Mor-bihan, seems to have been the oldest epicentre for the practice of consecrating axeheads; this is seen first in the deposition of Alpine jades during the

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Fig. 11: In the region around the Gulf of Morbihan (France), three gigantic Carnac mounds produced remarkable assemblages of Alpine axeheads in a central chamber. In the case of Arzon/Tumiac, large eclogite axeheads are of Alpine forms, scarcely modified, while the jadeitite axeheads had been repolished, to transform them into Carnac-style ‘object-

signs’. Mid-5th millennium. Photos: P. Pétrequin.

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time when the massive Carnac mounds were in use, and it continued later, featuring the use of axeheads made of various regional rocks, towards the end of the 5th millennium and later still. It is therefore in this geographical area that we should seek the origin of the ideas that led to the deposition of the large and complex flint axehead hoards, such as those seen in Scandinavia from the middle of the 4th millen-nium.

Compared with the rest of western Europe, the Morbihan constitutes an exception, with its numer-ous axeheads found in funerary contexts. This re-gion commands our attention since it has 68 Alpine axeheads, with 49% of all the Alpine jade axeheads that have been found in funerary contexts in western Europe. Furthermore, elsewhere in western Europe, axeheads found in graves are of modest size and are found just in ones or twos, whereas around the Gulf of Morbihan, certain massive Carnac mounds con-tained up to around 20 long axeheads of Alpine jade, along with other markedly rich grave goods such as objects of Iberian variscite and fibrolite. Fourteen such axeheads were found in the Carnac mound at Mané er Hroëck, Locmariaquer; 12 were found in Tumulus Saint-Michel, Carnac; and 18 were found in Tumiac, Arzon.

Thus, in the Morbihan, ‘object-signs’ that were used for religious rituals (in common with the practice elsewhere in Europe, where axeheads were conse-crated to supernatural powers and were consequently considered to be sacred themselves, as explained in section 3) were deposited in the chamber that held the mortal remains of a deceased man of power. The ritual and religious role of that individual had been as an intermediary between the elites of this world and the supernatural powers, to ensure that the world continued to be reproduced properly. (For a fuller development of this hypothesis of ‘sacred royalty’, see CASSEN 2000a, forthcoming 2011a; PÉTREQUIN ET AL. 2009, forthcoming 2011e).

Here, as with the axeheads deposited in hoards in the Morbihan as described above, the axeheads had been carefully arranged: the tumulus Saint-Michel at Carnac is a fine example, with its axeheads planted in the floor of the chamber (CASSEN 2000a, CAS-SEN ET AL. forthcoming 2011b). However, there are some important differences between the non-funer-ary deposits of axeheads and the deposits found in the giant Carnac mounds, even though there was an indisputable conceptual commonality regarding the jade axeheads themselves – axeheads which had been modified in the Morbihan, through re-shap-ing and polishing to a very high sheen, to give them a distinctive regional identity. Certain differences

could be chronological in nature, sugh as the higher incidence of axeheads of eclogite at Locmariaquer/Mané er Hroëck (fig. 11), which is probably the oldest mound in the series of giant Carnac mounds (CASSEN ET AL. forthcoming 2011b; PÉTREQUIN ET AL. 2011). Other differences relate to the nature of the funerary rites; that is certainly the case regarding the treatment of axeheads prior to their deposition in the funerary chamber.

In the case of Arzon/Bernon (fig. 10, right), a non-funerary hoard, all the axeheads were complete. (We may note also that most were of jade-jadeite and some were of jade-nephrite.) By contrast, in the largest Carnac mounds, the percentage of broken (and sometimes burnt) axeheads is significant, above all as regards the examples made from eclogite, the least ‘valorised’ of the axeheads (fig. 11). A number of polished axeheads had been broken (after removal from their haft), either with a hammer, or by striking them against the edge of an ‘anvil’ (fig. 12). There is also evidence for the removal of large flakes from the blades. By so doing, these acts rendered the axeheads unusable (according to the criteria pertaining to the use of an axehead for felling trees or working wood). Furthermore, the pattern of fracture lines (fig. 12, top left) shows that the act of breakage followed a general rule: the choice of location for transverse fractures is between a quarter and a third of the way along the axehead. It is as though there had been a desire to remove the ‘working section’ – that is, the blade, the most dangerous section – of the axehead. This act of ‘destruction’ – or rather, ‘neutralisation’ of sacred objects may not always have taken place inside the monument: at Carnac/Mané Hui, key sections of two axeheads are missing, as though the act had taken place outside the monument. Moreo-ver, there are some other signs of partial ‘destruction’ which suggests that the act had taken place outside the monuments: this is the evidence for the burning of certain axeheads, to a greater or lesser degree. This is most likely to have occurred prior to their being moved inside and deposited in the grave chamber (fig. 13). At Locmariaquer/Tumiac, a butt-end frag-ment illustrates this process well: the axehead had been burnt and thereby heat-altered for a long time; the external surface had become porous and impreg-nated with carbon; and then the axehead had been broken, and only the butt end was interred in the tomb (fig. 13, top right).

In other words, a considerable proportion of the polished jade axeheads found in the Carnac fu-nerary chambers do not correspond to the idea of a simple and brutal distruction of wealth, but in-stead, by contrast, may have been part of a complex ritual featuring the fragmentation of objects with a

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Fig. 12: Position of fractures on the axeheads from the Carnac mounds at Arzon/Tumiac, Carnac/Saint-Michel and Locmariaquer/Mané er Hroëck (Morbihan, France). Mid-5th millennium. Photos: P. Pétrequin.

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Fig. 13: Examples of large burnt and broken axeheads from the Carnac mounds at Arzon/Tumiac and Carnac/Saint-Michel (Morbihan, France). Mid-5th millennium. Photos: P. Pétrequin.

religious value. This would have been a sacrificial act, whose stages would have conformed to strict rules: the choice of dark Alpine rocks in preference to light-coloured Alpine rocks; breakage at a third of the way along the body, in order to remove the

blade; the use of fire to heat some of the axeheads, to varying degrees of intensity and over varying lengths of time; and finally, the gathering of the fragments, for deposition of some or all of them in the funerary chamber.

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5. Later and elsewhere

While the practice of consecrating jade axeheads (ei-ther as single objects or in larger numbers) was a widespread phenomenon across the whole of Europe during the 5th and the first half of the 4th millennium BC, the region of Carnac and the Gulf of Morbihan represent, by contrast, the early epicentre of new re-ligious rituals associated with jade axeheads. These rituals are well attested by the middle of the 5th mil-lennium. It is therefore highly probable that their origin lay in that region and was associated with, firstly, the mythology of the Carnac area (CASSEN 2006); secondly, the power of attraction exercised by the elites who were profiting from accumulat-ing goods of high value, produced at distances up to 1000 kilometres away as the crow flies (jade, var-iscite and fibrolite); and thirdly, the emphasis given to the manipulation of precious raw materials and to ‘object-signs’ that were destined to be consecrated in large numbers to supernatural powers, or else to be sacrificed in the monumental tombs of certain pow-erful individuals who mediated between the world of the living and the supernatural world.

The most extraordinary examples of this are prob-ably the magnificent jade axeheads that were de-posited, burnt and/or broken, in the graves of these powerful individuals in the Morbihan. These con-trast with the small, workaday axe- and adze-heads that are found in 5th millennium graves of less high status individuals elsewhere in Europe. It seems, in effect, that the mortuary ritual featuring the break-age of polished axeheads, or of their transformation by fire, was extremely rare in western Europe at that time. We have so far been able to find only one con-temporary example elsewhere, at Piacenza/Le Mose tombe 6 (Emilia Romagna, Italy), in a cemetery of the Square-Mouthed Pottery Culture (BERNABÒ BREA ET AL. 2006). Here, a man aged around 50 had been buried with grave goods that are some-what richer than the norm for this region: a bone fish hook and a flint blade had been placed in front of his face; a long piece of antler had been placed on his right arm; a decorated square-mouthed pot had been placed between his elbow and his left thigh; and finally two axeheads had been deposited, one on his left arm, the other close to his left hand, their butts pointing towards the body. At first sight this set of grave goods might seem to correspond to everyday activities – fishing, harvesting and perhaps knapping flint. However, what is striking is that the two ax-eheads (one of medium size and one small: fig. 14) had been intensively burnt before being deposited in the tomb, in front of the face of the dead man, in keeping with the tradition of the region.

With the exception of this grave at Le Mose, we have not yet found any examples of individual graves outside of the Gulf of Morbihan where ax-eheads had been burnt before being interred. We have to go as far away as Scotland to find a parallel. But here we are dealing with a much later, collec-tive megalithic funerary monument, Cairnholy 1, Kirkmabreck, in Dumfries & Galloway, south-west Scotland (Great Britain), which belongs to the first quarter of the fourth millennium (CASSEN/PÉTRE-QUIN 1999; SHERIDAN/PAILLER forthcoming 2011). A small fragment from the body of a large jadeitite axehead, completely altered by fire, was discovered in the anti-chamber of the monument (fig. 15, bot-tom left). It had probably been a large axehead that had been burnt outside the chamber tomb, and only the largest fragment, detached from the rest of the axehead by thermal shock, was taken and consecrat-ed to (what is assumed to be) the group of people interred inside the main chamber, or indeed to the monument itself.

A partial destruction by fire was similarly noted in a Chamblandes-type grave in Switzerland: tomb 117 of Lausanne/Vidy, dating to the end of the 5th mil-lennium (THIRAUT 2007). In this example, a serpen-tine axehead had been broken in two (fig. 16, right) and its blade had retained its original colour while the other fragment, the butt, had been whitened through a slow and low-temperature process of heat-ing. These two fragments had been placed side by side in the filling of the grave, and they are evidence for a ritual that had taken place outside the grave, namely the breakage of a large axehead and the heat-ing of its proximal end.

A few, rare examples can be cited of where polished jade axeheads that had been destroyed by fire have been found in a funerary context. One assumes (but cannot demonstrate) that this represents an exten-sion of the practice in the Carnac region, on the grounds that these examples post-date the massive Carnac mounds, and are situated in regions that were definitely involved with the circulation of Car-nac-type jade axeheads and with the expansion, out of the Morbihan, of the Breton architectural practice of erecting monumental standing stones (CASSEN ET AL. forthcoming 2011a; KLASSEN/PÉTREQUIN/ERRE-RA 2009; PÉTREQUIN ET AL. 2007b, 2009, 2011c ). We can perhaps apply this hypothesis further, in considering the north of Europe.

In southern Scandinavia, hoards of flint axeheads, in particular of flaked but unpolished axeheads, are very frequent. In Denmark, for example, there are around 171 hoards encompassing around 500 ax-eheads (NIELSEN 1977). These hoards, not found

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Fig. 14: Burnt axeheads from grave 6 at Piacenza/Le Mose (Emilia Romagna, Ita-ly). Square-Mouthed Pottery Culture. Second half of the 5th millennium. Photos: M. Bernabò Brea and P. Pétre-quin.

in settlements or in graves, are frequently associ-ated with wetland areas and can be considered as examples of our category of ‘consecrated axeheads’. By contrast, polished flint axeheads are statistically better represented in funerary contexts and were probably associated more with the individuals in-terred there, rather than with the graves themselves. As for burnt axeheads (our category of ‘sacrificed axeheads’), these are very frequently found in the entrance area to collective tombs – above all, on the exterior of these monuments – allowing us to suggest that these ‘object-signs’ had been linked to ceremonies that took place outside the tombs, de-spite the fact that the polished axeheads found in-

side the tombs are part of the grave goods associated with the individuals buried in the tomb (LARSSON 2011). Even though, in dating to the 4th and 3rd millennia, these hoards and tombs are much later than the great Carnac mounds and the hoards in the Morbihan, it is hard to deny a certain similarity in the social and ritual functions of these axeheads between the southern coast of Brittany and Scandi-navia, and in particular Denmark. This hypothesis, of a possible relationship between distant regions of Europe, separated by time but both touched by the movement of Alpine jade axeheads, has been argued elsewhere in detail (KLASSEN/PÉTREQUIN/CASSEN 2011).

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Fig. 15: Fragment of burnt and broken axehead, found in the antechamber of the megalithic monument at Cairnholy 1, Kirkmabreck (Dumfries & Galloway, Scotland). Early 4th millennium. Plan: from Piggott & Powell 1949, reprodu-

ced by permission of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland; photo: National Museums Scotland.

At the time when this kind of manipulation of flint axeheads had started in Scandinavia, in France, and especially in the Morbihan, the practice of depos-iting hoards of jade axeheads was in decline, with Alpine axeheads being replaced by axeheads of re-gionally-available rock such as dolerite and flint. In these hoards, some axeheads were imitations of Al-pine jade examples, including the distinctive variant that was produced in the Carnac region (PÉTREQUIN ET AL. forthcoming 2011e). And within funerary

monuments in the Morbihan, after the massive Car-nac mounds ceased to be built (some time during the second half of the 5th millennium), jade axeheads became increasingly rare. The development of the Auzay-Sandun style of megalithic architecture that succeeded the massive Carnac mounds expresses profound changes in both the social structure and the networks of long-distance exchange (as illustrat-ed at Riantec/Roch Parc Nehué, with a single Puy-type Alpine axehead in a megalithic grave).

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Over the whole of France, with the spread of using collective tombs after 3500 BC, with its increased number of individuals per tomb, jade axeheads are very poorly represented in funerary contexts. There are, however, a few examples in addition to the afore-mentioned axehead from Riantec. At Goult/dolmen de l’Ubac (Vaucluse, France), a utilitarian axehead of medium length was placed outside the tomb, be-tween two rings of stone that encircled the mound (fig. 17, top). This monument has been dated to the extreme end of the 4th millennium or the very be-ginning of the 3rd (BIZOT/BUISSON-CATIL/SAUZADE

2001). Similarly, the jade axehead from Saint-Léger-de-Montbrun/dolmen II de Puyraveau (Deux-Sèvres, France) might have been used as a sign pertaining to the monument itself, rather than to any specific individual within it; unfortunately the specific loca-tion of the findspot of this rare find is not known (ARD forthcoming 2011). As in Scandinavia, it ap-pears that the entrance to collective tombs had been a boundary, outside of which one finds objects that had been consecrated to the monument and to the collectivity of the individuals interred within, and inside of which one finds objects that had probably

Fig. 16: Right: Lausanne/Vidy (Vaud, Switzerland): axehead of serpentinite from Valais, broken in two. The unpatina-ted blade fragment comes from grave 17, while the burnt butt fragment was found outside the tomb (a Chamblandes-type cist). End of the 5th millennium. Left : example of a cist with multiple interments at Lausanne/Chamblandes.

Photo: P. Pétrequin.

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Fig 17: Large axeheads from Final Neolithic collective graves. Top: Goult/dolmen de l’Ubac (Vaucluse, France). First half of the 3rd millennium. Bottom: funerary monument at Unterjettingen (Baden-Württemberg, Allemagne), with its trapezoidal podium, covered by a round barrow during the Iron Age. End of the 4th millennium. Photo: top, from

Bizot/Buisson-Catil/Sauzade 2001; plan from Zürn 1957; photo at bottom from Matuschick 2009.

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been the personal possessions of the deceased (or, at least, had been deposited as that individual’s grave goods: SOHN 2002). However, the same cannot be said for the small collective graves that lack ante-chambers and passages, as at Unterjettingen (Baden-Württemberg, Germany), where a fine jade axehead (fig. 17, bottom) was found in the funerary chamber, associated with pottery of the Goldberg III Group, dating to the end of the 4th millennium (MATUSCHIK 2009).

At the same time, elsewhere, we see the successive mutation of the form of Alpine axeheads, with ex-amples found in settlements becoming progressively shorter and systematically more suited to woodwork-ing. We also see the emergence of axehead pendants around this time, re-using the small axeheads which were still circulating around the Midi of France, the Centre-Ouest and the Paris Basin, extending as far as the Channel Islands and the southern coast of England (BAILLOUD 1964; BORDREUIL ET AL. 2008; SHERIDAN/PAILLER forthcoming 2011; THIRAULT 2004). This means that Alpine axeheads had a social significance that spans over two millennia. However, the status of these axehead pendants – perforated near the butt and designed to be suspended or car-ried – remains unclear. Prehistorians were quick to class them as jewellery, but in fact there are as many found as stray finds as are found in collective tombs. One wonders whether some had been used as of-ferings, as was the case in the sanctuaries in Malta (SKEATES 1995), or indeed the earlier axeheads that had been consecrated in Neolithic western Europe.

6. Jade axeheads: a way of denoting an individual’s power or (and) control over reli-

gious rituals ?

The time has come to conclude this discussion. In our close examination of the archaeological evidence, it would seem that the large axeheads of Alpine jades evolved according to a life-cycle related to ideal con-ceptions (GODELIER 1984) concerning a system of ‘object-signs’, in which the jades were thought of and valued as rare and precious ‘matter’, supernatu-ral in its origin, and different from the stone that was normally used to make axeheads. The exploita-tion of the source areas on Mont Viso seems to have been regulated by rituals, as we see from the hoards of thermal blocks and of flaked roughouts depos-ited there; furthermore, it seems that the working of the finest raw materials (i.e. the fine jadeitites) was restricted to certain individuals, in contrast to the manufacture of small axe- and adze-heads (PÉTRE-

QUIN/PÉTREQUIN forthcoming 2011). Given this as a background, the over-sized axeheads would have been produced in small numbers, just one or two dozen each year (to judge from the overall total of c 1800 currently known examples and the overall duration of exploitation: around 2000 years for the main phase of exploitation on Mont Viso: PÉTRE-QUIN/ERRERA/PÉTREQUIN/ALLARD 2006). Despite their weight and their dimensions, which seem ill-suited to felling trees, the long axeheads do seem to have been hafted. Evidence for this includes the pecking marks corresponding to the area of haft-ing near the butts of some axeheads, and also the engravings on some monumental standing stones in the Morbihan, with a classic example on the cap-stone of la Table des Marchands at Locmariaquer, a re-used standing stone (CASSEN/ROBIN 2009). How-ever, their use as tree-felling tools must have been limited, since flakes and fragments of such axeheads are practically absent from settlements, at least be-tween 4700 and 3700 BC, when the long-distance circulation of these axeheads was in full swing. Per-haps we should seek to identify the function of these hafted axeheads in the world of rituals and of inter-elite gifts; it is indeed true that the sacred value of an object can underpin exchanges of socially-valorised goods (GODELIER 1996, PÉTREQUIN/PÉTREQUIN 2006).

Along the principal axis of exchanges between the Alps and the Morbihan, if not also elsewhere, jade axeheads were produced for long distance circula-tion: that is, as objects destined to be given and re-ceived, without being kept for long periods by any individual. This accounts for the relatively rapid ty-pological evolution over several hundred kilometres. But at any time during this inter-elite exchange, cer-tain large axeheads could be consecrated – that is, removed from circulation and deposited at specific points in the landscape or at the foot of boulders and of menhirs, to join others in these sacred sites where mediation was possible with the supernatural powers who control the world.

It is equally necessary to note that in between the area of exploitation in the Alps and the Morbihan, jade axeheads scarcely feature as grave goods. It is as if they had been signs that could not be monopo-lised by a single person for a long time; they were not designed to be long-term personal possessions. Thus, around 4500 BC in the Paris Basin, jade ax-eheads are completely absent from the large funer-ary monuments of Passy type (CHAMBON/THOMAS 2011); by contrast, axeheads that had been depos-ited and consecrated are particularly numerous in this region, where they were repolished (into Alten-

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stadt-type axeheads) in order to modify their shape according to the regional standards.

It is in the Morbihan where the jade axehead was re-conceptualised and repolished yet further, to pro-duce the Carnac-style axeheads. Here, the axeheads took on an even more explicit value in the domain of myths and religious practices in a society which, around 4500 BC, was profoundly inegalitatian. The Powerful Ones were men who accumulated exotic and precious objects and who appear to have played the role of intermediaries between the elites and the supernatural powers. This kind of social organisa-tion is very likely to have been related to certain forms of theocracy (for which, in an archaeological context, see CASSEN 2007, forthcoming 2011a and PÉTREQUIN ET AL. forthcoming 2011e; and for the anthropological theory, see for example HENSCH 1990; THALAMON 2010 and TESTART 2005). The originality of the religious concepts and mythology around the Gulf of Morbihan is not in any doubt (see, among others, BAILLOUD ET AL. 1995 and CAS-SEN 2000a, 2006). Its profound influence on the evolution of religious thought along the Atlantic façade and on the Continental interior as far as Ger-many and Switzerland is now well attested (CASSEN forthcoming 2011a; KLASSEN/PÉTREQUIN/CAS-SEN 2011; PÉTREQUIN ET AL. 2005, forthcoming 2011c).

It is therefore not surprising that we argue that, around the Gulf of Morbihan, the phenomenon of depositing large numbers of consecrated axeheads was pushed to its extreme, while at the same time the axehead (with or without its haft) figured promi-nently in the themes involved in the religious gram-mar of the Carnac region, sometimes being associ-ated explicitly with engravings, or with monumen-tal standing stones, that portrayed an erect phallus (CASSEN 2000c, forthcoming 2011a). During the early phase of the Carnac mounds (exemplified by, among others, Quiberon/Fort Saint-Julien), long narrow fusiform axeheads of jade were similarly closely associated with disc-rings, forming an im-aginary male-female act of reproduction, controlled by men (CASSEN 2000d). At Locmariaquer/Mané er Hroëck, the oldest of the three immense Carnac mounds, the sexual symbolism is again explicitly expressed in the arrangement of a long axehead of extraordinarily high quality together with a ring-disc (both of Alpine jade) and with large pendants made from Iberian variscite (FLEURIOT DE LANGLE 1876; SOLDI-COLBERT DE BEAULIEU 1897 ; CAS-SEN 2000b). These objects signified the ritual power to control and to reproduce society in the Carnac region, and they accompanied the deceased Great Men in their grave chamber, perhaps because they

were associated with these individuals’ specific per-sonal power, which could not be transmitted directly to other men.

Furthermore, in these monumental tombs of the Carnac region, we see the appearance of original funerary rites, in particular the breakage and the destruction by fire of large, highly polished jade ax-eheads, in a sacrificial act that was unparalleled in Europe at that time. A clear distinction can be seen between the intact axeheads that were consecrated to supernatural powers, and the axeheads that were sacrificed for the tomb of the most powerful men. It was in this way that the life-cycle of the large Alpine jade axehead reached its end during the 5th millen-nium.

Similarly, we could trace the chronological develop-ment of beliefs and rituals surrounding jade. Jade axeheads had first been used as signs, to be sacrificed by fire and by breakage, in the ceremonial sites at the end of the 6th and beginning of the 5th millennium (at Sammardenchia, Golianovo and Kamegg).

Then, from 4700 BC throughout western Europe, large jade axeheads began to be consecrated to su-pernatural powers, and by c 4500 BC, in the Morbi-han, some were sacrificed on the death of important individuals.

When, subsequently, the social structure was pro-foundly modified – as we see in the emergence of collective tombs – the number of axeheads deposit-ed in funerary contexts diminished drastically. Rare examples of Alpine jades, in the form of medium-length tools, incompletely polished, were however consecrated or sacrificed to the funerary monument and/or to the generality of the individuals interred within them, being placed at the entrance or out-side the monument (rather than inside, beside any specific individual, as a grave good). By contrast, flint axeheads – in the form of polished axeheads or of realistic representations thereof – came to mark the various thresholds which punctuated the collec-tive funerary space, in the gallery graves (allées cou-vertes) and the hypogea of Seine-Oise-Marne type (BAILLOUD 1964).

Finally, it was not until the beginning of the 3rd millennium that representations of hafted axeheads (along with engravings of copper weapons) were to appear on the anthropomorphic stelae of the French Midi (JALLOT/SÉNÉPART 2008); the force and the power of the axe thus seems to have passed into the realm of the Great Ancestors, who had captured part of the symbolism that had previously been reserved for the Supernatural powers.

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In terms of this contribution, we have tried to show that the automatic use of language that has led us to associate large axeheads with prestige represents a misuse of language, born of modern ethnocentric interpretations rather than being based on close ar-chaeological observation. By contrast, within the rituals and myth-related conceptions that we have seen so forcefully expressed, jade axeheads – a mate-rial that had been made sacred – would seem to have been objects linked to power based on religion and on mediation with the Supernatural powers who were concerned with the reproduction of society and the well-being of the world. It is certainly from such ideal concepts that we can understand the very long-distance circulation of these axeheads around Europe.

As for the question of how/whether these ‘object-signs’ were manipulated for personal prestige, we should probably emphasise:- the elevated, indeed exceptional status of the dominant men who controlled the religious ri-tuals and perpetuated the social inequality; and- the fundamental act of giving and receiving jade axeheads, and the power involved in consecra-ting or sacrificing these objects that acted as media-tors with the Otherworld. These are most likely to have been the concerns sur-rounding the use of these axeheads; thus, they were not primarily symbols of power of particular indivi-duals, to be displayed alongside other exotic perso-nal possessions.

For the 5th millennium, at least, this is the best way to approach Alpine jade axeheads : as active ‘object-signs’, used in a society where the social order was determined by religious beliefs and where the elites played a fundamental role in maintaining this order through their control over rituals.

Acknowledgements: this work was carried out within Projet JADE (Agence Nationale de la Recherche 2007–2010) : “Social inequalities in Neolithic Eu-rope: the circulation of long Alpine jade axeheads”, administered by la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme et de l’Environnement (MSHE C.N. Ledoux), Be-sançon.

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Menschen - Hunde - Artefakte

Gedenkschrift für Gretel Gallay/Callesen

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Menschen - Hunde - Artefakte

Gedenkschrift für Gretel Gallay/Callesen

Schriften des Vereins für Vor- und Frühgeschichte im unteren Niddertal e.V. Band II

herausgegeben von Heike Lasch und Britta Ramminger

redaktionelle Mitarbeit: Petra Hanauska und Thorsten Sonnemann

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InhaltsverzeichnisVorwort I

HeikeLasch/BrittaRamminger,BibliographieGretelCallesen 1

HelmutBrück,„Schatzregal“oder„hadrianischeTeilung?“DieEigentumsordnungfürBodenfundeinHessenimÜberblick

Alf Steinbrecher,EingeologischerStreifzugvonHochstadtnachWindecken

PierrePétrequin/AlisonSheridan/SergeCassen/MichelErrera/LutzKlassen/Anne-MariePétrequin,Consecration and sacrifice: long Alpine jade axeheads in Neolithic Europe 32

ChristophSteinmann,DieFrischealterIdeen.AntiquareinMecklenburgundihrVerständnisderHünengräber.

HeikeLasch,„Igelgefäß“undGussform–ZweiaußergewöhnlicheFundstückeausSchöneck-Büdesheim,Main-Kinzig-Kreis

Petra Hanauska/Thorsten Sonnemann, Neue und alte Erkenntnisse zur vorgeschichtlichen Besiedelung desBüraberges

Dirk Brandherm/Christian Horn, Die Zwei in der Drei, oder: Ein Zwilling kommt selten allein

Gretel Gallay (†), Fundstellen der frühkeltischen Hallstattkultur im Stadtgebiet Nidderau, Ortsteile Heldenbergen und Windecken 3

Dirk Hassler, Der hallstattzeitliche Bernsteinschmuck aus dem Gräberfeld Nidderau-Windecken, „Allee SüdIV“(Main-Kinzig-Kreis)

Cornelia Riedel, Ein Schwertträgergrab aus Nidderau-Windecken, Neubaugebiet „AlleeSüdIV“–BerichtderFundrestaurierungeineshallstattzeitlichenGrabinventars 9

Nina Schücker, Neue Befunde aus Lager II und dem vicus von Heldenbergen

ChristianFalb,ZweifrühhallstattzeitlicheBrandbestattungenimGrabenverlauf desrömischenErdlagersII in Nidderau-Heldenbergen

ErwinHahn,AnthropologischeUntersuchungenderhallstattzeitlichenLeichenbrändevonderAral-Tankstelle in Nidderau-Heldenbergen, Main-Kinzig-Kreis 6

LeonieKoch,DasBilddesHundesinderSitulenkunstundverwandterDenkmäler 15

BrittaRamminger,Begleiter,Wächter,Opfertier?–ZurBedeutungdesHundesinderHallstattkultur

JörgEwersen,DerHaushund–geliebt,gebrauchtundgegessen

Susanne Heun. Keltischer Töpfereibefund in Hofheim a.T. – Marxheim: Beschreibung ausgewählter GrabungsbefundeundihrefunktionaleDeutung

Hartmut Polenz, „Nach Golde drängt, am Golde hängt doch alles!“ (J.W.v.Goethe/ Faust)-AnmerkungenzueinemAltfundaus‚Rheinhessen’(?)

CordulaBrand/UweSchoenfelder,GermanischeSiedlerauf römischemBoden.DieBefundevonVoerde-Mehrum/Kr.Wesel

Wolfgang Böhme, Spätrömische Zwiebelknopffibeln in der Germania magna

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Regula Wahl-Clerici/Annemarie Wiechowski, Der „Forno dos Mouros“: ein Aufbereitungs- und Verhüttungsplatz im römischen Goldbergwerksdistrikt von Três Minas und Campo de Jales 13

Olaf Krause,ZeugnisseeinermedizinischenVersorgungindenLimeskastellenSaalburg,Stockstadta.M.undZugmantel 9

Bob Wilson, Abdalla J. Nabulsi, Petra Schönrock-Nabulsi, Thomas F. G. Higham, Excavation of Animal Burials in a Tomb from the Ancient Khirbet es-Samrā Cemetery in Jordan 12

Andrea Hampel, Die Frankfurter Stadtbefestigung seit 1343 im Spiegel der Archäologie 12

Matthias Jung, „Objektbiographie“ oder Verwirklichung objektiver Möglichkeiten? Zur Nutzung und UmnutzungeinesSteinbeilsausderCôted’Ivoire 10