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Part VIII. A Winged-Axe Mould

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2013

F. H. Stubbings
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Extract

Among the burnt fill in Room 4 of the ‘House of the Oil Merchant’ at Mycenae excavated in 1952 was found one half of a stone mould for casting a winged axe, a type of implement (or weapon) otherwise unknown in Late Helladic or other contemporary Aegean contexts. The mould is made of a fine-grained grey stone. Its shape will be clear from the illustrations. The cut surface is flat, and measures 0·167 × 0·067 m.; the underside is convex: at the centre the stone is 0·038 m. thick, but at the ends only about 0·02 m. In one corner of the flat face is a small round hole, the socket for a peg or knob which would have projected from the other half of the mould (now lost) to ensure the two fitted correctly. There was probably a similar hole at the diagonally opposite corner, which has been broken away. This break fortunately does not prevent us restoring with certainty the shape of the casting that would be produced from the complete mould. This is shown below.

Medial winged axes are common in the upper Danube basin and northern Italy, but rarely found farther south, and not at all in the Aegean. It is known from surviving hafts that they were usually mounted (on a knee-haft) as axes (i.e. with the cutting edge in the same plane as the handle), but they could equally well be mounted as adzes. The four ‘wings’ would be hammered round to grip the ends of the haft on either side; and the ledge or ridge (‘stop-ridge’) across the blade immediately below the wings served to prevent the butt end from driving upwards and splitting the haft.

Type
Mycenae 1939–1953
Information
Annual of the British School at Athens , Volume 49 , November 1954 , pp. 297 - 298
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1954

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References

Thanks are due to Professor V. G. Childe for valuable assistance in preparing this note, and or the drawing reproduced n the text.

(Note: Plaster casts of the Mycenae mould, kindly prepared by the National Museum at Athens, may be seen at the London University Institute of Archaeology and at the Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.)

1 Säflund, G., Le Terremare (= AIRRS VII), 167.Google Scholar

2 Op. cit. 165, 167, and pl. 53, 3–5. Cf. Montelius, O., Vorklassische Chronologie Italiens 179 (fig. 430) and 181.Google Scholar Säflund, op. cit. 168, equates his Tm II B with the second half of Reinecke's period B; but this does not agree with his concordance on p. 11. The true equation is rather with Reinecke D.

3 Montelius, O., Civilisation primitive en Italie, pls. 30, 6 and 29, 8Google Scholar; text 170, 168. The other faces of the Freghera stone were cut with other moulds.

4 NdS 1900, 441 and fig. 12. Some of the Mycenaean pottery has been discussed by Furumark, in Dragma Martino Nilsson dedicatum 466 ff.Google Scholar; but I understand from Lord William Taylour, who has just completed a special study of Mycenaean pottery in the central Mediterranean, that much remains unpublished, and Furumark's chronological conclusions may well need revision.