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Stone Axes as a Guide to Neolithic Communications and Boundaries in England and Wales

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2014

W. A. Cummins
W. A. Cummins
Affiliation:
Department of Geology, University of Nottingham
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Extract

Six of the twenty-five British implement petrology groups (Clough and Cummins 1979, 127)—Group I (Penzance, Cornwall), Group IV (Callington, Cornwall), Group VI (Langdale, Lake District), Group VII (Penmaenmawr, North Wales), Group VIII (South-west Wales), and Group XVI (Camborne, Cornwall)—account for almost half of all the stone axes so far examined from England and Wales. In every part for the country, one or other of these six is the most abundant individual group. On the basis of stone axe distribution studies (Cummins 1979), the country seems to fall naturally into three major provinces (fig. 1), which might possibly be interpreted as Neolithic tribal territories. Northern and Central England, the largest of these provinces, is dominated by Group VI axes which, though originating in the Lake District, seem to have been distributed from a secondary centre in Humberside. Wales, including Herefordshire and part of Shropshire, forms another province and is dominated by Welsh axes, Group VII in the north, and Group VIII in the south. Southern England, the third province, is dominated by Cornish ‘greenstone’ axes, mainly Group I but locally, in the south-west, Groups IV and XVI.

Cumulative percentages of all axes belonging to each group plotted against distance from its distribution centre (Cummins 1979, figs. 4–9) give an indication of absolute frequency variation in relation to that centre. The shape of the plots is controlled by two variables, (i) the cumulative increase of area with distance from the centre, and (ii) the variation in average frequency of the grouped axes (per unit area) with distance from the centre.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society , Volume 46 , December 1980 , pp. 45 - 60
Copyright
Copyright © The Prehistoric Society 1980

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References

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