Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T01:13:24.474Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A Stone-Axe Factory at Pike of Stickle, Great Langdale, Westmorland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 May 2014

Brian Bunch  and
Clare I. Fell
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The work of the Stone Axe Sub-Committee of the South-western Group of Museums and Art Galleries, familiar to readers of these Proceedings, has made it evident that an important stone axe factory must have existed in the immediate area of Great Langdale, Westmorland. The name ‘Stake Pass,’ applied to stone axes of Group VI of the Committee's classification, indeed referred to a small working-floor discovered at this locality by Professor D. M. S. Watson over thirty years ago. The present paper first records the discovery by Mr Brian Bunch of what was evidently the main factory at Pike of Stickle, as well as a number of subsidiary working-places, and then goes on to describe the material from the sites and to discuss the distribution of the finished products as evidence of early trade.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society , Volume 15 , 1949 , pp. 1 - 20
Copyright
Copyright © The Prehistoric Society 1949

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

1.J.R.A.I.,LI, p.198.DrDunham, K. C. of the Geological Survey and Museum tells me that Dr Thomas' slides of these axes cannot be traced.Google Scholar
2.Hull Museum Publication, no. 122 (1921), p.45.Google Scholar
3.Proc. Lanes, and Cheshire Arch. Soc.,L (1934–1935), p.74.Google Scholar
4. Group VI axes have been found on Walney Island near the mouth of the Duddon at Seascale on the Cumberland coast and at the Ehenside Tarn settlement near the Esk (Arch., XLIV, p. 273). Axes from a small factory site at Portinscale are very like the Great Langdale tools both in type and material, but seem to have been made on the spot from river cobbles (Trans. Cumberland and Westmorland A. and A. Soc., N.S. II, p. 418). The finds are now in the Keswick Museum, together with two more unpublished axes from Portinscale and several others from the neighbourhood of Keswick. The path over Stake Pass skirts Mart Crag Moor and leads from Langdale into Borrowdale.Google Scholar
5.Proc. Soc. Ant., N.S.VI, p.438.Google Scholar
6.Trans. Cumberland and Westmorland A. and A. Soc., N.S.XXIX, p.331; XXXV, p. 179.Google Scholar
7.Trans. Cumberland and Westmorland A. and A. Soc., O.S.III, p.254. This site is not mentioned in the Westmorland volume of the Royal Commission for Ancient and Historical Monuments.Google Scholar
8.J.R.A.I.,XXXIII, p.362. Outcrops of red sandstone as well as loose fragments were used for grinding stone axes in Ireland and outcrops of this stone in Furness, West Cumberland and the Eden valley were also probably used for this purpose.Google Scholar
9.Jopling, C.M.,Sketch of Furness and Cartmel, p.95.Google Scholar
10.North Lonsdale Magazine,1867, vol.1, p.305, note.Google Scholar
11.Trans. Cumberland and Westmorland A. and A. Soc., N.S.XII, p.281.Google Scholar
12.J.R.A.I.,XXXIII, p.366.Google Scholar
13.Proc. Prehist. Soc.,XIV, p.219.Google Scholar
14.McCarthy, F. D., ‘Trade in Aboriginal Australia’,Oceania,X, p.98.Google Scholar
15.Arch. Ael., vol.XIX (1941), pp.106–8, pl. VIII, no. 1.Google Scholar
16.Ant. J.,XXVIII, p.154.Google Scholar
17.Greenwell, ,British Barrows, pp.510–13.Google Scholar
18.Hawkes, C. F. C.,Prehistoric Foundations of Europe, p.196.Google Scholar
19.Trans. Cumberland and Westmorland A. and A. Soc., N.S.XL, p.118.Google Scholar