Wow! eBook
Stone Axe Studies III
Author(s): Vin Davis (Editor), Mark Edmonds
- Publisher: Oxbow Books
- Publication Date: 15 Mar. 2011
- Language: English
- Print length: 448 pages
- ISBN-10: 1842174215
- ISBN-13: 9781842174210
Book Description
This volume builds upon the model of the first Stone Axe Studies volume published in 1979. It explores how scholars from various parts of the world currently approach these distinctive items. Some papers are united by specific material, such as those working on Jadeite axe blades in western and Central Europe. For others, the link is analytical (e.g., the development of new geochemical techniques), contextual (e.g., work on techniques of hafting or on patterns of deposition) or conceptual (e.g., the uses made of ethno-historic and related models). Taken together, they document the state of the art in stone axe research in Britain and abroad, at the same time providing a much needed basis for comparative study and for debate regarding analytical and interpretative issues.
Editorial Reviews
Review
Despite its prosaic title, Stone Axe Studies III, edited by our Fellow Mark Edmonds and Vin Davis, and with numerous Fellows amongst the contributors opens a window into the many different manifestations of this obsession with stone at different times and in different parts of the world, from Norway to India and Papua New Guinea, and from the Neolithic to the twenty-first century. The twenty-seven papers look at every aspect of the quarrying of the raw materials, the making of the axes, their uses as tools and as gifts and as objects of trade, their distribution, symbolism and social significance. What emerges is a sense not of stone as inert and intractable, but as something alive and potent: think not of Stonehenge as an arrangement of stones in a Wiltshire field, but as something pulsating with an innate energy capable of being harvested and used. ― SALON – The Society of Antiquaries Online Newsletter
About the Author
Mark Edmonds teaches for the UHI having recently retired as a lecturer in archaeology at York. He specialises in flint artefacts and prehistoric landscapes.
