File:2008 T703 Bronze Age Hoard, socketed Axe (FindID 239439).jpg

English: TREASURE CASE 2008 T703: Bronze Age Hoard.

Hoard Content: spear blade tip and socketed axe blade.

Hoard Catalogue

1. The socketed axe fragment is the blade end of the tool. It has expanded blade tips and the casting seams are still apparent along the sides. The blade itself is blunt and there is a profusion of scratches (some of them deep) on the pitted surface. Length 38 millimetres; width 45.5 millimetres; weight 60.18 grams.

2. The spear blade tip has a deep and prominent midrib; both sides of the blade are still present. What might conceivably be the start of the socket is visible at the lower (broken) end of the midrib. The edges of the blades are blunt, having been completed destroyed by corrosion. The rest of the surface is pitted with many scratches. Length 26.3 millimetres; width 13 millimetres; weight 3.78 grams.

Hoard Weight

63.96 grams (before conservation).

Date

There is nothing chronologically sensitive about the hoard components. Socketed axes appear in the middle Bronze Age Taunton phase (Schmidt and Burgess 1981, 172-3), which began c. 1500 BC (Needham et al. 1998, 85). But they are not found in any numbers in Essex until later when find numbers peak in the c. 1020-800 BC Ewart Park phase of the late Bronze Age. Theoretically the axe might belong to the c. 800-600 BC Llyn Fawr phase but metalwork of that period is almost unheard of in the county (Cuddeford and Sealey 2000, 15; O'Connor 2007, 64). The only Llyn Fawr axe known to the writer from Essex is a solitary bronze Sompting axe from Walthamstow published as a drawing in the frontispiece to Hatley (1933). Technically therefore the High Laver 2 hoard should be assigned to the broad period c. 1500-600 BC, although the likelihood is that it belongs to the c. 1020-800 BC Ewart Park phase.

An Interpretation of the Finds and Their Status as Potential Treasure

The items catalogued here are bronze or copper-alloy (although no scientific metallurgical analyses of the finds have been undertaken) and were found together the same field. Bearing in mind their date and the fact that both items were found together in direct association and therefore constitute a hoard, there is a prima facie case for considering the find to be treasure, as defined in law.

Author of the Report

Dr Paul R. Sealey, F.S.A. Curator of Archaeology Colchester and Ipswich Museum Service 01206-282932 paul.sealey@colchester.gov.uk

4 December 2008

Bibliography

Cuddeford, M.J. and Sealey, P.R., 2000. 'A late Bronze Age hoard from High Easter', Essex Archaeol. Hist. 31, 1-17

Hatley, A.R., 1933. Early Days in the Walthamstow District (Walthamstow Antiquarian Society Official Publication 28) (Walthamstow)

Needham, S.P., Bronk Ramsay, C., Coombs, D.G., Cartwright, C. and Pettitt, P., 1998. 'An independent chronology for British Bronze Age metalwork: the results of the Oxford radiocarbon accelerator programme', Archaeol. J. 154 for 1997, 55-107

O'Connor, B., 2007. 'Llyn Fawr metalwork in Britain: a review', in C.C. Haselgrove and R.E. Pope (eds), The Earlier Iron Age in Britain and the Near Continent (Oxford), 64-79

Schmidt, P.K. and Burgess, C.B., 1981. The Axes of Scotland and Northern England (Prähistorische Bronzefunde 9.7) (Munich)