Jade is normally associated with imperial China, notably the Han Dynasty burial suits made up of hundreds of jade plaques linked with gold wire; or with the Ancient Maya in Central America, where royal burials were often smothered in jade necklaces and carved objects. Prehistoric Europe is not usually thought of as society that used jade, but recent studies have shown that superb polished axes of green jadeitite were traded from the Alps to the Channel 6,500 years ago, reaching Britain shortly thereafter.
A three-year project, JADE, has investigated the production, distribution, use and meaning of Neolithic jade axeheads, and is “revolutionising our understanding”, Alison Sheridan writes in The Archaeologist. Involving researchers across Europe and a ¤-Euro<NO> budget, the project “is the brainchild of Pierre P?trequin and is the fruit of many years’ work undertaken with his wife Anne-Marie, involving fieldwork high in the Alps”.
The P?trequins did not believe that the source of European jade was from boulders transported by rivers and glaciers to the foot of the Alps. By fieldwalking in the Alps at altitudes of 1800-2400m (5850-7800ft) each year since 1994 they have discovered the bedrock sources of jade and the working site where the raw material was trimmed down into “rough-outs” with hammerstones.
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Two main sources have been found: at Monte Viso above Turin, and Monte Beigua above Genoa, both in northwestern Italy. A source of nephrite, another rock classified as jade but of different chemical composition from jadeitite, exists in the Valais area of Switzerland. “The spectacular geography of the source areas makes it easy to imagine that the large, exquisite axeheads could have been attributed divine powers, coming from the liminal zone between Earth and the Otherworld”, Dr Sheridan says. In medieval Europe stone axes were called “elf-shot”, or thought to fall from the clouds.
The jade-workers could only collect their raw material during the summer, and brought their prizes down to lower altitudes for finishing.
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Jade has a hardness of 6.5 on the Mohs scale, substantially harder than a steel knife blade. It was worked by sawing, using water and sand as an abrasive. One partly sawn block was found 200 kilometres (125 miles) from its source. Subsequent work was by pecking, grinding and polishing, and experiments suggest that the finest axes took a thousand hours of work, Dr Sheridan says.
The finished products were traded great distances, up to 1,800km from their Alpine sources. Jade axes have been found as far away as Varna in Bulgaria and Co Mayo in Ireland.
Production seems to have begun around 5,000BC, supplying the area around the Alps with small axes, perhaps for everyday use. Larger axes, up to 47cm (19in) long, were traded longer distances by around 4600 BC, when they are found associated with megaliths in Brittany.
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More than 140 jade axes are known from the British Isles, and seem to have arrived around 4000 BC. One of the most noted, found as a ritual deposit beside the Neolithic Sweet Track across the Somerset Levels, was deposited close to the spring of 3806 BC, on the basis of tree-ring dating of the track (The Times, July 1, 1990).
Project JADE’s database of 12,000 analyses shows that one axe found in Fife was made from the same block of Monte Viso jade as three found in Germany, while a superb example from Canterbury came from the same block as an axe from Breamore in Hampshire, although these two were made centuries apart. Many “were carefully placed in significant contexts, especially in wet areas, as beside the Sweet Track or in the Thames”, a pattern of ritual offering found across Europe and marked most spectacularly by the “bog bodies” of the Iron Age.
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Dr Sheridan suggests that the decision to exploit difficult to access British sources of fine stone to make polished axes, as at Langdale Pike in the Lake District (The Times, August 6, 1987) may have been inspired by the desire to recreate the continental “magic mountain” ideology of axe production locally in Britain and Ireland.
Ancient trade routes spread ideas and beliefs as well as such precious items as jade axes.
The Archaeologist 71 (Spring 2009): 38-40