Antler axe

An antler axe found in the Stępnica area (German: Stepenitz) was donated to the collection of the Pomeranian State Museum (Pommersches Landesmuseum) in Szczecin together with three flint axes at the end of November 1938 by Mr Grützmacher. Little information has survived about the circumstances of its discovery. Based on pencil sketches with a laconic, very poorly legible archival note, it is only known that the axe and flint tools came from the same field and that the axes were found together, deposited in one place. The axe from Stępnica belongs to the T-shaped forms produced from the male deer antlers, using their structure specifically. They were made using the central part of the tusk, cut at equal distances from the spur (the so-called rest), also removed, and a hole for a wooden handle was made in its place. T-shaped tools made of antlers were widespread in the Central European Lowlands from the late Mesolithic to the middle Neolithic. The oldest known specimens, dated even to the 7th millennium BC, are associated with a population practising a hunter-gatherer economy. However, a much larger group of finds of this type of tool dates to the 5th millennium. It co-occurs in the context of agricultural communities’ settlements, mainly from the group of late ribbon ceramics, but also with other populations, remaining in contact with agricultural communities or in the process of adopting features of the Neolithic economy. In the case of the axe from Stępnica, we have no data of the discovery. The only clue, which - with a considerable measure of reserve - can be used to approximate its dating, is the discovery in the same place of a deposit of flint axes, which are characteristic products of the people of the Funnel Beaker culture.

Krzysztof Kowalski