Stone axe

A stone axe discovered in Brzózki (German: Althagen) found its way into the museum collection of the Society for History and Antiquities of Pomerania (Gesellschaft für Pommersche Geschichte und Altertumskunde) in Szczecin in 1847 or early 1848. Together with another miniature stone axe, the Society received it as a gift from Friedrich Ferdinand Krüger. He was the heir to the local estate, which had been in his family's possession since the 1880s when Gottfried Krüger acquired it from the first owner, the war councillor August Friedrich Matthias. Both finds were excavated by accident while cleaning a ditch on the property at the Szczecin Lagoon, probably in swampy soil. In 1880, the monument was presented among the most valuable museum exhibits from the Szczecin collection of Pomeranian antiquities at a prestigious exhibition of archaeological and anthropological finds from Germany, opened during the 11th General Convention of the German Anthropological Society in Berlin. In the catalogue accompanying this exhibition, it is listed as an axe of the Amazons. It was the term used then for axes with both ends extended symmetrically up and down. The name referred to the Greek Amazons known from ancient accounts and mythology, women warriors who used double-edged axes in battle and at the same time considered them symbols of power. Neolithic double-edged axes are believed to have evolved from the evolution of stone mace or to be an imitation of the oldest copper labrys. They are commonly regarded as battle-axes and objects of prestige. Their different varieties were widespread in the Funnel Beaker culture in northern Germany and southern Scandinavia when the so-called corridor tombs belonging to the younger megalithic constructions were created there. In West Pomerania, they probably appeared because of contacts with the Nordic area in the last centuries of the 3rd and 2nd millennium BC.

Krzysztof Kowalski