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1884.127.15

Stone pick or hammer-stone

1884.127.15

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Collection type
Object
Description
Stone pick or hammer-stone
Long description
Stone pick or hammer-stone with pronounced groove. [CC [Excav. PR] 10/09/2013]
Date
Date collected
1874
Acquisition information
Donated: 1884
Materials and processes
Material Stone, Process Grooved
Dimensions
Thick: max 54 mm, Width: max 92 mm, Length: max 204 mm, Weight 1038 g
Object numbers
Accession number: 1884.127.15
Research and responses

JAI vol v page 2 has a paper given by Prof W Boyd Dawkins FRS at the Anthropological Institute meeting on 9.2.1875 when he also exhibited a series of stone mining tools from Alderley Edge. He had been walking in the excavations of the copper mines at Alderley Edge with H Wilde when he has spotted the worked tools [AP Leverhulme project on founding collection 1995-1998]

See http://www.derbyscc.org.uk/alderley/ for details about the mines at Alderley Edge, they were used to mine copper and lead [AP 03/08/2006]

The English Heritage maintained National Monuments Record holds maintains a record on the site under monument no. 76343. The record states the following about the site: Old mine-workings for copper have been identified at Engine Vein (SJ 8605 7748), Brindlow (c. SJ 855 773), Stormy Point (SJ 8611 7784), in Windmill Wood quarry (SJ 8550 7760) and at Saddlebole (SJ 8604 7810), but only at Brindlow were they undisturbed by later workings. They were open workings and a large number of grooved stone hammers have been recovered either from the pits or their tips. The hammers (illustrated in 1) were first assigned c. 1874, to the Bronze Age by Professor Boyd Dawkins, but later because an oak shovel...and an iron pick were found in association with hammers (the shovel at an unspecified spot between 1876 and 1878, and the pick at Engine Vein c. 1904) were considered Romano-British. The record can be accessed online at http://pastscape.english-heritage.org.uk/hob.aspx?hob_id=76343. [MN 12/06/2009]

Associated publications
Boyd Dawkins, W. 1876. On the Stone Mining Tools from Alderley Edge, Cheshire. Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 5: 2-5 http://www.jstor.org/stable/2841358 [Dan Hicks 04/07/2013]

Search terms: Tool, Metallurgy, Hammer-stone, Pick