AXE-CITING FIND AT DIG

ARCHAEOLOGISTS looking for evidence of neolithic axe work have make an “astonishing” discovery. team of experts from Gwynedd Archaeological Trust have come across three discarded axe workings in Llanfairfechan, Conwy – made roughly around 5,000 years ago.

They are thought to have been thrown away when someone had started to shape the stone into an axe, and found it was not good enough.

Hundreds of ‘stone flakes’ have also been discovered at the field at Ty’n y Llwyfan Farm, the debris from axe working.

Jane Kenney, a senior archaeologist at Gwynedd Archaeological Trust explained the flakes are struck from stone blocks as they are reduced to a suitable shape and size for axes.

To find the flakes, archaeologists dug 16 small holes (test pits) at intervals across a field at Ty’n y Llwyfan Farm, with permission from the farmer.

The area is near to where evidence of axe working has been found before.

“We were astonished with the results,” Ms Kenney, said. “Axe-working flakes were found in every pit.

“Some just had a few, but most had many and some had hundreds of flakes. Three axe ‘roughouts’ were found also. The person trying to make an axe would have selected a stone and tried to knap it into shape. But some stones are better than others, and if a stone was not good enough it was quickly discarded.”

The Neolithic period in Britain was about 6000 to 4500 years ago – before bronze and iron metalworking had been discovered. Ms Kenney said the axes from here found their way through exchange over all of the southern half of Britain.

She added: “In future years we want to look more widely for axeworking sites around Llanfairfechan and Penmaenmawr.

“We would love to find out where people were living and where they were finishing off the axes.

“We might find out if people were living permanently in the area or if they visited so that they could collect axe stone from this special, and probably sacred, place.”

Neolithic stone axe making was first recorded in North Wales the 1920s, when there were excavations around a rock outcrop known as Graig Lwyd above Penmaenmawr.

Since then fieldwork, especially by David T Jones from Llanfairfechan, has shown stone quarrying and axe working took place at a number of locations above Llanfairfechan and Penmaenmawr. There are traces of an extensive Neolithic landscape of national importance in this area that has received relatively little archaeological investigation.