[SunkenCiv]

A group of 453 artefacts are due to go on display at a museum next year © LDRS

[Hot Tabasco]

Why don’t they clean them up?

[rktman]

Yet, not an AR to be found.

[2banana]

Assault weapons of the day.

[BenLurkin]

Very cool

[lurk]

Weapons are forbidden in London.

[Billthedrill]

I hope they didn’t have pointy ends on them.

[SES1066]

For those of us outside England / Britain, the following may be a bit confusing;

The find, which dates from between 800BC and 900BC, was officially declared treasure by a coroner earlier this year.

In these cases, pursuant to the "Treasure Act of 1996", if a 'find' has items of historic heritage or coinage older than 300 years [other criteria], then the local coroner is informed within 14 days and that person has the responsibility of saying yea or nay to the find being a 'treasure'. If yea, the coroner would inform the relevant parties, e.g. the national and local museums, the finder, the landowner, etc. The Treasure Valuation Committee may be called in to determine the value of the find, should a museum desire to purchase it. It is only when a museum is not interested in purchasing the ‘treasure’, or unable to do so, that the finder may retain it, and do with it as they please.

[Openurmind]

Looking forward to the testing for the origin of this copper.

[TXnMA]

Based on the text, I expected this to be evidence of an axe-bit refurbishing / resharpening workshop. IOW, a site akin to the lithic "Tranchet Flake" workshop at Colha in Belize, where used stone adzes were re-sharpened by skillful removal of a single, strategically-planned billet flake (at first called an "'Orange peel/segment' flake", then generalized as "Tranchet Flake").

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

However, examination of the photo shows relatively few damaged "bit edges". Rather, most of the damage I see is breakage associated with the hafting cavity or socket on these bronze (90-degree-hafted) axe heads.

Surprisingly, there appears to be few examples of damage to the (relatively-fragile) haft-binding loops...

Several of the axe heads appear to be intact and re-usable, but there may be cracks or fractures not visible in the photos, A number of the samples have sub-rectangular, rather than circular socket openings; the rectangle "corners" could well be stress-risers and fracture-initiation points...

Several fractures appear to be at the bottom of the socket hole, and there are clear indications of a weak (wedge-shaped) socket bottom design.

At any rate, the above failure indications -- plus the presence of amorphous melted bronze -- would tend to imply that, at least, the group in the photo with the gloved hand -- may well have been deemed non-repairable, and were scheduled for re-casting.

~~~~~~~~~~

That's a lot of inference from scant data, but, it makes sense to me...

YMMV... '-)

TXnMA
  

[bitt]

p