File:Bronze Age - Flat Axe (FindID 273467).jpg

English: This is a fragment of an Early Bronze Age flat axe. In this case, the axe has lost most of the lower blade and cutting edge but the shape and overall characteristics, give credibility to the conclusion.

The butt is rounded, slightly bent and coincident with the bend, there is a stress fracture across the face around one centimetre from the top edge. A small section of the butt has broken away and missing. The surface is undecorated but there are what appear to be hammer strikes down the edges. The axe width expands from the butt with a very slight concave curve towards the now missing blade section. The remaining length is 81.5mm and maximum width 47.5mm. The thickness runs from 6.92mm at the butt to 4.90mm at the remaining lower edge at the break.

Found in Shropshire near the border with Wales, it resembles the matrices carved on the five-matrix axe mould from the river bed of the Walleybourne below Longden Common which has been ascribed to the Migdale-Marnoch tradition. See Thomas, Nicolas, "An Early Bronze Age Stone Axe-Mould from the Walleybourne below Longden Common, Shropshire" in Prehistoric Man in Wales and the West, 1972, pp161-6. It is also similar to axeheads found at Usk, Monmouthsire and St George's, Glamorgan (Savory, H N, 1980. "National Museum of Wales, Guide Catalogue of the Bronze Age Collections", pp165, Fig. 17, nos 106 and 110). Staff at the National Museum have now confirmed the this axe belongs to the Migdale Tradition.

The surface has a small area of ancient, brown bronze patina but the greater part is lost. That patina has now broken away to reveal the corrosive bright green copper oxidation below.