File:Flint axe (profile) (FindID 406111).jpg

English: Flint axe, triangular in plan and lenticular in profile and section, tapering to a point at the butt end and squared off at the blade end. The axe is bifacially and bimarginally reworked throughout. There is no polishing on the blade and it is difficult to identify any surface gloss as the whole axe has a surface sheen. The cutting edge is symmetrical in profile suggesting that the implement would have been used as an axe rather than an adze. The flint is a light grey colour which is typical of the local flint derived from the Lower Chalk of the Yorkshire Wolds, but erratic flint is also available as large flint blocks, up to 60 cm in length, on the beaches of Bridlington Bay (Manby 1979, p.71). There are some patches of iron staining on the surface, from the soil and surroundings that the axe was buried in.

The elegant triangular shape with expanded blade suggests that this may be a flint copy of an Early Bronze Age flat axe, and the shallow invasive flaking is also typical of this transitional period. Late Neolithic / Early Bronze Age (see NMS-92F628 for a similar example).

Manby in Clough & Cummins (1979) illustrates a similar flint axe which is triangular in plan with a narrow butt end and an expanded blade, from Dane's Dyke Farm at Sewerby, and now in Bridlington Museum, on page 70, Fig.4, No.2, and discusses the associations between Yorkshire flint axes and Later Neolithic Grooved Ware and Beaker period finds on page 71.

Clarke, Cowie & Foxon (1985) illustrate two similar flint axes with tapering narrow butt ends and finely flaked surfaces with edge-polishing, on page 64, Plate 3.34, Nos.30.1 & 30.2 from an early individual burial in a round barrow at Liff's Lowe in Derbyshire, which is dated from the Beaker period to the Early Bronze Age. They also illustrate a flint axe with an expanded blade from another early individual burial in Whitegrounds Barrow, Burythorpe, Yorkshire on page 66, Plate 3.35, No.31.2, where the inhumation has been dated to about 2800 BC.