Neolithic axe found in Lake Constance

A wood and stone axe from the Neolithic era in impeccable condition was discovered in Switzerland’s Lake Constance last year. It has been conserved and stabilized and is now on display at the Museum of Archaeology in Frauenfeld. Its wooden handle dates it to around 4,800 years ago when a prehistoric community of houses built on stilts occupied what is now the lake shore.

The artifact was found during an underwater excavation in the harbor basin of Steckborn on the southwestern arm of the lake. The area was scheduled for dredging due to low water levels this winter, and because the remains of prehistoric pile dwellings had been found there in the 19th century, divers from the Thurgau Office for Archaeology explored the site last spring.

The excavation uncovered posts from the pile houses, animal bones, pottery fragments and stone tools. The axe was the most important find in the group and would have been highly valued in the Neolithic community. Experiments with fiddle bows have found that it takes more than a day of work to manufacture an axe like this one.

The axe blade was made of prasinite, a hard, tough rock from the Grisons Alps. However, back then, it wasn’t necessary to hike all the way up the Alpine Rhine Valley to obtain this raw material. Such stones can also be found in the Ice Age moraines around Steckborn. For the handle, the pile dwellers chose a thin ash trunk. This type of wood is hard and elastic, thus perfectly fulfilling the requirements for a tool handle.

The pile dwellings were built on what was then marshy land. Building the houses on piles protected them from flooding, enemies and predators while giving the early agrarian communities easy access to fishing in the water and farming on the shore. Hundreds of people lived in groups of small homes connected to each other by wooden walkways that were also built on piles. Made out of wood, wattle and daub (clay over woven branches) walls and thatch for roofs, they were not intended to be permanent structures. Evidence suggests they were replaced every 10 years or so.

As the waters of what would become the lake rose, the settlements were abandoned, but the waterlogged environment preserved organic materials for thousands of years. Artifacts recovered from the pile settlements include textiles, dugout canoes and the oldest wheels in Europe (ca. 3,000 B.C.). The rich source of archaeological materials illuminate how Neolithic farming communities worked, traded, fished, hunted and raised livestock.

* This article was originally published here