English: An incomplete Bronze Age red deer (Cervus elaphus) antler Base Axe mattock dating from 3000 - 1000 BC. This is a Smith Type B mattock. The object consists of the lower beam and basal junction of a red deer antler. The brow tine and bez tine have both been removed, at the distal end (the burr) remains. The mattock has a perforation with a diameter 26.59mm mediolaterally through the beam above the bez tine junction where the haft would have been inserted. At the proximal end the working edge is missing.

AMS radiocarbon dating of similar Base Axe mattocks by (Tolan-Smith & Bonsall, 1999) gave a Bronze Age date range of between 3000 - 1000 BC.

Dimensions: length: 126.12mm; width: 73.96mm; thickness: 51.03; perforation diameter: 28.33mm; weight: 306.23g.

Elliott (2014:4) "Smith's broad typo-chronological framework has also been challenged by the application of AMS radiocarbon dating to bone and antler artefacts from the British Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic (Bonsall & Smith, 1989, 1992; Bonsall et al., 1995; Tolan-Smith & Bonsall, 1999). Table 1 and Figure 2F demonstrate that types A and B date mainly to the Bronze Age, with a single type B mattock producing an Early Mesolithic date."

References: Elliott B. 2014. Facing the Chop: Redefining British Antler Mattocks to Consider Larger-scale Maritime Networks in the Early Fifth Millennium Cal BC, European Journal of Archaeology 2014, pp. 1-23

Smith, C. 1989. British Antler Mattocks. In: C. Bonsall, ed. The Mesolithic in Europe: Papers Presented at the Third International Symposium, Edinburgh 1985. Edinburgh: J Donald, pp. 272-83.

Tolan-Smith, C. & Bonsall, C. 1999. Stone Age Studies in the British Isles: The Impact of Accelerator Dating. Memoires de la Société prehistorique francaise, 26:249-57.