Casgliadau Arlein

Bronze flat axe of Type Barton Stacey (Class 3D). This is a complete flat axe in good condition, with original surfaces surviving over the majority of the axe. The axe is narrow-butted and wide-bladed and has a lenticular profile. The sides of the axe are gently concave, expanding modestly from the butt to the blade end. There is slight triple faceting visible down the sides of the axe, indicating that these were hammered after casting. Hammering of the side facets has led to the face-edges becoming crisp and very slightly raised in places, however this is not deliberate and visible enough to constitute true low hammered flanges. The butt of the axe is curved with a low to medium arch. There is no central stop bevel on the faces of the axe. The broad cutting edge has a shallow blade bevel, approximately 7mm in depth. Striations are evident on the lower face and blade bevel, running parallel with the long-axis of the axe, indicating the blade was prepared for use. There is differential patination evident on the axe, one face being green and the other being dark-grey green. Along one side of the dark-grey green face, there is an elongate strip of mottled surface matching the size and dimensions of the axe-chisel. This provides evidence that the axe and axe-chisel were carefully placed together, one immediately on top of the other. A localised area of black patination extends across half of the blade bevel on the reverse axe face with green patination. On the butt end of the face with green patination, a modern diagonal scrape is also evident, revealing a small area of fresh bronze metal. A second less deep diagonal scratch is also evident on the same face at the lower blade end. This is likely to have occurred during recent removal of the axe from the ground by the finder. In places along the face-edges and blade-edge original surfaces have been lost, revealing grey-green areas of sub-surface. In places along face-edges, there is also localised surface cracking evident on original surfaces, indicating these areas to be fragile and unstable.