So this is it. THIS is the discovery that made our hearts skip a beat.

It’s a beautiful Neolithic polished stone axe. Specifically, it’s a Langdale axe – a type of axe produced in England’s Lake District and distributed all over the country on a near industrial scale between 4,000 and 6,000 years ago.

It’s made from Langdale tuff, which became one of the most common materials for axe-making at the time. But the fact that it was the most common does NOT make it ordinary.

Born of volcanic ash, petrographic analysis shows that the tuff used for these axes comes from a narrow range of outcrops along the likes of Scaffell Pike and Harrison Stickle. In other words, our axe is made from compressed volcano dust harvested from some of the highest peaks in England!

If it sounds like the stuff of legend, then bear in mind that Neolithic people could probably have got similar tuff from easier to reach locations. Perhaps its source mattered, and the people who acquired the axes really did want what was hardest to get.

In a way, it’s easy to see why. That same wow-factor still resonates today.

The artefact was discovered when Allison noticed a sudden flash of aquamarine under her trowel. As the object got passed around, we were all immediately smitten, not only by how it looked (so blue, so shiny!), how it felt (so smooth!), and by how much of a tangible connection it provided to the person who last held it 4,000 years ago, but also by the impressive story of its origin.

But it’s not just how immediate the discovery feels, it’s what it adds to the story of the mighty Bronze Age burial mound we’ve been investigating up here in Lancashire.

So far, most of our major finds (like the urn), relate to the early Bronze Age, but the fact that Allison found the axe broken and buried in a fire pit absolutely smacks of Neolithic behaviour.

The axe itself is not complete; it bears the wounds of having been hit on the side with another sharp object and appears to have been broken, perhaps intentionally. All we’re left with is the very end. So who smashed it? Why? When? And what happened to the rest of it?

If this axe and the fire pit it was buried in really is the result of late Neolithic activity, then it pushes the story of our burial mound even further back into the past. And that makes this little axe a pretty gigantic discovery.

Yippee! A little gallery of all our favourite photos from our second week at Barrowed Time.

It has been an incredible excavation. In the first week, we exposed the centre of the monument and combed it’s exterior for any tiny pieces of evidence. By the second week, we’d cracked the monument’s rocky outer shell and started probing the inner surface. It was a long and delicate process, but it paid off! We found another urn to the one we found last year, and fragments from several other urns too – each decorated with a different pattern. We also found a number of fire pits, full to the brim with burned material, and even a polished Neolithic axe.

We’re so proud that our crowdfunded dig has recovered so much new evidence. Given that so few Bronze Age sites have been investigated in the region, this is going to have a HUGE impact on our understanding of the Bronze Age in North West England.

For now, it’s goodbye from the field team, but not for long… we’ll be handing everything over to the lab team and will be getting it all analysed over the winter months. We can’t wait to see what new discoveries await us in the lab!

Waaaaaah! We’ve come to the end of the dig but we still have so much to tell you! #BarrowedTime pic.twitter.com/TKDAPCnDdV

— DigVentures (@TheDigVenturers) September 24, 2017

Curiously, it appears to have been intentionally broken as it bears the wounds of having been struck on the side with another sharp object.

Even more interestingly, Allison found it buried in the fire pit she’s been excavating. An intentionally broken axe buried in a fire pit absolutely reeks of Neolithic activity, and if that’s the case, it pushes the story of this Bronze Age burial mound even further back into the past!