![]() ![]() As these narrow blades are mostly quite short, often less than 50 mm, they look like miniatures of type three or four blades and are often regarded as children’s toys or non-functional amulets. Although it is not a classifying characteristic, nearly all type one blades have a HBI larger than 50, mostly even around 100. Type one blades are characterized by a width of less than 20 mm. The high, mostly quite narrow (between 30 and 40 mm) adzes of type four have a height that exceeds its width (index >100). In contrast to type two the medium high blades of type three have a breadth between one and two times the height (HBI between 50 and 100). The most common type (type two) is the flat blade with a height-breadth-index (HBI) of less than 50, which means that the breadth is more than two times the height. A respective index is calculated by dividing the thickness of the blade by its breadth, multiplied by 100. ![]() According to the most recent classification (Ramminger 2007) four types are distinguished, based on the absolute width of the blade in combination with the height-breadth-ratio. ![]() There are two general forms: a flat, mostly broad blade, known in the older literature as Flachhacke or flat hoe, and a higher, often narrower variety, formerly known as Schuhleistenkeil or shoe-last celt. This shape, as well as hafting traces and use-wear, is clearly indicating that they were hafted as adzes with the cutting edge perpendicular to the handle instead of parallel as in axes. Such tools are of a typical shape with a very pronounced asymmetrical section, characterized by a domed upper side and a flat bottom with a distinct bevel towards the cutting edge (See Figure 1). Apart from the eponymous pottery, decorated with curves and spirals, they introduced diverse crops, domestic animals, timber-built longhouses and polished stone tools to the region. The first farmers, inhabiting the fertile loess-soils in Central Europe, were the carriers of the Linear Pottery Culture (LPC), more commonly designated as LBK for the acronym of the German Linearbandkeramik (for an older but still valid overview in English: Modderman 1988). In many aspects, including the felling of the trees for the construction of the first permanent architecture and the production of agricultural tools, the Stone Age is a Wood Age. It was a prerequisite for the clearing of the land to create fields and settlements. In many ways the polished stone axe or adze is indeed emblematic for this new way of life, which was introduced to Central Europe in the middle of the sixth millennium BC. Early Neolithic polished stone toolsĪs the Neolithic was first defined in 1865, it was done without any regards to agriculture, sedentarism, pottery and all other innovations, now known to be associated with the Neolithic transition, but on the basis of the occurrence of polished stone tools (Lubbock 1865, 3).
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