English: Incomplete gabbroic greenstone axe which has been petrologically analysed by Dr. Roger Taylor as part of the Clodgy Moor Project. Straight-sided in plan and lozenge-shaped in profile and oval in section. About half of the axe remains, including the cutting edge, which has a shaped finish and has broken after some grinding, so it is not a roughout. The axe may have originally been twice as long, judging from similar ethnographic parallels, in order to balance it with the haft. The axe may look like an adze because its blade is slightly off-centre and its section not quite elliptical, or symmetrical either side of the mid-line. But this just shows that it was made from a cobble where one side maintains the original smooth surface that is due to the underlying crystalline formation over time, and the other has been pecked and ground, giving it a rougher, newly exposed surface which comes from inside the cobble (Dave Weddle pers comm). The greenstone is typical of that found in the west of Cornwall from known outcrops and contains pale felspars and dark amphibole inclusions (Dr. Roger Taylor pers comm - see notes below).

Similar examples have been excavated from the Neolithic settlement at Carn Brea and are referred to in Mercer (1981) on page 159, Petrological Identification No.CO 253 (adze) and illustrated on page 155, Fig.64, No.S6 (axe).