An Assemblage of Palaeolithic Hand-Axes from the Roman Religious Complex at Ivy Chimneys, Witham, Essex

Abstract

THE Iron Age settlement and Roman religious site at Ivy Chimneys, Witham, 1 lies on the line of the Roman London to Colchester road, c. 2 km. south-west of the modern town of Witham (fig. i). The site, which lies on the 30 m. contour, has produced extensive evidence of Roman votive activity, and traces of two possible Romano-Celtic temples were recovered during the 1978-83 excavations. 2

Remembering and Forgetting in the Roman Provinces

“…With regard to the original body of material gathered by Adkins and Adkins (1985), Bradley (1986) pointed out that many sites had seen prehistoric activity, thus making it possible that some ancient artefacts occurred in Roman contexts by chance. Equally, while the nature of the Ivy Chimneys assemblage of forty-one Palaeolithic hand-axes (Turner and Wymer 1987) suggests that there was human selection, I am not convinced that these hand-axes would even have been recognised as man-made by a nonarchaeologist. Given that they were found in gravel deposits in pits not associated with the Ivy Chimneys templ es, is it possi ble that suitably sized pieces of flint were collected for some more mundane purpose?…”

Acheulean Handaxes in Medieval France: An Earlier ‘Modern’ Social History for Palaeolithic Bifaces

“…Sixteenth-century natural historians across Europe noted the presence of ‘ceraunia’ or ‘thunderstones’, which were ‘curiously shaped stone objects … treated as a naturally occurring geological phenomenon’ formed through lightning strikes (Goodrum 2002, 257). This explanation for the presence of handaxes has a long history, with Turner and Wymer (1987) suggesting 44 Roman-deposited Palaeolithic handaxes from Witham, UK, to have been a possible tribute to Jupiter, a Roman god often depicted wielding thunderbolts. Moreover, Pliny the Elder ( Natural History 37.51) describes red ‘elongated’ ceraunia ‘resembling axe-heads’, which were considered by the Magi to be found ‘only in a place that has been struck by a thunderbolt’.…”

“…Moreover, there is little record of their role within society in these earlier occurrences (although see Johanson 2009;King 1867), or unequivocal evidence of their acceptance as objects with societal value prior to the seventeenth century. Indeed, despite the widely repeated interpretation of Turner and Wymer (1987), we can only securely state that a collection of prehistoric handaxes was intentionally deposited by Romans beneath a structure. This does not go much further than Frere's (1797) reporting of workmen depositing baskets full of handaxes to fix ruts in roads.…”

Ancestor Artefacts - Ancestor Materials

“…The presence of Roman finds on Dark Age sites (Dark 1993) and the presence of prehistoric finds on Roman sites (Eckardt 2004; Adkins and Adkins 1985; Ferris and Smith 1995; Turner and Wymer 1987) speak of the superstitions and power associated with objects from the distant past in the peripheral provinces of the Roman empire (Eckardt 2004). In Rome itself, temples were filled with ‘artistic spolia’ (Greenhalgh 1989), in particular Greek statuary, from the conquests of an expanding empire.…”