R is for the Real Thing

According to the labels put on it by the seller (some +40-odd years ago), or the collector (I think it was an auction lot) this is a mid-Bronze Age hammer-head. In an axe-like format it was probably used for rough-working wood, for posts, door-frames, cart-parts? That sort of thing; also for post-holes, breaking ground, ditching, digging roots out . . . and chopping dead-wood for firewood? The blunt end would be for banging-in posts or 'nails'; handmade bronze pins, killing livestock and making new hammers!

Other than that I know nothing about it and wouldn't pretend to; when I mentioned it to an archeologist friend of mine (in its absence) I thought it was 'cave man' (i.e. Palaeolithic or Stone Age) and she got quite excited saying "....there's only a few known" but I guess, later metal-age ones are commoner?

Anyway, as part of the occasional ('very occasional' these days, but I hope to have more non-toy stuff go up in the future) 'Other Collectables' thread (which was a separate Blog back at the start of my web-logging), I'll let the pictures speak for themselves, the interesting thing is the double tapered hole which would produce a pinch-point, allowing another hammering-tool or a block of wood, to force it on to a slightly larger-diameter shaft and to then pack the ends with waxed or pitched-rope maybe, before the/any wedges and cross-tying?

I don't know what kind of stone it is either, but you can see it's a fine-grained material, and appears to be a sedimentary rock similar to slate or shale, however from the chip off the 'blade' end you can see the granular look and stepped-edge of something more like a fine granite? It's also bloody heavy!

S is for Shrunken Stone!

You know how it is . . . the neighbours get all the tribes together, six-summers running and build a bloody great henge-a-ma-bob down the road, and you think it would be nice to get Jeff the odd-job bloke to knock you up one between the parterre and the ha-ha? Cost is an issue - of course; you've been taxed the fuck-out-of to pay for the big-chief's one, so you go with a bit of a downsized 'replica'!

This was a charity-shop job earlier in the week, and I was trying to gauge the size of the thing from the very small box, and whether it was the same as the one I bought years ago, after another Blogger (who I'm afraid I've forgotten the name of) highlighted them on his Blog (The Works it was). I reckoned it couldn't be the same; in addition it was only 95p, so I figured it was worth a punt?

Once I'd shot the pictures for Friday's 'News, Views . . . ' I began to suspect it was the same, the puzzle-mat seemed the same and the stones also felt/looked familiar as they fell into place, especially the L-shaped ones in the outer circle, but once it was all in place I thought it looked too small to re-do the battle I'd done on the previous posting. Also I couldn't find the old one on the dongles!

Eventually I found it on the Airfix Dongle as I'd posted one image there (reproduced above as I still haven't found the original sample!), and it's odd, but clever . . .

. . . both sets are by the same maker/publisher; Running Press, and to the eye, the stones seem to be about the same size, but the puzzle-disc base is about 30% smaller, and the whole thing has been contracted - the inner circle are all closed up (you wouldn't get a chariot through the new gap!), while two big gaps in the outer circle have been done away with to pull the whole thing tighter.

But closer inspection reveals that the stone may be smaller too. I will dig the old one out and do a proper comparison at some point (soon'ish - I think I know where it is), and I suspect the stones will be the same 30-odd% reduced. It's hard to judge as these are in a very small box while the others were spread-out in two or three layers of blisters.

Looking at the stones they (or some) look similar but not all identical and it may be that pantographing, or a scaling down of a CAD .dwg for 3D printing was employed in the production of new masters? Their finished state, like the earlier set is poured, cold-cast, two-part epoxy 'polyresin'.

I think these are part of a range of novelty 'things' (toys, games, pastimes and executive trinkets) in little boxes, that you find in places like Waterston's in a dedicated rack-tree; we've seen a Dalek here, and [foam] paper-planes? While the other was a kiddies activity book, but between the two, I may be able to produce a better 'complete' example one day, as it wasn't in its current state when the Romans arrived!

Although for those finding this one only, there were lots of stone circles once, with none of them the size or scale of Stonehenge, so imagination is the only limit and it'll make a great focus-piece of scenery in war-gaming . . . the message of the original post elsewhere I think!