Jade Axe
A History of the World in 100 Objects
The Canterbury Axe Head in the British Museum Acts
The bolder from which the British Museum Acts was chipped 6,000 years ago sits today in a landscape high above the earth and sometimes above the clouds. The jade seekers seem to have deliberately chosen this special spot. It's likely that it was first of all roughly sculpted in northern Italy, then carried hundreds of miles across Europe to northwest France. Jade from here eventually spread throughout northern Europe, some even as far as Scandinavia. We can only speculate how the hierarchies of prehistoric British society might have regarded this rare and beautiful thing or what they might have done with it.
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