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The Langdale axe industry (or factory) is the name given by archaeologists to a Neolithic centre of specialised stone tool production in the Great Langdale area of the English Lake District. [1] The existence of the site, which dates from around 4,000–3,500 BC, [ 2 ] was suggested by chance discoveries in the 1930s.
Great Langdale and Elterwater were centres of the Lakeland slate industry. Two slate workings, Elterwater Quarry and Spout Cragg Quarry, have been more or less continually working using modern methods. Elterwater is the larger of the two, and like Spout Cragg, is operated by the Burlington Stone Company.
A Neolithic stone axe from Cumbria, now in the British Museum. [2] Fell was interested in the analysis of individual axes. [3] In 1949 she worked on Grahame Clark's excavations at the Star Carr Mesolithic site in Yorkshire. Around the same time she began studying the Langdale axe industry in Cumbria, the project for which she is perhaps best ...
The factory was set up here because of a vein of greenstone, a very hard volcanic rock, which comes to the surface around the head of the valley. Evidence of axe manufacture have been found in many areas of Great Langdale but it is the screes of Pike of Stickle which have yielded the most discoveries.
This is probably due to the area's proximity to the so-called 'Langdale Axe Factory'. Many of the axes seem to have been intentionally deposited in waterlogged areas, or in fissures in rocks. [34] In Cumbria the majority of axe heads originating from Langdale have been found on the Furness Peninsula. [35] Castlerigg Stone Circle
By contrast, Neolithic axeheads from the Langdale axe industry were recognised as a type well before the centre at Great Langdale was identified by finds of debitage and other remains of the production, and confirmed by petrography (geological analysis). The stone was quarried and rough axe heads were produced there, to be more finely worked ...
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Neolithic stone axe from Langdale. The Lake District has a long history of mining and quarrying going back to at least Neolithic times, with the stone axe factory at Langdale. There are very few active mines or quarries in the Lake District at present, with the quarries working the Shap Granite being a notable exception.