The Tale of the Axe

Focusing on the British Isles, the author explores a period of huge societal change—the Neolithic, or 'New Stone Age'—through the most iconic artefact of its time: the polished stone axe. Using an ancient stone axe-head brought to him by a local quarry worker, the book provides a guide to the revolution that changed the world.

These formidable creations were not only crucial tools that enabled the first farmers to clear the forests but also objects of great symbolic importance, signifying status and power, interwoven with expressions of religion and politics. Mixing anecdote, ethnography, and archaeological analysis, the author vividly demonstrates how the archaeology on the ground reveals the evolving worldview of a species increasingly altering their own landscape; settling down together, investing in agricultural plots, and collectively erecting massive ceremonial monuments to cement new communal identities.

As a direct result of the invention and intensification of agriculture, the planet entered the Anthropocene, or the current 'age of humanity': an era in which we are changing the world around us in significant, accelerating, and often unpredictable ways. As the author poignantly concludes, our ancestors set us on the path to the modern world we live in; now seven billion humans must face the challenges that presents.

The Tale of the Axe is enriched with 76 illustrations, 24 in colour.