This diorite axe from northwest Queensland dates to the Holocene period, after 5000 BP.  The axe is an heirloom of a Pitta Pitta family from Boulia.  The shape of the axe is similar to those made at axe quarries near Lake Moondarra, west of Mt Isa, Queensland.

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The axe in this model was expertly-made from a slab of dioritic rock.  The slab was shaped by non-invasive percussion flaking followed by pecking (also called ‘hammer dressing’).  The edges were rounded and shaped by pecking applied directly onto the edge, rather than oblique to it.  A cutting edge was ground onto one end of the axe.  The unusual disc shape is typical of axes made in the region, particularly at the Lake Moondarra axe quarry near Mount Isa.  The axe appears to have been minimally resharpened.

See the annotations for technological details about this stone tool.

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The earliest-known edge-ground stone axes in the world are found in archaeological sites in Australia, and are over 40,000 years old.  They were made continuously from the earliest occupation of the continent through to the recent past, and are still made in New Guinea today. Stone axes were made in vast numbers during the Middle and Late Holocene period, from about 10,000 years ago, and Aboriginal people developed extensive trade networks for axes made of particularly prized stones.  The anthropologist W. E. H. Stanner, writing in 1933 about ceremonial trade on the Daly River of the Northern Territory, said that ‘there can be nothing more useless in the native economy than a pile of [stone axes] with nowhere to send them.’  Axes were also symbolically and ritually important, with story sites for axe quarries and mythological figures wielding stone axes as weapons.  For instance, Namarrkon, an Ancestral Being in Arnhem Land in Northern Australia, uses stone axes affixed to his head, elbows, and knees to create the intense lightning in storms that signal the arrival of the monsoon.  Axes were integrated within the cultural system in the historic period, and axe manufacture and use was embedded in various social roles.  Stone axes in the recent past were usually mounted onto thin wood handles and affixed with plant resin or native bees wax.