NAVIGATION

These magnificent stone axes are illustrative of an emerging society whose self image was one of warfare rather than one of work. They have been found in the male graves of the 'corded ware culture' which included Denmark and stretched from Switzerland to Moscow. Unlike their prehistoric forebears who lived in large communal village farming groups, they were outsiders living on the margins of existing cultures. They were a semi-nomadic people of small, more fluid, social grouping where livestock rather than land was the basis for wealth, and artefacts such as this axe, were symbols of authority and power. Their dead no longer joined an anonymous community of ancestors, but were buried as personalities showing off their personal position and equipment of life.