5. Conclusion

This article has drawn attention to a unique sequence of flaked debitage at Parc Bryn Cegin, which describes the conscious exfoliation of carefully and laboriously executed ground and polished axes of Graig Lwyd source rock over a protracted time-span, covering the whole of the Neolithic period in Wales. It has drawn attention to the same phenomenon being practised in other parts of Britain, establishing it as one of a number of specialised acts involving the burial of stone and flint axes. It is argued that Graig Lwyd polished axes, unflaked nuclei, and axe-making debitage was brought from the area of the type source to Parc Bryn Cegin, where it was systematically disaggregated and the resultant flaked assemblage buried in a series of pits. The act of disaggregation appears not to have been undertaken for any domestic/utilitarian purpose, but may be considered as an example of the ritual fragmentation of a highly valued commodity, a phenomenon that has been identified elsewhere in the Neolithic of Britain. It was suggested in the introduction that this act could and should be interpreted, a task made difficult by the fact that it is not possible to enter into the mindset of the prehistoric inhabitants of Parc Bryn Cegin. Interpretations are numerous, grading from the simple, as acts of woeful vandalistic destruction, or of orgies of smashing in bucolic merriment, to the more sophisticated, involving acts to establish social and economic control, or to the expression of social competition à la the potlatch phenomenon of the west coast of North America, or to a ritual act of neutralising the power of the artefact, or to a more subtle declaration involving rites of passage – whichever interpretation may be invoked, there is no doubting the sanctity of the fragmented debitage to the Neolithic supplicants of Parc Bryn Cegin. What might have been the underlying motive for the process of axe exfoliation we can only guess.

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