Neolithic : Neolithic Stone Adze Blade, From Northern Viet Nam, Phung Nguyen Period (2500 BC to 1500BC) #397 Sold

Neolithic This type of artifact is called an adze blade. The adze configuration has the blade hafted at right angles to the handle (different by 90 degrees from the orientation of the axe blade that is more familiar to Europeans and Americans). It was used for many different tasks, but the motion often ended with the blade coming back toward the user. Of note on this piece is the substantial corrosion over the entire surface. The vast majority of stone materials used for tool-making in the Neolithic period DO corrode, albeit slowly. A small fraction of the pieces that have been found were made for ritual use, rather than true work. This is borne out by the fact that many of them have no chips or other marks of hard use. This is NOT the case with this piece. It clearly was used, and used hard. The chips on this tool are corroded to the same extent that the other parts of the surface are. This points to the chips having been made in antiquity, so that the depressed surface had about the