Create DM World Culture Gallery Guide

Tools for making and creating

Create

Gallery Guide

Tools for making and creating Assembled here are things that people have used for creating other things.

There is an example of one of the earliest manmade objects in the world, a handaxe made about 1.5 million years ago, which paved the way for all other tools to be developed. We have tools for chopping down trees, cultivating land, making fire, woodworking, building canoes and houses and weaving textiles.

These tools were painstakingly crafted and honed, then used and maintained and passed through generations. Look out for the tool marks left on the objects in this gallery by the people who made them.

Zone

Create

Can you help discover more about these objects’ stories?

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The objects marked with this symbol are unidentified or need further research. Take a look at the folder in the bookcase by the seating area. It has images and information about these objects. We welcome your ideas, input or expertise.

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Axe blade Pelee Island, Lake Erie, Ontario, Canada, North America

Axe blade

Adze or axe There are many ways that stone axe or adze blades can be attached to handles. Here the stone blade is attached to a wooden haft with basketwork binding.

The haft would in turn have been attached to a long L-shaped wooden handle. The blade haft adds weight and length to the blade, to give it more power.

It could have been used for cutting down trees and for woodworking, making canoes and houses.

Papua New Guinea, Pacific Ocean

c.1800-1900 CE

c.40001500 BCE

This is probably 19th century but it could have been made much earlier. New Guinea has been inhabited for about 60,000 years. People in nearby Australia were making polished stone axes about 47,000 years ago.

It is not always possible to tell if a stone blade was intended for use in an axe (a chopping tool) or an adze (for smoothing and hollowing out wood). An adze blade is set at right angles to the shaft (like a hoe blade); an axe blade is set in plane with the shaft.

This was found on farm near Auckland in about 1840.

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Banda, Uttar Pradesh, India, Asia

Axe blade

Axe blade

Maori people, Auckland, New Zealand, Pacific Ocean

c.2500 BCE – 1600 CE

New Guinea, Pacific Ocean

c.1800-1900 or earlier

c. 1250 - 1800 CE

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Axe Here the stone blade is attached directly into the L-shaped wooden handle. The wood for the handle would have been specially selected, having grown in this shape.

Patagonia, South America

c.1800-1900

Ruatangaeo, ceremonial adze This type of adze, with an intricately carved shaft and elaborate coconut-fibre bindings, is unique to the island of Mangaia. They are ceremonial rather than practical, and associated with the god Tane-mata-ariki, the Mangaian patron of craftsmen, who it is said to have taught the people of Mangaia how to make the adze. The craftsmen (ta’unga) who made these adzes were highly skilled and respected. By the 1800s ruatangaeo were being made for trade with Europeans. Ours was collected by the captain of a London Mission Society ship, who went on expeditions to New Guinea and other Pacific Islands between 1898 and 1907.

Mangaia, Cook Islands, South Pacific

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c. 1900

Photo : David9Edge

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Polished stone tools Maori people, New Zealand, Pacific Ocean

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C Comb This may be a carding comb for preparing fibres for spinning and weaving. Alternatively it could be a hair comb.

Fiji, Pacific Ocean

Late 19th – early 20th century

c.1250-1800 CE

Heddle pulley from a weaving loom These include axe and adze heads made of a greenstone (nephrite jade) and basalt, and files made from schist, used for shaping bone fish hooks. Greenstone adzes are called toki pounamu in the Maori language. Before first contact with Europeans, no metals were used in New Zealand. Stone was a valuable resource for making tools, ornaments and weapons, and some types of stone were highly prized and traded throughout the country.

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Baule people are famous as weavers, using traditional narrow looms to make fine indigo-and-white cotton fabrics. The heddle is the part of the loom which lifts and lowers alternate warp threads, allowing the shuttle to pass between them with the weft thread. Baule people decorate their heddle pulleys with human and animal figures which might have religious or symbolic meaning, or be purely decorative. Men weave in public and the heddle pulleys are designed to be admired. Our pulley has been attached to a wooden base, which is not original.

Baule people, Republic of Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Africa

Late 19th – early 20th century

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Flint handaxe Israel, Middle East, Western Asia

About 450,000 years old

Palaeolithic handaxes These handaxes were made by early humans between about 1.5 million and 40,000 years ago. They were multi-purpose tools used for chopping, cutting, digging, scraping, hammering and piercing. They may also have been fitness indicators used in sexual selection (much like a male peacock’s tail) – a male’s ability to make them may have been attractive to females. This perhaps in part explains why they continued to be used over such a long period of time.

Kudur, Karnataka, India, Asia

Flint handaxe Israel, Middle East, Western Asia

Flint handaxe About 300,000 years old

Quartzite handaxe This is the oldest man-made object in the museum, and among the oldest in the world. It was made by an early human species such as Homo erectus. It was donated by the explorer, big game hunter and amateur archaeologist Heyward Walter Seton-Karr, who found many handaxes at Issutugan in Somalia in about 1900.

Somalia, Africa

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500,000 – 60,000 years old

About 450,000 years old

Stone handaxe Twyford, Derbyshire, UK, Europe

Stone handaxe

Swanscombe, Kent, UK, Europe

About 400,000 years old

Stone handaxe Penna Valley, India, Asia

About 500,000 years old

About 1.5 million years old

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Ceremonial axe handle Massim people, Trobriand Islands, Papua New Guinea, Pacific Ocean

Late 19th – early 20th century

The Trobriand Islands are coral islands which do not have any natural stone suitable for making stone tools.

The missing blade for this ceremonial axe was probably made from stone obtained from Suloga on nearby Woodlark Island, but shaped and polished by people on the Trobriand Islands. It would have been very thin and would have taken a lot of time and skill to make.

The end of the handle is carved with a stylised frigate bird head, and the carved decoration on the handle is infilled with lime made from burned and crushed shells.

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Photo : David Edge

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Knife with obsidian blade Obsidian is a natural volcanic glass which is ideal for making cutting tools. Obsidian knives, daggers and spears have been made on the Admiralty Islands for over 4,000 years. After first contact with European sailors metal soon replaced obsidian for tools and weapons. However, from the 1860s to the 1980s obsidian tools and weapons were made for the tourist trade.

Admiralty Islands, Papua New Guinea, Pacific Ocean

Five knives

Late 19th – early 20th century

These steel and wood knives are multi-purpose cutting tools. They were collected by Baptist Missionaries working in DR Congo from the 1940s to the early 1960s.

Yalemba Mission, Basoko territory, Tshopo District, Orientale Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Africa

Mid 20th century

Pair of firesticks These are portable firelighters. You can see two blackened indentations in the end of one stick where the other stick would have been rotated to create fire.

The holder for the firesticks is decorated with shells and red abrus seeds. These seeds are highly toxic if eaten but many people around the world have used them as decoration, as gold weights and to make medicines.

Aboriginal people, Australia

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Late 19th – early 20th century

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Axe or adze blade The Plateau, Nigeria, Africa

Polished stone tools have been made by people all over the world, often developed independently, over the last 47,000 years or more. They would have been attached to handles and used for woodworking, digging and clearing land for agriculture.

They are a wonderful example of how when people are presented with the same natural resources and the same problems to solve, they come up with the same solutions. The polished surface is laboriously created by repeatedly rubbing with abrasive stone or sand lubricated with water. Polishing reduces the brittleness of the tools and allows them to cut more easily.

c. 4000 – 900 BCE

Axe or adze blade Denmark, Europe

3900-1700 BCE

Axe or adze blade Carriage and Wagon Works, Osmaston Road, Derby, UK, Europe

c. 4000-2200 BC

Axe or adze blade Coleraine, Northern Ireland, UK, Europe

4000-2200 BCE

Axe or adze blade Saint-Acheul, France, Europe

c. 4500-2400 BCE

Axe or adze blade Axe or adze blade Southern India, Asia

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Robenhausen, Lake Pfäffikon, Switzerland, Europe

4400 – 1900 BCE

c. 3000-1400 BCE

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Axe or adze blade Markeaton Park, Derby, UK, Europe

Axe or adze blade About 4000-2200 BC

Axe or adze blade Belize, Central America

c.650-1500 CE

Axe or adze blade c. 8000 BCE – 800 CE

Axe or adze blade Maori people, New Zealand, Pacific Ocean

Jamaica, West Indies

Native North American peoples, North America

c. 5500 BCE 500 CE

Axe or adze blade c. 12501800 CE

Axe or adze blade

Guntakal, Anantapur, Andhra Pradesh, India, Asia

c. 3000 – 1400 BCE

Axe or adze blade Found on a farm near Auckland in about 1840.

Clark County, Indiana, United States of America

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c. 5500 BCE 500 CE

Maori people, New Zealand, Pacific Ocean

c. 12501800 CE

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Axe or adze blade

Axe or adze blade

Southern India, Asia

The oldest known polished stone tools in the world were made in Australia about 47,000 years ago. The next oldest were made in Japan about 35,000 years ago, and they were developed in Europe, West Asia and Africa about 8,500 years ago.

c. 3000 – 1400 BCE

Barellan, New South Wales, Australia

Up to 47,000 years old

Adze blade Unprovenacded

Undated

Chisel blade Stockholm, Sweden, Europe

Beku, ceremonial axe blade c. 4000 – 1700 BC

Axe or adze blade Southern India, Asia

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c. 3000 – 1400 BCE

In parts of eastern Papua New Guinea these large flat axe blades are a ceremonial currency, gifted at weddings and funerals, and used to pay for canoes, land, allegiance and ceremonial valuables. Their value depends on their size and beauty. The hard, striped stone probably came from Woodlark Island in Papua New Guinea, a source of prized stone traded throughout the region. This axe head was collected by the captain of a London Mission Society ship, who went on expeditions to New Guinea and other Pacific Islands between 1898 and 1907.

Papua New Guinea, Pacific Ocean

c .1900

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Case

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Stone tools Pitcairn Islands, Pacific Ocean

About 1000 – 1500 CE

Basalt and jade axes, adzes and borers made by early Polynesian settlers of the remote Pitcairn Islands. These first settlers either left or died out after trade with local islands broke down and resources became scarce.

Just their stone quarries and tools, rock carvings and a few traces of buildings survive. The Pitcairn Islands were re-inhabited by mutineers from the crew of The Bounty and their Tahitian companions in 1790 and the islands officially became a British colony in 1838. The Pitcairns are still a British Overseas Territory.

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25Edge Photo : David

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Stone hammer head Notice the wear on each end, produced though hammering.

Banda, Uttar Pradesh, India, Asia

Stone axe blade or handaxe West Indies, Caribbean, Americas

Axe blade

South America, unprovenanced

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Grooved stone axe

Native North American peoples, North America

Pre c. 1500

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Late 19th – early 20th century

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Pre c. 1500

Boat-shaped battle-axe This would have been mounted on a handle which went through the central hole. The so-called Battle-Axe Culture or Corded Ware culture which made this battle-axe spread to Denmark from the Eurasian steppes in the east, perhaps bringing with it the proto Indo-European languages from which most modern European languages descend.

Denmark, Europe

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c. 4000-1500 BCE

About 2,800– 2,350 BCE

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Words offered by visitors This gallery is built on a foundation of shared experiences that were offered by thousands of people at the start of the project. The words are a mix of values, emotions and actions and they’ve shaped the way the collection is displayed and explained Here are a few that relate to this zone.

creativity doodling imagination industry painting drawing jobs making working art using hands hobbies learning well-being fiddling maths need building looking Photo : David Edge

Glossary

Acknowledgements

Here are explanations of a few terms used in this guide

‘Objects of love, hope and fear’ has been coproduced with an amazing team of volunteers, visitors and partners. Our deepest thanks go to out to all of you for your generosity of time, knowledge, skill and energy.

BCE

An extra special thank you to:

Before Common Era (equivalent of BC ‘before Christ’)

Sheikh Qazi Abdul Mateen Al-Azhari

Alan Foord

Rajaa Sakhari

CE

Lisa Graves

Gaye Sculthorpe

Andy & Margaret Austen

Jeff Hallam

Lizzy Serieys

Common Era (equivalent of AD ‘anno Domini’, the year Christ was born)

Soshain Bali

Theresa Hempsall

Susan Sharif

Sheana Barby

Stephen Hill

Val Shelton

Richard Bartle

Anne Ishikawa

Christopher Simpson

Wendy Biz-Lage

Bali Jenkins

Alison Solomon

Ollie Brown

Lisa Kavanagh

Alice Southwood

James Bucklow

Zachary Kingdon

Celeste Sturgeon

Clare Calder-Marshall

Michelle Laverick

Jackie Taylor

Andrew Carrier

Steve Lockley

Jonathan Taylor

Richard Carter

Antonia Lovelace

Chevy J Thompson

Shannon Cherry

Emson Maneya

Tim Unwin

c.

Abbreviation of circa, a Latin word meaning ‘around’ or ‘about’

Pacific Ocean Islands in the Pacific Ocean east of Indonesia and Australia

Sub-Saharan Africa

Lia Colombino

The area south of the Saharan desert in the continent of Africa

Katarina Massing

Karim Vahed

Melissa Coons

Adam McCready

Shelagh Wain

Elspeth Cranston

Amelia Meran

Toni Walford

Unprovenanced

Ed Darby

Zagba Oyortey

Kat & John Woodward

Lubna Din

Oral Phillips

Sarah Worden

Dubrek Studios

Naomi Pierrepoint

Barbara Woroncow

Serene Duff

Helen Powell

Kerry Edwards

David & Janette Edge

Adeena Raslee

Hope Falk

Alison Englefield

Steven Pryce

Jade Foster

Catherine Falkner

Naomi Rubinstein

Margaret Wright

The object’s place of origin is unknown

Guide co-designed with Leach Studio. Published by Derby Museums 2018.

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