The Celt
During the prehistoric times in this country, the people made extensive use of the natural resources including trees and stone. They used trees for firewood, housing, hunting tools and boat transportation to name a few forms of wood consumption. And they needed a way to cut and shape the trees into useful forms – thus they invented the stone axe. The first stone axe heads, in the Piedmont, were probably chipped from rhyolite or similar materials that were later supplanted by pecked and ground axes with grooves to accommodate the hafting of the axe handle. Then somewhere along the time line, someone decided change the shape of the axe head and eliminate the groove which made for a more efficient and easier to make tool. Thus the Celt was developed.
Today we do not know exactly when the tool we call the Celt was invented but it was in use at least by the Middle Archaic Period (circa 4,000 to 6,000 BC) and possibly well before that time. The word we use for this tool – Celt – comes from the Celtic people of ancient England though we have changed the pronunciation from the English Kelt to the Americanized Selt. This un-grooved axe type tool was developed and used throughout the world by many peoples who probably had no contact with one another. You know the old saying – Great minds think alike!
There are differences between the grooved axe and the Celt beyond the obvious lack or presence of the groove. The grooved axe is normally larger and heavier at the poll end (opposite the cutting edge) while the Celt’s poll is the smallest and lightest part of the tool. Even though very large Celts have been found, they are usually smaller and lighter and more streamlined than the grooved axe. The basic shape of the Celt is either triangular with the widest part of the tool being the lower half toward the cutting edge or a rectangle/trapezoid with the sides being parallel or almost so and a squared off poll end. Many triangular shaped Celts, though, have been found with very battered polls giving them a more square shape which was not the way they were made. Archaeological research has established that the Celts with the pointed or slightly rounded ends are probably from the Archaic or Early Woodland Periods while Celts with the more or less rectangular shape and squared polls were produced in the Middle Woodland to Historic Periods. If you carefully examine Celts, you will note that the form often follows the natural shape of the stone. In other words, if the maker wanted a long and narrow tool, he started with a long and narrow rock. This is simple time saving efficiency which is a characteristic we humans possess. The manufacturing process was to peck the selected stone to the desired final shape using a hard hammer stone and then sharpen the bit with an abrasive rock followed by final polishing with sharp sand and water or animal fat, except for chipped Celts which were obviously flaked to shape. Usually, but certainly not always, the later time period Celts were more polished than earlier examples. In the Piedmont, we have acid soils, which tend to eat away at the surface of buried materials. A well polished Celt, after being in our soil for several hundred or thousand years, could be found with little or no polish remaining. Since there was no groove to fit the handle around, the Celt maker needed a way to haft this axe tool and it was accomplished by cutting a slot or hole into a suitably shaped wooden handle and forcing the narrow or poll end of the Celt into the hole/slot. With this method of hafting, the more the tool was used, the tighter it was driven into the handle. Of course, with the rectangular shaped Celts, this would not work; so the maker probably tightened the axe head in the handle using small wooded wedges. One of the drawbacks to the Celt as a woodworking tool is that because of the smaller size, it probably was not the best tool for cutting large trees since it would have had less striking energy. Jack Hranicky experimented with the average size Celts and discovered that in cutting trees larger than about three inches in diameter, the Celt did not cut well and merely bounced off the wood. The grooved axe or large Celt could have been used for heavier cutting chores.
Celts have been found throughout most of the United States as well as Canada and Mexico. In the eastern half of our country, they are found in many sizes from a miniature of about two inches to large sizes up to almost twenty inches long, though these are extremes. In the Piedmont, the average size of the Celt is in the four to six inches long range. Carolina and Virginia Celts were made of many types of stone including granite, greenstone, diorite, gneiss, schist, basalt and other hard rocks and occasionally one will be found that is made of relatively soft stone such as slate but this type was most likely ceremonial in usage. The majority were seemingly made of granite, greenstone or indeterminate hard stone. Strangely enough, almost completely absent from the Celt makers stone inventory were quartz and quartzite even though these are very common minerals in the Piedmont.
This tool was a utilitarian axe head used for cutting, chopping and shaping wood and other hard substances though undoubtedly it was also used in warfare. It was used by the natives for maybe 8,000 years until it was replaced by the iron trade axe during the Historic Period. Collectors seem to prefer the grooved axe over the Celt, maybe because of its size and more ancient age, but in terms of simplistic grace, few American Indian artifacts can compare with the style and elegant beauty of the Celt.
REFERENCES:
Coe, Joffre L.
“Formative Cultures of the Carolina Piedmont”,
TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY
1964
Hothem, Lar
INDIAN AXES & RELATED STONE ARTIFACTS
1989
Hranicky, Wm. Jack
PREHISTORIC AXES, CELTS, BANNERSTONES AND OTHER LARGE
TOOLS IN VIRGINIA AND VARIOUS STATES
1995
Hranicky, Wm. Jack
EXPERIMENTAL ARCHAEOLOGY:
A SCIENCE FOR STUDYING NATIVE AMERICAN PREHISTORIC TECHNOLOGY
2007