30/08/2026
For this Ulster Finds Friday, we will be looking at a flat axe from County Donegal!
This previously unpublished Early Bronze Age flat axe was acquired in 1955 by the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England. It had been in the collection of A.D. Passmore who had purchased the flat axe in 1939 in Edinburgh. The attached label reads ‘Fenton, 11 New Oxford St, London,’ which would suggest that it had been passed through a series of collectors since it was discovered.
The flat axe was discovered in June 1864 at or near Ballybofey, County Donegal. It is 15.0 centimetres long, has a thin butt and a wide-splayed cutting edge that reached 11.3 centimetres in width. It also had a rough, corroded surface with a greenish patina. The characteristics place it in Harbison’s Killaha type, which at the time of the article’s publication was the earliest form of tin-bronze flat axe. A Killaha type bronze axe was discovered at Newgrange, County Meath closely associated with a Beaker settlement, which radiocarbon-dating would suggest dates the type to the early second millennium BC.
If you would like to learn more about this flat axe, read the article ‘Flat Axe from Ballybofey, Co. Donegal’ by S.H. Penney in the Ulster Journal of Archaeology Third Series Volume 38 (1975) pages 84-85 on JSTOR at https://www.jstor.org/stable/20567752.
Remember all UJAs up until 2022 can be read *for free* on JSTOR at https://www.jstor.org/journal/ulstjarch.
Have a fantastic Friday!
Image 1: Figure 1 from Penney 1975 page 84
