- Summary
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Alpine jade axes were among the funerary offerings of god-kings offered, consecrated, or sacrificed to supernatural forces buried beneath the massive mounds of the Carnac region. Along with other long-distance imports – intense green variscite ornaments and opalescent fibrolite axeheads from Spain – jade became part of various religious practices that developed around the Gulf of Morbihan. The success of these beliefs is illustrated by the spread of menhirs and the architecture of stelae in Western Europe in the second half of the 5th millennium BC.
- Contents
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TOME 5
Review of the history of Projet JADE - Collaborations
Acknowledgements
Foreword
At the origin of the Europe of Jade
A stone axehead: what is it for?
The choice of jades
The earliest exploited jades: Syros and Monte Beigua
The archaeological exploration of the Alps
Extraction and working sites on Monte Viso
5000 BC: the adze-heads of Bégude type
First half of the 5th millennium: from northern Italy to the Gulf of Morbihan
The manipulation of stone rings
Towards the jade mountain
Two innovations: copper and sawing
4600 BC: jades and power in the Morbihan
Axeheads and religious rituals
The concentration of wealth in the Morbihan
The journeys of the Carnac-type axeheads
Raised up towards the sky, axeheads and stelae
From the Alps to the Black Sea
4300 BC: the northwards and southwards expansions
The end of the Europe of Jade
The consecration of jade
Bibliography of the main text
Distribution maps of large jade axeheads in western EuropeTOME 6
Introduction to the database
Acknowledgements
European inventory of large axeheads of Alpine jades
General bibliography
Geographical index to Volumes 1 to 5 by commune - by findspot - Author (s)
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Pierre PÉTREQUINAnne-Marie PÉTREQUINAlison SHERIDAN (transl. by)The two authors are researchers at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and specialists in the archaeology of the European Neolithic and the ethnology of New Guinea. Between 2007 and 2017, they led two successive National Research Agency projects : JADE 1 and 2.
- Readership
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archaeologists, ethnologists, historians, students, a well-informed public
- downloadable items
- Support (s)
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Published with the support of the Centre de recherche archéologique de la vallée de l'Ain (Gray) and the Maison des sciences de l'homme et de l'environnement (UAR3124, CNRS/UFC).
