Tools & tillage: a journal on the history of the implements of cultivation and other agricultural processes (6.1988/1991)

HAFTING OF A STONE AXE-ADZE AND
ITS USE IN THE FIRE-CLEARANCE
HUSBANDRY OF PAPUA NEW GUINEA

By
Axel Steensberg

When the palaeobotanist Johannes Iversen
published his »Landnam i Danmarks Stenal-
der« in 1941 he suggested for the first time
that Neolithic agriculturists had cleared large
areas of the climax forest with ground flint
axes. He had observed a distinct layer of
charcoal in the bogs, marking this first land-
reclamation or »Landnam«. But he was met



by suspicion. His opponents argued that such
large areas could not be cleared by the use of
such an ineffective tool. This was the reason
why his colleague J. Troels-Smith, together
with Svend Jorgensen, demonstrated the ef-
fectiveness of flint axes in three years of ex-
perimentation (Jorgensen 1985, Steensberg
1979).
In my book: »New Guinea Gardens. A
Study of Husbandry With Parallels in Pre-
historic Europe« (1980), I compared the tech-
niques of hafting stone axes and adzes in two
quite opposite parts of the globe, proving that
adzes had been used in Europe as well as in