A Stone Age masterpiece - A Mace-head from North Wales

The Maesmor mace-head. Discovered in 1840, this artefact was initially thought to be either an Arch Druid's sacrificial hammer, or a war mace belonging to a Celtic chief.

Detail of the carving on the Maesmor mace-head, showing a rare flaw in the design where two chevrons are broken (see centre of image).

Mace-heads from Ogmore (Vale of Glamorgan), Y Fron (Flintshire), and Sker House (Bridgend). The majority of mace-heads made around 2500BC are comparatively simple and undecorated. Examples like these ones have been found throughout Wales.

It is easy to think of the Stone Age as a period in which life was nasty, brutish and short. The Maesmor mace-head from North Wales is proof that it was not always so.

Mace-heads like this one were made around 2500BC, and were typically used for combat. Elaborate mace heads were also created as ceremonial objects and symbols of power within Stone Age tribes.

Many mace-heads have been found in Wales. For the most part they have been discovered by chance, having been disturbed from the spot at which they were lost or discarded. However, occasionally they are found with burials, including one example from Wiltshire, which was found with a body that had been adorned with gold and bone ornaments.

A symbol of power and wealth

This has led to the suggestion that mace-heads were symbols of power and were held by people with status. It is easy to imagine that this would have been true of the Maesmor mace-head since if its owner had only wanted something to use as a club he could have saved himself a lot of trouble by drilling a hole in a pebble and mounting that on the wooden handle.

Instead, a large piece of white flint – a rare stone in Denbighshire where the mace-head was found – was cut roughly into shape. Then a hole was drilled through the tough stone, probably using a bow drill with lots of sand and water. This hole was where the handle would originally have fitted.

Skilled workmanship

But the real skill was the cutting and shaping of the elaborate design on the sides of the mace-head. This was probably also done using the side of a bow drill to score the overlapping grooves.

This process must have taken the maker many tens of hours of work, slowly but gradually shaping first the rough outline, then grinding a hole through the stone before carving out the elaborate decoration on the sides.

The finished mace-head must have been much admired by its owner – possibly the elder of a community, a chieftain, or possibly just a craftsman revelling in his own skill.

Whoever owned the Maesmor mace-head, it demonstrates that even in the Stone Age there was time to make art and time to appreciate it. Luckily, it is still possible to appreciate the decoration that took so much effort and time to create thousands of years later.

Comments (13)

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Oldernu
6 June 2021, 23:42
Wonder if you have examples of stone axes. How does their construction differ from maces? I would think that makers would recognize that the "grain" that gives a sharp edge to axes would cause fracture in a mace. Not good in battle. So perhaps even a rounded mace would have a face that resist impact failure. The grasped haft would be easily detected by feel so the warrior could know the strong face vs weaker side.


Skot Knight
8 April 2021, 18:06
Hello Steve,
I have since my last comment completed a flint mace of this type based on the Knowth mace from NewGrange in Ireland, I have yet to conquer a copy of the Maesmor head but it is on my to do list. I would be happy to email you some pictures of my Knowth mace and answer any questions about its production and the hurdles working with flint throws at you when working with it to make these things.
Steve Burrow Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales Staff
18 May 2020, 14:14

Hi,

Thanks for your comment Skot, you make a fair point, the grind marks do run down the grooves. A few experimental archaeologists have looked at this macehead over the years with the intention of having a go at replicating elements of the design but I'm not aware of anyone who's actually done so. We'd be delighted if you tried and would love to hear how you get on.

Kind regards,

Steve Burrow
(Head of Historic Properties)
 

Skot Knight
9 May 2020, 14:25
A wonderful piece of technical ingenuity, I would disagree with the idea that the side of a bow drill was used to create these marks though. You can clearly see grind marks running parallel from top to bottom of each cup. I would suggest it more likely that a small abrasive stone wheel was used, most likely attached to a spindle that was turned like a spring lathe and the flint offered up to the spinning wheel much as the chinese jade carvers still do today (only now with motorised drills to hold the wheels.)
I am currently working on some recreations of this technique on stone maces and hope to carve a flint one soon, that way i can experiment and get a clearer picture of how this may have actually been done.
Bob Maysmor
21 March 2017, 00:25
Just a reminder that the given name for the mace is Maesmor - not Maesmawr. The name was given because the mace was found in the field that slopes up from Maesmor Hall (in Maerdy near Corwen) towards the Hanging Hill. Maesmawr is a name found throughout Wales more common in the south. The name means large field. Maesmor/Maysmor is a family name dating back to Bleddyn of Maesmor, Lord of Dinmael and Rûg in Edeyrnion 1176-1218.
Graham Hill
27 December 2016, 23:53
A wonderful mace head. The lozenges and net patterns are I think symbolic and represent the land with water permeating it. Single lozenges, often with seed shaped marks in them are to be found on Later Neolithic Grooved Ware pottery throughout Britain. A mace head may be a kind of omphalos or 'navel of the world'. The perforation drilled may intended be a link between this world and beyond. We can find examples of Greek omphalos which have a hole in them and a net pattern in museums. The oracle of Delphi was at an omphalos. St. Michael's Mount near Penzance, England may have been thought of as such a place in Neolithic times according to my interpretation of a symbol on Clodgy Moor Boat Slate, to be seen in 2017 at Royal Cornwall Museum.
Jody Deacon - Curator: Prehistoric Archaeology Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales Staff
19 May 2016, 11:26

The Maesmawr macehead and the example from Knowth in Ireland date to the late Neolithic (c.3000-2500BC) and are remarkably similar in material, form and decoration.

Maceheads with this ovoid shape and faceted decoration are known as Maesmawr type and the few examples that are known are distributed across Britain from Windmill Hill in Wiltshire, to Sutherland in Scotland. These incredibly fine prestige objects are made from flint which has been shaped and polished before carefully grinding out the lozenge shaped facets.

Most of the known examples of Maewmawr type maceheads are antiquarian finds from uncertain contexts but those maceheads that do have good contexts show that they are rarely found with burials and probably have another type of ceremonial role in Later Neolithic life.

George Eogan and Hilary Richardson, who in 1982 reported on the discovery of the Knowth macehead in the Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, believed the relief decoration of spirals and curved demonstrated that it was not an import from Britain but an Irish take on the Maesmawr form.

Sara Huws
4 May 2016, 09:25

Hi there Adam, thanks for your comment. It really is such a beautiful object, and it would be interesting to know whether there is a connection with the Knowth mace head.

I'll pass on your comment to our curators and post their reply when I get it.

Thanks again for your enquiry

Sara
Digital Team

Adam C, London
4 May 2016, 00:03
The style of chevron is similar to the Knowth mace head... Is there anything linking the two? It is a stunning object, really of stupendous beauty when you think how old it is, how it was made and the violent times in which it was created. Are there similar examples from mainland Europe at all?
3 May 2016, 00:00
Fascinating to see the similarity with the Knowth mace head - particularly the chevron decoration. A stunning object that seems both a window into the past and a puzzle.