Polished axes: object biographies and the writing of world prehistories

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Research contextThe idea that objects have biographies has recently received widespread recognition in 'A History of the World in 100 objects (HoW)'. This collaboration between the BBC and the British Museum (BM) http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/ahow/all shows how the power of objects as historical sources lies in their biographical details that arise from their context of manufacture, use, recycling and deposition as well as when and how they were collected. All of these aspects are well illustrated by jade axes that are among the most distinctive artefacts in the museum. The BM has 109 of these objects collected from Europe, the Middle East, the Americas, the Pacific and China. They attract attention because of their aesthetic qualities and their complex biographies; as shown by Object 14 in HoW, a Neolithic jade axe from Canterbury. Their biographies have been revealed through the history behind their collection, their archaeological and ethnographic context and most recently the application of science to determine their provenance. But Jade axes are only a small sub-set of a much larger collection of 4500 polished stone axes held in the BM. These are made on many different raw materials reflecting the geology of the regions where they were collected. The act of polishing was regarded as significant by antiquaries such as John Lubbock who, in 1865, used them as the defining artefact of his Neolithic stage. Subsequently the Neolithic became a worldwide stage in the mental, technological and economic evolution of human societies. The polished axe was, and remains, a symbol of progress from hunting to farming and from a peripatetic existence to a settled life. In short the axe became an iconic artefact for the beginning of the modern world.Aims and objectivesThere are two main aims to this PhD. i) Through a series of case studies the student will examine the networks of artefacts and collectors that drew these polished axes into the BM from across the globe. These biographies will address issues of geographical location and the production of knowledge about the past in a world museum. The student will examine the interplay between earlier ideas of 'living prehistory' and the acceptance of a deep past based on artefacts from areas without a stone age ethnography such as Europe. Of particular interest is the pattern of collecting as revealed by region, date of accession and the collector, and the influence of ethnographic observation on the acceptance of a pre-historic past. ii) The student will then trace how these objects were used to write world prehistories of technology and society such as those by Lubbock (1865), Evans (1872) and Morgan (1877) and much later the works of Peake and Fleure (1927), Smith (1933) and Childe (1951), culminating in Clark's seminal World Prehistory of 1961.The wider research communityThe BM is a world museum. It seeks, through research, to find new ways to inform and engage a variety of audiences both national and international with its collections and the opportunity they afford for understanding world cultures and their history. This PhD will contribute to this research mission by its inter-disciplinary approach that examines a single category of artefact collected by four departments of the BM. By collaborating with RHUL's expertise in geography and archaeology the outcomes of the PhD will contribute to the AHRC's international strategy where the aim is to promote the UK as a world centre for research. Tracing the networks of collectors and axes across the world in the 250 years since the BM was founded will provide a tangible example of the inter-connectedness of people, places and things and their translation into shared knowledge. The beneficiaries of the research will be UK heritage research generally as well as the specific disciplines and collaborations identified in t