File:Early Bronze Age shafthole adze (plan) (FindID 260757).jpg

English: Incomplete greenstone (epidiorite) cushion macehead or shafthole adze, sub-oval in plan, tapering slightly towards the surviving end, and lozenge-shaped in profile and section. About half of the adze remains, including the blade end, and half of the shaft hole. Both ends would have been worked to form an edge which could have been used for chopping as well as hammering.

The implement has been worked from a beach cobble and would have been collected from the coast. It would have then been pecked and ground into shape and the central hole bored by using sand and a drill. The shaft is 20 mm in diameter and is oval in plan and has a slight 'hour-glass' shape in profile suggesting that it has been drilled from both sides. This shape might have improved hafting, especially if the wooden haft was swollen once it was held in the centre. The surviving blade end of the macehead has been damaged through use, and there is a considerable area on one side that has eroded away over time.

The source of the dolerite is to be found all around the findspot of this implement in the peridotite outcrop on the Lizard peninsula. The macehead was cored and thin sectioned by Dr. Jens Andersen of Camborne School of Mines so that its petrological group and potential source can be ascertained, under the auspices of the Southwest Implement Petrology Committee. The report by Dr. Roger Taylor of the Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter is below in the notes.

Such implements have been found throughout Britain and there is some debate as to whether they were tools or had a symbolic function. A similar example, complete with evidence of a shaft, was found in the Bronze Age Bush Barrow in Wiltshire.

Edmonds, Sheridan & Tipping (1992) illustrate a similar example of a cushion macehead from Creag na Caillich, Killin, in Perthshire, on page 107, Illustration 21, which is dated to c.2900-2300 BC.

Clarke, Cowie & Foxon (1985) illustrate a similar example of a cushion macehead from Bloody Quoy, Orkney on page 256, Plate 7.19, No.51.

Similar examples of cushion type maceheads in the Museum of London's collection, such as one from Mortlake (seen on-line), are dated to c.2500-2000 BC.