Prapovijesna željezna sjekira s ručicama iz korita rijeke Cetine u Sinjskom polju
Prehistoric Iron Lugged Ax from the Cetina River Bed in the Sinj Feld

Summary/Abstract: In the last decade, especially between 1990 and 1995, the Cetina riven- bed, in the Sinj Field, Dalmatia, produced numerous archaeological artefacts from almost all historic époques, from the early Neolithic to the late Middle Ages. The most numerous are pre-historic, Metal-Age, finds. It is one of them, the iron axe with handles, that is treated in this paper. This find was added to other similar axes from Dalmatia, mostly in older museum collections. According to the present knowledge, ten of such axes were found in this area. This does not include the long-time ago published discovery of a similar axe of Ston. Unfortunately, the location of their discovery is known in only two cases (both in the upper Cetina bed in the Sinj Field, the sites of Mali Drinić near Trilj and Dugip near Otok). However, the other eight are quite certainly from the wider Dalmatian area, since the character of the collection they are now in (the Croatian Archaeological Monuments Museum in Split) allows no other hypothesis. Furthermore, the specific qualities of particular Dalmatian artifacts, especially those marked as numbers 1 and 10 are emphasized here. The catalogue number 1, although of common basic typological characteristics, is very interesting because of the preserved wooden-handle ironwork, present in no other piece of this kind of prehistoric tool found so far. This find, therefore, explains possible reconstructions of the handle shape in such axes.

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