Middle and Late Bronze Age Metal Tools from the Aegean, Eastern ...

specimens (Evely’s Type 4 lists seven examples), but they hail chiefly from the
Mycenaean period. 342 Grooves at the ends of the oval shaft holes also confirm that
elliptical hafts could be secured to the ax-heads with wedges, pins or nails. The basic
ergonomic difference between round and oval shaft holes is that the ax could twist around
the shaft in the case of a round hole, but would stay put if it were oval. 343 It is unclear
why elliptical holes were not universally adopted on Crete. Evely observes that the
Minoans either “missed or remained unmoved by the alternative solution favoured by the
Mycenaeans” and that they had a “stubborn preference for the circular shaft hole.” 344
The
oval design of shaft holes was far superior to the circular one, but the round versions
persisted on Crete for hundreds of years and were later employed on 13 th -century Cyprus,
even when the elliptical Mycenaean shaft holes were in vogue.
One of the similarities between the Cretan and mainland double axes was the
nearly identical width of the cutting edge (Fig. 4.2). The average width for Cretan axes is
5.88 cm (with a coefficient of variation of 0.13), while the mainland’s mean is 5.85 cm
(with a coefficient of variation of 0.19). The limited variation of cutting edge sizes
demonstrates that the Mycenaeans found the Minoan blade edge sufficient and effective.
Yet along with the change to the more ergonomically shaped oval shaft holes, the
Mycenaeans seem to have increased the double ax length (17.6 cm with a CV of 0.29)
and made the waist more narrow (4.05 cm with a CV of 0.14) in comparison to the
Cretan examples (length=16.6 cm with CV of 0.23; middle width =4.9 cm with a CV of
342 Evely 1993, 50.
343 Shaw 2009, 39.
344 Evely 1993, 51.
144