by David Marolf, Manchester, Iowa
January 2017 Central States Archaeological Journal
This monstrosity is a 28 lb. 11 ½ oz. axe that I discovered in 2002 (Fig. 1). In July when I was returning home from an artifact hunt in Louisa County, Iowa I noticed a large front-end loader moving dirt while passing a known site on the Muscatine Highway 61 bypass. I did a U-turn to investigate.
Upon hiking out to the machine, I discovered the operator spoke a different language than I, but he pointed to the adjacent buildings of a relatively new logging business that had sprung up along the bypass a few years prior. I hiked to the buildings to quiz whomever I could find about what was going on. There I met Pat Mealy, the proprietor, who told me he had purchased eight acres from the neighboring farmer and was going to level the low-lying hill and pour 25,000 square feet of concrete to stack lumber on.
His intent was to complete this project in two weeks. I asked if he would mind if I dug on the site before he leveled it and he said, “Go ahead and dig all you want.”
All the machine operator was doing that particular day was removing the brushy fence row between Mr. Mealy’s lumber mill and his new property. The operator nearly had his task completed so I hiked back to search the dirt he had disturbed.
Like most collectors I move almost every rock I see, but when I kicked a big rock it didn’t move. So I got down on my knees and began to dig low and behold it wasn’t long before I felt a groove and pulled out the behemoth axe pictured in Figure 1. I had kicked the emerging poll end and the bit was pointed straight down.
This axe cannot be wielded by any one person that I know so what was it used for? There is more than one line of thought here.
One theory is that this enormous axe was the tool department of the prehistoric Walmart. It hung on the “GET YOUR AXES HERE” sign and was made by the guy that made all the axes for the clan. The guy that made all the axes for the clan made this one for fun in his spare time from making ones that could actually be used for something.
This multicultural occupation site is a low-lying ridge less than a mile from the edge of what was in ancient times a several-thousand-acre marshland. These ancient folks lived on the site year-round and in the winter time this behemoth axe may have been mounted on a pole and fulcrum and hauled around to break through the ice in the wetlands.
It may also have been mounted stationary to something—possibly a log—and whatever needed cracking open was struck against it. Not to mention that it would be easier on the thumbs of the cracker!
Although the axe maker of the clan did not have a big demand for axes of this size, there have been others of this size found.
My cousin Arlo Williams found another tiny full-grooved (4/4) axe that is now in my collection (Fig. 4). Arlo found his dwarf in Mercer County, Missouri. Another coincidence—two dwarfs, one from Mercer County, Illinois, and the other from Mercer County, Missouri, were found by two cousins about 150 miles apart.
