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Late Bronze Age/early Urnfield culture

From the late Bronze Age onwards, the distribution of bronze axe finds shows a characteristic pattern. In our region, they are then no longer found in tombs, but as part of hoards, in waterways, or individually. Only at the end of the Urnfield culture period are axes again used as grave goods. The Spardorf Axe, found as a single object in a fox den in 1894, was probably also buried intentionally.

The custom of burying objects in the ground was especially widespread during the Bronze Age and the Urnfield culture period. There are various reasons. Axes may represent dealers' scrap metal deposits or hoards created in times of crisis, both with the intention of digging up the objects again when the need arose. However, they may also represent votive offerings motivated by religious belief, whereby the objects were dedicated to a deity and then buried.