• Date: c 4000 BC
• Material: Stone from the Great Langdale, Cumbria
• Place Made/Found: Stonehenge World Heritage Site
• Lender: Wiltshire Museum, Devizes

Polished axe were used to clear woodland, an essential task for the new farming communities of the early Neolithic period. Many axes were prestigious objects, with a value far beyond their practical use: some were never actually used. An axe such as this might take 40 hours to make. The best stone came from Langdale in Cumbria and axes from there were traded widely across Britain.

• Date: c 3500 BC
• Material: Flint
• Place Made/Found: Amesbury 42 long barrow, ditch
• Lender: Salisbury & South Wiltshire Museum

Neolithic people were skilled stone- and flint-workers. Over 5000 years ago, someone crouched in the shelter of a ditch and 'knapped' or flaked this lump of flint. It has been painstakingly re-created from the debris. No flakes were taken from this to make tools. Either none of the flakes was useable or the flint-knapper was simply passing the time or practising the skill.

• Date: c 3300 BC
• Material: Domestic cattle bone
• Place Made/Found: Base of the Stonehenge ditch
• Lender: Salisbury & South Wiltshire Museum

This jaw bone was probably already a few hundred years old when it was placed at the bottom of the Stonehenge ditch. Nonetheless, it is in very good condition, showing that it had been kept with care. Cattle were important to Neolithic people and this relic may have been a family or tribal totem, placed in the ditch as a special offering.

• Date: c 3000 BC
• Material: Red deer antler
• Place Made/Found: Base of the Stonehenge ditch
• Lender: Salisbury & South Wiltshire Museum

500 years before the stones arrived, people created the first monument at Stonehenge, the earthwork banks and ditch, using antler picks like this one. It is battered and the points are worn, showing how it was used to cut into the chalk or as a wedge to work the chalk free. When the earthwork was finished, the pick was deliberately left at the bottom of the ditch.

• Date: 2900-2580 BC
• Material: Chalk with incisions
• Place Made/Found: 'Chalk Plaque Pit', 2km from Stonehenge
• Lender: Salisbury & South Wiltshire Museum

Nearly 5,000 years ago, people dug a pit and carefully buried some objects: this plaque, another smaller one, other pieces of chalk, animal bones (probably the remains of a feast), some sherds of Grooved Ware and an antler pick. This extraordinary plaque, decorated with incised lines and marks, is unusual: we don’t know what it was used for or if its presence in the pit marks a special commemoration. The design resembles decoration found on some Grooved Ware pottery. 

• Date: c 2500 BC
• Material: Flint
• Place Made/Found: Durrington Walls
• Lender: Salisbury & South Wiltshire Museum

These lop-sided arrowheads, called 'oblique arrowheads', are very characteristic of the late Neolithic period. Made from local flint, some were prestigious objects and seem to have never been used. At Durrington Walls, hundreds of arrowheads were hafted and then used to kill pigs, possibly during ritual hunting events. On impact, the arrow tip pierced the skin, creating blood loss and bringing the animal down. The pigs were then cooked and eaten in great feasts.

• Date: c 2500 BC
• Material: Animal bone, flint
• Place Made/Found: Durrington Walls
• Lender: Salisbury & South Wiltshire Museum

Durrington Walls was the site of a late Neolithic village, occupied at the time the stones were raised at Stonehenge. At midwinter, the inhabitants seem to have held ritual killings, in which pigs were shot with arrows and eaten in great feasts. Hundreds of arrowheads have been found there, as well as many pig bones.

Usually the arrowheads have been recovered intact: however, this bone is embedded with the tip of the arrow, which broke off.

• Date: c 2500 BC
• Material: Ceramic
• Place Made/Found: Woodhenge
• Lender: Salisbury & South Wiltshire Museum

In the late Neolithic period the use of Grooved Ware pottery spread across Britain, together with other objects and monuments that suggest people shared the same ideas and performed similar rituals. Grooved Ware was the first pottery in Britain to have a flat base, and the pots were probably used in feasts. They were decorated with deep grooved lines, cordons and impressions. Similar designs are found on stone and chalk objects from this period.

• Date: c 2200 BC
• Material: Spotted dolerite
• Place Made/Found: Wilsford G54, Wilsford, Stonehenge
• Lender: Wiltshire Museum, Devizes

Stonehenge remained significant to people long after major construction activities ceased there about 2200 BC. This ceremonial battle axe, beautifully shaped and finished, has no signs of use. It is one of the earliest of its kind to be found in Britain. It is made of the same material as the bluestones at Stonehenge and may well have been fashioned from a piece of one of these stones. The axe was found along with a metal dagger in the grave of a young man buried under a round barrow.