Ancient Metal Axes and Other Tools in the Royal Ontario Museum: European and Mediterranean Types.

• Author: Muhly, J.D.

John W. Hayes is known to the world of Mediterranean archaeology as the pre-eminent authority on Late Roman and Early Byzantine pottery. It is safe to say that no one has ever known so much about that pottery, not even those ancient potters who made the stuff. In his capacity as Curator of the Greek and Roman Department of the Royal Ontario Museum, Hayes has also published a series of volumes, based upon the collections of that museum, of the type known as a catalogue raisonne. The volume under review here is the latest in that series and is to be seen as the companion volume to the catalogue of the museum's British and Irish bronzes, published by F. Pryor in 1980. (Hayes also includes some corrigenda and addenda to Pryor's catalogue.)

The R.O.M. has an interesting collection of ancient metal axes which, however, comes entirely from the antiquities market. Not a single one of the 202 artifacts published by Hayes has a secure archaeological context. This means that provenience, date, even authenticity, must always remain in doubt. Hayes does all that can be done with such material and has many interesting things to say about individual pieces, but the best that can be said is that he has carried out a rather unprofitable task in an exemplary fashion.

Hayes presents three pieces from the collection of the R.O.M. as modern fakes (nos. 200-2). Another axe (no. 109), probably an East European type dating to the second half of the third millennium B.C., was purchased from a dealer in Paris who said that the axe had been found in Greece (Athens or Thebes). Apparently in order to support that attribution, the dealer seems to have added a Greek inscription (in...