Socketed bronze axehead - Public domain museum image. A metal pitcher with a handle on a white surface

Copper axes cast in one-piece moulds were the most common metal artefacts in the earliest stages of metal use. These very early metal axes are simple flat shapes, which were hafted, in the same manner as stone axes, by slotting the axe head into a perforated wooden handle. Bronze axes followed, and throughout the Bronze Age axe types were developed that required ever more sophisticated metalworking skills and increasingly effective hafting techniques.

HCA 228 has very slight flanges along its edges, while those on HCA 237 are more pronounced with a transverse stop-ridge between the flanges. These developments show that axes were now hafted in the fork end of an angled wooden shaft rather than via the earlier perforated handles. Further developments is seen with the blending together of the palstave-type axe and finally the creation of the socketed variety. The more developed axes would have been cast using two-piece moulds, or clay moulds and cores for hollowing.