New Research This Intricately Decorated Deer Antler Was Used as a Battle Ax Before Being Repurposed as a Fishing Harpoon During the sixth millennium B.C.E., carvers in present-day Sweden etched patterns into the artifact before redecorating it in a new style. It was likely deposited into a river as part of a ritual The antler fragment seen from multiple angles Peter Zetterlund / National Historical Museums Eight years ago, archaeologists in Sweden unearthed a deer’s antler covered with intricate patterns. Found at the archaeological site of Strandvägen, the artifact dates to around the sixth millennium B.C.E. Now, after examining the artifact under a digital microscope, researchers have discovered its likely purpose: Residents of Stone Age Sweden used it as a battle ax before turning it into a fishing harpoon. According to a recent study published in the Oxford Journal of Archaeology, the antler was found on a stone platform among other objects made from stone, bone and antler, as well as human skull fragments. Located near Lake Vättern, Sweden’s second-largest lake, Strandvägen was inhabited by hunter-fisher-gatherer groups between about 5800 and 5000 B.C.E. (It lies across a river from Kanaljorden, a similarly aged settlement where researchers have found ancient human heads impaled on stakes.) The antler photographed at 40x magnification Lars Larsson At about four inches long, the carved antler found at Strandvägen once belonged to a red deer. Based on the patterns of damage, researchers think it served two purposes. Initially, it was likely used for combat. “It was probably handled as an ax,” co-author Lars Larsson, an archaeologist at Lund University in Sweden, tells Live Science’s Taylor Mitchell Brown. “There are several examples in present-day Denmark of antler axes with severe damage after heavy use.” He adds that such damage indicates that the axes may have been used in battle.  Later, the antler was likely repurposed as part of a harpoon, a pointed spear used to catch fish. Parts of the object are marked with traces of the original decoration, as seen in 60x magnification. Lars Larsson “If an item gets broken, many of us buy a new one,” Sara Gummesson, an archaeologist at Stockholm University in Sweden who wasn’t involved in the research, tells Live Science. “This was not the case until very recently.” In addition to serving multiple purposes, the antler had also been designed in multiple phases. Carvers smoothed the artifact’s surface before using a flint tool to etch a pattern of slanting lines. Later, the antler was redecorated in a “completely different pattern,” per the study. The antler and nearby artifacts may have been part of a ritual. Peter Zetterlund and Fredrik Molin / National Historical Museums The original patterns were “removed through polishing and replaced with a new design,” as La Brújula Verde’s Guillermo Carvajal writes. “The new ornamentation, created with several cutting tools, featured longitudinal bands with fine oblique lines arranged in three distinct zones.” Larsson tells Live Science that the artifact is the “best decorated” object ever found at Strandvägen, which is one of the largest Mesolithic sites in Sweden. Previous excavations have revealed houses, graves and workshops. Unlike many other archaeological sites in Sweden, where acidic soil degrades organic material, Strandvägen’s conditions have allowed organic material to survive for many years, as Gummesson tells the publication. The collection of artifacts found alongside the antler—such as pieces of a human skull and other “highly symbolic objects”—suggests that its burial was “possibly linked to religious ceremonies or ancestral remembrance,” as La Brújula Verde writes. “The deliberate deposition of the fragment in a ritual context indicates that these objects held significance beyond their practical utility.” Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.