Otzi’s axe is 99.7 per cent pure copper, and the ore came from Tuscany

When two hikers found a mummified body melting out of an Alpine glacier in September 1991, the copper axe lying beside it turned out to be almost as revealing as the body itself. Radiocarbon dating places the Iceman, now known as Ötzi, at roughly 5,300 years old, making his intact axe the only complete example of its kind to survive from the Copper Age. Decades of metallurgical analysis have since shown the blade is nearly pure copper, and that the ore it was smelted from was hauled hundreds of kilometres from the spot where Ötzi died.

A Trapezoidal Blade Cast, Cooled and Hammered

The axe blade is trapezoidal in shape and made from copper that tests to 99.7 per cent purity, according to the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology, which holds and studies the mummy and its equipment. The blade was cast in a mould, allowed to cool, and then compressed further by hammering, a two-stage process that left the metal denser and harder than a straight casting alone would produce. Signs of wear on the edge show the axe was used repeatedly and resharpened more than once, evidence that it was a working tool carried for practical use rather than an object made solely for burial or display.

A Yew Haft Bound With Birch Tar and Leather

The blade sits in a knee-shaped haft carved from yew wood roughly 60 centimetres long, one of the few complete hafted axes known from this period anywhere in the world. The copper blade was fixed into a forked slot cut into the shaft, held in place with birch tar and then wrapped tightly with leather straps to keep it from working loose under repeated use. The museum notes the axe is unique both for surviving intact and for preserving that full assembly of blade, haft and binding together, rather than the museum having to reconstruct how the pieces once fit.

Ore From Southern Tuscany, Not the Nearby Alps

The copper itself did not come from the Alpine region where Ötzi lived and died, even though active copper mines existed there at the time. Researchers traced the ore to mines in South Tuscany, in what is now central Italy, a find that surprised specialists who had assumed a mountain community would rely on the nearest available deposits. Geoscientist Gilberto Artioli of the University of Padua and colleagues reported the finding after comparing lead isotope ratios in the blade against ore deposits across Europe, work published in PLOS ONE in July 2017 and summarized by Science News. Their analysis put the source roughly 500 kilometres south of where the Iceman was found, in the Colline Metallifere district near Campiglia Marittima.

Isotopes and Trace Metals That Pinned Down the Source

Before that study, researchers had generally assumed the copper came from ore deposits within about 100 kilometres of the Iceman’s home range, since Alpine mining was already active in his lifetime. Artioli’s team instead matched the mix of lead isotopes in the blade, along with trace concentrations of arsenic, silver and more than a dozen other elements, to ore specifically from Southern Tuscany rather than any closer source. It remains unclear whether Ötzi or his community acquired raw Tuscan copper and cast the blade locally, or received the finished axe head already made, but either scenario points to a functioning long-distance trade network moving metal across the Italian peninsula roughly 5,000 years ago.

A Weapon, a Tool and a Mark of Status

Copper was the first metal widely used for weapons and tools, and mining and smelting knowledge had spread from Asia Minor into central Europe by roughly 4000 B.C. By around 3000 B.C., high-ranking men in the region were commonly buried with a personal copper axe, and the museum describes the tool as serving double duty: useful for felling trees and other woodworking, and effective enough as a close-combat weapon to double as a display of its owner’s standing. Given the effort required to mine, transport and cast the copper, owning one marked a person as someone of real means rather than an ordinary hunter or herder.

Why the Attacker Left a Valuable Axe Behind

Ötzi died from an arrow wound, and researchers have long treated the case as an archaeological murder investigation. What has puzzled specialists studying the equipment is that whoever killed him left the copper axe at the scene rather than taking it. Given how costly the object would have been to produce and how clearly it marked its owner’s status, the museum’s own account frames the decision as a genuine mystery: carrying off a well-known man’s valuable axe might have exposed the attacker as his killer, which could explain why it stayed exactly where Ötzi fell.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

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