Found this in my email this morning courtesy of http://www.stonepages.com
Relatively interesting I think!
THe shape of the axe itself.

Men working on a peat bank in Orphir have unearthed an “outstanding” example of a late Bronze Age socketed axe – believed to be only the second found in Orkney to date.

The find is particularly exciting, given the comparative scarcity of Bronze Age artefacts in the county.

Michael Watt discovered the 3,000-year-old axe head while spreading peats at the Highland Park's Hobbister peat bank. The distillery uses the peats, which are mechanically extracted each spring and manually spread to dry over the summer, to dry the barley used in its whisky.

Initially, it was thought that the peat-encrusted object was an old tractor part, but once its significance was realised it was passed to Scott Chalmers, whose father, Jim, took it to the archaeology department in Orkney College.

Measuring 8.9cm long, the axe head has a socket at one end, to which a wooden haft would have been attached, as well as a loop through which leather or twine would have been threaded to keep head and haft together.


The rest, with photos, is here:
http://www.orkneyjar.com/archaeology/socketedaxe.htm

     Bjarn!                                                                                     
         Wow! Nice catch!!    Some time ago I was taking some classes at a nearby arts and crafts school and I did some basic bronze casting ( and other things: see the thread on bladesmithing ) but the one or two crude pieces I made were junk compared to this. A gorgeous piece of work and an interesting write up! ThanX, Bjarn!!
      .......Dan

Ja, it looks odd to me, kind of fat and ja, the hole is so it can be tied on.

Ive only made stone axes..

perhaps you are supposed to find  a  sapling with a nice handle sticking out of it in the form of a branch.  then cut out the section of the tree the handle is attached to and whittle it into a wedge, wich is shoved in the back of the axe, and the little hole is where you tie it on to make sure the wedge doesn't fall out of the back.  just maybe, and i could be wrong.

it looks like it is all still in one peice, but i am not sure.

Cool axe! It is thick, so maybe it is a maul?

maybe its just a splitting wedge? and the loop down on the bottom is for hanging it when your done. You would not want to lose something like that at that time.

It looks like the haft would be a split rod, wrapping the axe head where the 3 vertical lines are the vertical lines possibly biting into the inside of the split rod, then wrapped at the top and bottom with possibly an x crossing behind the head on the opposite side of the head(back side)  similar to some of the axes of ancient egypt.  I would suppose the hole in the axe head to possibly hold a short stick to keep the axe head from working its way backward through the haft of the axe.

This is all just a guess of course.