The following study is a continuation of my earlier essay on swords and daggers (Iraq, VIII, 1946) and was undertaken with the help of a research grant from the Central Research Fund of London University. This has enabled me to examine at first hand the material in the Louvre and the Musées Royaux at Brussels as well as the collections in the British Museum, the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Cambridge, and the Institute of Archaeology, London, and I am indebted to the authorities of all these Museums for permission to publish many of the axes in their collections. These collections and the mass of scattered material in both excavation reports and special studies form the basis for this essay, which must be regarded merely as the outline for a typological scheme which, when more stratified material is available, will no doubt have to be modified and developed.