Stone Age hand-axes from Hoxne, Suffolk, England. Engraving from an article by John Frere. In June of 1797 Frere wrote to the Society of Antiquaries describing that, in the same month, he had observed men digging clearly man-made implements from a Hoxne brick-clay pit. His article was ignored until 1859 when the archaeologist John Evans rediscovered the handaxes while making the case for the antiquity of man based on findings in France.