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A hand-axe but a headache too. 

What was it used for?

• Cooking
  
• Leatherworking
• Carpentry
• Some other craft
• Gardening
  
• Forestry
  
• Hunting
  
• Fighting
  

or some combination of these? Or some other purpose?

Was it fitted to a wooden handle ('hafted')?

If so was it?

• Bound into a split in the handle
  
• Fitted into a socket
  

Or perhaps it was just hand-held.

Where was it from?

Here we are on firmer ground. It was

• Found in North Hertfordshire or South Bedfordshire 30+ years ago
  
• Made about 4000 years ago in a stone axe factory in North Wales, at Penmaenmawr. BBC 'A History of the World' shows a very similar object. But the BBC site says that axe is made of a rock 'similar to slate'; I'm not sure that's right. I think it may be diorite; any geologists are watching please write in! My hand-axe also seems smaller, about 12 cm.
  

So it had travelled 200+ hundred miles.

How did the owner lose it (or didn't they?)

The cutting edge is sharp and the polished faces on either side unscratched. So perhaps

• A stone-axe trader dropped it
  
• The owner dropped it on the way home from the local axe-sharpener
  
• The owner deliberately discarded it as a offering to supernatural beings. (But it was such a votive offering we would expect to find other objects nearby, and it was found in isolation.)
  
• A hunter threw it at a prey animal, missed, then couldn't find the axe again.
  

We can never know exactly.

The history of objects

When anyone brings an object like this into my local The Moon Under Water, many people ask to see it. Their first question is always 'How old is it?' 

'About 4000 years.' 

'Can I touch it?

'Yes.'

And then, reverentially, 

'So apart from you I'm the first person to touch it for 4000 years.' 

'Yes'.

Everyone is very quiet and thoughtful at that point. I find the respect they display is very moving. It shows that the human race is noble, in spite of everything.