The yew haft — the wooden handle — was made from a single piece of yew wood, 60 centimeters long, with the axe head hafted into a split at the top. Yew was not incidentally chosen: it is one of the strongest and most flexible native European woods, and later experimental archaeology has shown that the hafting technique used was effective and durable. The specifics of how the head was attached — the precise angle, the binding materials used, the method of preventing the head from loosening under impact — suggest skill and knowledge in axe construction, whether applied by Ötzi himself or by a specialist.
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## His Bow and the Question of Readiness
The unfinished longbow found with Ötzi has generated substantial discussion about what his final days looked like. The bow was made from a single piece of yew wood, 1.82 meters long — approximately six feet, appropriate for a tall bow for an Alpine Copper Age man — but had not been strung and was not finished at both ends. Yew is an excellent material for self-bows (bows made from a single piece of wood without lamination), combining a compression-resistant heartwood and a tension-elastic sapwood in a single stave in a way that makes it among the best bow-making materials available in temperate Europe.
The bow was unfinished. It could not have been used as a weapon or hunting tool in the state it was found. The standard interpretation is that Ötzi had recently acquired the bow stave and was in the process of working it into a usable weapon — a task that would have required days of careful work to shape, dry, and string the bow correctly.