Description

Summary: 1 flint dagger from the River Thames.

Research results

An Early Bronze Age flint dagger found in the river thames in Wiltshire. The dagger is finely knapped and preserved remains seen on other similar daggers suggests it was originally hafted. It would have been contemporary with some of the earliest examples of copper alloy tools and weapons in the country, although flint daggers do not appear until after the earliest beaker burials, and are a feature of the later 3rd millenium BC.

This flint dagger was featured in Frieman's (2014) study of British and Irish Flint daggers as part of the Developing Archaeo-prosopography project funded by Oxford University, The Prehistoric Society and the Fell Foundation. The first major study of this class of artefact in 80 years, Frieman highlights the relatively short use period of these daggers when compared to continental traditions and suggests that the daggers produced in Britain were probably initially based on examples from the Netherlands, themselves imported from Scandinavia. She suggests their use in the later 3rd millenium BC may have related to stressing cultural links with these groups, although there may have been regional differences. Whilst found across Britain the daggers are most common in East Anglia and the South East where they are often deposited in rivers, by contrast those on the periphery of this region were often deposited as grave goods.