Double Edged Blades: Re-visiting the British (and Irish) Flint Daggers

Abstract

Flint daggers are a well-known and closely studied category of artefact found throughout western Europe during the final centuries of the Neolithic and the earliest phases of metal use. They are widely linked to the adoption of metal objects and metallurgy – in many cases being described as copies of metal daggers. In Britain, several hundred flint daggers have been recovered from a variety of contexts, among the best known of which are a handful of rich Beaker single inhumation burials. The British flint daggers were of great interest to early archaeologists, and were the subject of several publications in the early 20th century, most notably the seminal 1931 typochronology and catalogue by W.F. Grimes. However, despite 80 years of evolution in our understanding of the British Early Bronze Age, Beaker burials, European flint daggers, and lithic technology in general, little further attention has been accorded to the British flint daggers. This paper returns to the flint daggers deposited in British contexts. It proposes a new classification for British daggers, distinguishing between those probably produced in Britain and those brought in from elsewhere on the continent. It further examines thechaîne opératoirefor these daggers based on their final form as no production locales are yet known and examines in detail the choices made in their deposition, not just in funerary contexts but on dry land and, most importantly, in wet contexts. Finally, it proposes a sequence of development for British flint daggers which links them technologically and morphologically to lanceolate Scandinavian daggers in circulation in the Netherlands. It is suggested that people in south-east Britain knowingly played up this Dutch connection in order to highlight a specific ancestral identity linking them directly to communities across the Channel.