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Histories of Northamptonshire
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Bronze Age Flint Dagger

Early Bronze Age 3300 - 2100 BCE Geologic to Prehistoric

This flint dagger was found in a male burial in a barrow along with other grave goods. It had never been used so may have been an ornamental or ritual piece.

Flint dagger from Bronze Age barrow at Stanwick Lakes. © NMAG
Flint dagger from Bronze Age barrow at Stanwick Lakes.
Complete collection of grave goods from Bronze Age burial including pottery beaker, jet buttons and additional flint tools © English Heritage
Complete collection of grave goods from Bronze Age burial including pottery beaker, jet buttons and additional flint tools
Reverse of Bronze Age flint dagger from Stanwick Lakes barrow © NMAG
Reverse of Bronze Age flint dagger from Stanwick Lakes barrow

This flint dagger was discovered in the burial of an adult male in a Bronze Age Barrow at Stanwick Lakes alongside an assorted toolkit of other flint objects and personal items.

Dating to the Early Bronze Age, 3,300 to 2,100 BCE, a time when flint tools were starting to be replaced by metal tools. Highly skilled crafts people continued working (or knapping) flint tools that looked like the new incoming copper tools.

Microscopic analysis of this dagger shows no signs of use on the item other than polishing on the sides from the repeated wrapping and unwrapping of the dagger in a piece of leather or animal skin. This suggests that the dagger and the other flint tools found with it were never used. Instead, it could have been part of an ornamental show piece collection owned by the individual buried with them, a reflection of both the object's value and the status of the owner some 4,000 years ago.

Number 11 of the objects selected for the A History of Northamptonshire in 100 Objects Exhibition 2025

Stanwick Lakes - Bronze Age Barrow
Contributed by Georgina Clipstone, Archaeological Resource Centre

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