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.
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
This Jewish tombstone fragment is one of two surviving medieval inscriptions in England; indicating a thriving medieval Jewish community living in Northampton at the time.
This screw pine fossil is a rare type specimen. Parts of Jurassic Northamptonshire were submerged in a shallow warm sea and tropical plants thrived on the nearby land.
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Peterborough Museum