EuroDag · The first European daggers: Function, meaning, and social significance

The first European daggers: Function, meaning, and social significance

The EuroDag is the first ever comparative study of the function of early European stone and metal daggers, c. 3800-1500 BC. The EuroDag project aims to understand how early daggers were used, for what purposes, and in which social contexts, while also exploring whether meaningful functional differences might be discerned amongst this broad class of objects based on manufacturing technology, chronology, typology, or regional distribution. The research problem will be addressed through an original combination of microwear analysis (to be conducted on prehistoric flint and copper-alloy daggers from Italy) and functional experiments with purpose-built replica objects. The importance of the project is threefold: (1) this is the first comprehensive functional analysis of a class of objects that, though widespread in Neolithic and Early Bronze Age Europe, is still poorly understood; (2) it is the first attempt ever made to examine both flint and metal daggers as a coherent set of artefacts; and (3) it is the first time that a researcher will develop a unified experimental and analytical methodology for the investigation of both lithic and copper-alloy objects from world prehistory. The research will dramatically reshape the agenda of prehistoric studies by revealing the functional basis of the significance and lasting fortunes of flint and metal daggers in Neolithic and Early Bronze Age Europe. Prehistoric daggers have been subjected to a considerable amount of scrutiny. While early studies tended to focus on classification and chronology, later research concentrated on manufacturing processes; the role played by these objects in the construction of male and martial identities; hoarding and ritual practices; and the close yet ambiguous relationship that existed in prehistoric Europe between stone and metal implements. Functional analysis and experimentation represent important methods of analysis and to interpret the meaning of daggers. These were not just objects but a "dagger idea" spreads and was adopted throughout the continent and beyond. The EuroDag project has the following objectives: Objective 1 – To investigate the uses of early European daggers by means of microwear analysis, to be conducted on flint and copper-alloy objects from Italian context; Objective 2 – To assess the hypotheses stemming from the microwear analysis by means of functional experiments with purpose-built replica flint and copper-alloy daggers.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз