Knives and Daggers

Stone knives were essential tools throughout prehistory. A stone knife that was hafted onto a handle would often have the proximal end of the tool modified to fit within the handle.

Stone knives were often (but not always) hafted onto a handle, and the proximal end of the tool was frequently modified—thinned, notched, or narrowed—to fit within the handle and to facilitate gluing or lashing.

Stone knives in many parts of the world were made on blanks made by flaking across both surfaces, called bifaces. A cutting edge was present on both edges of the knife. These two-edged bifacial tools are called ‘daggers’ in European convention; in North America, the term ‘biface’ is often used, or the misleading term ‘point’.

The label ‘knife’ should be considered cautiously, as there is not an unequivocal difference in shape or size between bifacial tools used as spear or dart points, and those used as knives. Indeed, some of these bifacial tools may have been used for both projectiles and knives, as observed historically in the Kimberley region of Australia.

Archaeologists can sometimes infer that a tool was used as a knife from the way it was resharpened. Use-wear analysts can a knife by the micro-wear left behind on the tool’s edges.

Special elongated flakes, called blades, often were used as knives, both unmodified or after hafting. Macroblade knives were still made and used into the historic period across much of Australia and on the Admiralty Islands near New Guinea. In Arctic areas, slate pieces were ground to create a bifacial cutting edges, and hafted for use as knives. The Inuit people in Alaska used a distinctive types of slate knife, called an ulu, into the historic period.

Knife handles rarely preserved in the archaeological record, but many of the known handles were carved with culturally-meaningful designs, shapes, and symbols. Prestige knives were flaked from the highest-quality stones, with outstanding workmanship on both the stone part and the handle, and often interred with burials. Famous examples include the Eagle Warrior knife from Mexico, on display in the British Museum, and the Gebel el-Arak knife from Egypt, on display in the Louvre. The handles on daggers from Denmark were flaked into the stone itself, with some handles wrapped with hide or bark to protect the hand. The Hindsgavl Dagger, on display in the National Museum of Denmark, is considered a National Treasure, and appears on the 100 kroner banknote. Handles on everyday knives might also be decorated, or might be plain and utilitarian, like on the knife carried by Otzi, the mummy discovered in the icefields of the Tyrolean Alps, and the Allensbach Dagger, on display in the Archaeological State Museum, Baden Wurttemberg. Modern flintknappers often haft their knives into handles with no known counterparts in the archaeological record, creating ‘fantasy’ tools.

The most common knife type in the archaeological record is the simple unmodified flake. Modern stone-using people used these tools expediently, striking them from a core when they needed a sharp tool, and threw them away afterwards. Expedient flake knives number in their millions on archaeological sites across the world, but without use-wear and residue analysis, it can be difficult or impossible to separate them from the discarded debris from making other types of tools. Sometimes these unmodified flakes were affixed to handles, as seen in the historic period in the Americas and Australia. Backed microliths may have been hafted singly or together in a series to create composite stone knives.

Most stone knives appear to have been for generalised use, but knives were dedicated for some tasks. In the Bible, Joshua was told by God to ‘make flint knives and circumcise the Israelites’ (Joshua 5:2). The book is thought to have been written in the Late Bronze Age or Early Iron Age, ca. 2400-2600 years ago, long after the appearance of metal knives. A freshly-struck and unmodified flint knife is sterile and sharper than a bronze knife, which may explain the continued use of flint in this ritual, although stone knives carried symbolic meaning as well. Aboriginal people continue to perform circumcision and subincision during male initiation rituals, and the knife used is often an expedient flake struck from a glass bottle base.