dagger;
sheath
- Museum number
- ML.2401
- Description
-
Copper alloy dagger corroded into its sheath. The two together are now 358 mm long, and have been slightly bent, perhaps on discovery. The dagger is more sharply bent than the sheath (perhaps an attempt was made to restore the shape of the sheath) and its lower part projects beyond the broken back plate. Although the tip of the blade is missing it seems that the weapon was much shorter than the sheath. Now about 245 mm long (both shoulders are damaged), it would originally have been about 250 mm; about 41 mm wide. There is a marked midrib, one face obscured by the front plate, and the blade is shaped to fit the sheath for the top 140 mm but then tapers sharply to its point about 70 mm away from the end of the chape. The tang is rectangular in section and its upper part is lost; the shoulders are damaged. The sheath has a copper alloy front plate overlapping an iron back plate that survives only at the bottom (below the tip of the dagger). 325 mm long and 44 mm wide (disregarding slight distortion at the top), it has a fine ridged midrib with bordering ribs and broad and salient overlaps extending to the bottom. The mouth has a high narrow peak with a step on each side. The chape is a separate casting, perforated at the bottom to receive the tips of the two plates. Open and circular, it has a raised circle at the bottom on the front, and terminates in two drum shapes that clasp the sides of the sheath.
- Production date
- 600 BC - 450 BC (circa)
- Dimensions
-
Length: 250 millimetres (c., dagger original length)
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Length: 245 millimetres (dagger current length)
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Length: 325 millimetres (sheath)
-
Length: 358 millimetres (total)
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Weight: 263 grammes
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Width: 41 millimetres (c., dagger original width)
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Width: 44 millimetres (sheath)
- Curator's comments
-
Short iron daggers kept in sheaths appeared during the Hallstatt D period, after around 600 BC, and continued to be used into the La Tène I period. This is a later example.
-
Stead and Rigby 1999
Context: Daggers and their sheaths; La Tène I.
Weapons with blades mainly between 200 and 280 mm long, and 30 to 55 mm wide at the top, found in both Hallstatt D and La Tène I graves.
La Tène I: The sheath is made of two plates linked by a separate chape at the bottom. In one of the Morel examples (ML.2401) the chape is merely the rounded end piece, and there has never been a frame above it; another (ML.2601) has the remains of a frame but no hint of a bridge or clamps.
- Location
- On display (G50/dc10)
- Exhibition history
-
Exhibited:
1980, London, BM, Celtic Antiquities from Gaul
- Department
- Britain, Europe and Prehistory
- Registration number
- ML.2401