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Description: | Iron dagger in a wooden sheath, dating to the iron age. The piece measures 00mm in overall length, 00mm in width and is 00mm thick; it weighs 00g. It comprises a long slender iron dagger housed within an ash-wood sheath. Both are in a reasonable state of preservation although the dagger's organic hilt-plates and pommel, and the sheath's suspension loop(s) and chape, are missing. Initial cleaning of the surface corrosion products on the sheath in the laboratory by Rebecca Lang has revealed negative traces clearly demonstrating the former existence of a series of overlapping ? copper alloy strips decorated with bands of repoussé dots. (It is possible that these strips copied leather originals.) X-rays have also revealed the positions of a number of pins arranged in a broadly linear fashion down the back of the sheath, by which means the now-missing decorative strips were presumably secured. A further series of three narrow ? iron bands clasp (rather than encircle) the sheath, and these may have been the means by which the missing suspension loop(s) were attached. The sheath itself appears to have been constructed of two separate slender plano-convex 'leaves' of ash wood, effectively bound together by the (missing) overlapping ? copper alloy strips. It is hoped that further conservation work will be able to confirm both this and other constructional details. The Chambers Wharf dagger can be added to a small group of late Hallstatt examples, all but one of which were probably recovered from the west London Thames (Jope 1961; Macdonald 1978). The single outlier, from Luttre in Belgium, may be a British export. As a group, these daggers are usually dated to the 6th century BC; it is possible that radiocarbon dating of the Chambers Wharf sheath will be able to supply independent corroboration. | Publisher: | http://finds.org.uk | Source: | Portable Antiquities | Identifier: | http://finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/r... | Go to resource |
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