Posted on 05/02/2022 1:02:24 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Analysis of Bronze Age daggers has shown that they were used for processing animal carcasses and not as non-functional symbols of identity and status, as previously thought...
As daggers are often found in weapon-rich male burials, or ‘warrior graves’, many researchers speculated that they were primarily ceremonial objects used in prehistoric funerals to mark out the identity and status of the deceased. Others suggested that they may have been used as weapons or tools for crafts.
However, the lack of a targeted method of analysis for copper-alloy metals, like those available for ceramic, stone, and shell artefacts, left this problem unresolved.
A revolutionary new method, pioneered by an international research team led by Newcastle University, UK, has enabled the world’s first extraction of organic residues from ten copper-alloy daggers excavated in 2017 from Pragatto, a Bronze Age settlement site in Italy. The new method reveals, for the first time, how these objects were used, for what tasks, and on what materials...
The residues were then observed under several types of optical, digital, and scanning electron microscopes. This allowed the team to identify micro-residues of collagen and associated bone, muscle, and bundle tendon fibres , suggesting that the daggers had come into contact with multiple animal tissues and were used to process various types of animal carcasses. Uses seem to have included the slaughtering of livestock, butchering carcasses, and carving the meat from the bone.
(Excerpt) Read more at eurekalert.org ...
Reference: ‘Organic residue analysis reveals the function of bronze age metal daggers’ Isabella Caricola, Andrea Dolfini et al. Scientific Reports. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-09983-3
Duh.
For sticking Bronze-Age bloggers and conspiritards.
Another $tudy who$e re$ult wa$ more $$$$$tudy needed.
LOL
Mumbletypeg or pinfinger.
LOL
Not just bronze, pretty much anything will work.
I’ve gotta wonder what Amber Heard would have used it for.
They treated it the same as my dad treated his Bowie knife. First clue...it’s a knife!!
I thought they used them to pick their teeth 😂
Having watched “Oak Island” from the start I have appreciated the testing technology advances they have been using.
During the Middle Ages, most men and women wore a small knife in a sheath as part of their daily dress and used it as an all-purpose eating utensil and tool. It’s use as a weapon has usually been secondary. It is not extraordinary that this was also the case in the bronze age. Also wealthier individuals generally had nicer daggers. Meteorite knifes or daggers were, and are, the most valuable, unique and have properties that are close to the best modern metal, almost magic in the old world. Knifes of this type have been found in the tombs of Pharaohs.
https://skilledknife.com/meteorite-knives-what-are-they/
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-36432635
a dagger entombed alongside the mummy of Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun was made with iron that came from a meteorite, researchers say.
The weapon was one of a pair of daggers discovered by British archaeologist Howard Carter in 1925 within the burial wrappings of the teenaged king.
The origin of its unrusted iron blade has baffled scientists because such metalwork was rare in ancient Egypt.
Tutankhamun was mummified more than 3,300 years ago.
“Meteoritic iron is clearly indicated by the presence of a high percentage of nickel,” the study’s main author, Daniela Comelli, said.
Pretty much any artifact found is either food-related, or sex-related, unless its found in a site left by sociopaths who sacrificed fellow human beings for witless superstitions. :^)
Thanks, SunkenCiv!
My pleasure. Of course, next someone will try to tell us that stone arrowheads were actually used for hunting game. Farfetched, I say.
Archeologists are so out of touch with reality.
They just completely miss the practical aspect of why ancients did what they did.
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