Bronze Age Dagger

A quartz crystal dagger with ivory handle was recovered from a Copper-Age tomb in southern Spain in 2008 within a highly unusual grave assemblage, dominated by exotic Ivory objects. This unique object has a blade, around 18cm long, made from a single piece of quartz crystal that was mounted in a highly decorated ivory handle and found accompanied by a carved ivory plaque, probably part of its sheath. Clearly a very special object, analysis of its properties and associations tells us about the importance of social status and craft specialisation during this time (around 2500 BCE) and about the nature and extent of the trade and exchange networks that existed.

Reading

GarcíaSanjuán, L., Luciáñez Triviño, M., Schuhmacher, T.X., Wheatley, D., Banerjee, A. In Press. Ivory craftsmanship, trade and social significance in southern Iberian Copper Age: the evidence from the PP4-Montelirio sector of Valencina de la Concepción (Seville, Spain). Journal of European Archaeology 16(4) (preprint can be downloaded from http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/353784/)

García Sanjuán, L. 2006, Chapter 11: Funerary ideology and social inequality in the Late Prehistory of the Iberian South-West (c.3300-850 cal BC), in Díaz-del-Río, P., and García Sanjuán, L., Social Inequality in Iberian Late Prehistory British Archaeological Reports  International Series 1525, 149-169.