Research answers what Bronze Age daggers were used for
phys.org
phys.org
Saved you most of an article.
In some very important ways, celebrations are a playful exercise in logistics. Some events are essentially celebrations of successful logistics - if you reduce Oktoberfest to its essence, you are drinking last year's beer as soon as next year's supply is guaranteed.
Humans have a long history of conserving limited supplies of intoxicants for celebrations. Given how many of our early crops have a recipe for intoxication - wheat, barley, honey, apples, the notion that agriculture started for celebrations is not that gonzo.
Except then it sounds like it comes out of the no-duh institute of obvious studies.
The study has included both the analysis of the residues from the surface of the ancient daggers and the making of bronze replicas, which have been tested successfully as butcher knives, so the previously accepted opinion about their purpose has been proven to be wrong.
But at time why would something new and not useful be a status item? And if it was useful, but rare surely it will get lot of use? Good working cutting tools is extremely useful thing.
A thing can be an everyday tool AND a status symbol. But in this case, WHEN in the bronze age has a lot of bearing. Early on, yeah copper-alloy objects were relatively rare and expensive, but later as more mining put a LOT of copper alloy into trade and those trade networks became more extensive, they were less so, and thus you could have finds like I think one in England where EVERY HOUSE had copper and bronze implements.
The Pragatto finds in the article come from relatively late in the Bronze Age, so what they answer is AT THIS RELATIVELY LATE DATE, bronze daggers were common enough, even though still expensive and rare, to be used as everyday implements of slaughter rather than being strictly ornamental heirlooms.
If it's just for curiosity, isn't the methodology and capability atleast as interesting and much more important?
Valuing how we know things, not just what we think we might know is actual science.
Anyway articles like this are humbling about how little we know about our in the scheme of things not too distant ancestors.
Humans also have bone, muscle, and bundle tendon fibers. Do we know these residues are non-human? Another explanation could be that they were extensively in warfare.