In 2013 Justina Baron and Beata Miazga published an interesting paper on an iron dagger from Legnica (south-western Poland).The dagger was discovered in 1966 as a stray find and after conservation previously identified as a medieval kidney-dagger and dated to the 13th century (Fig. 1). Due to interdisciplinary research, this unique find turned out to be instead a Scythian akinakes which belongs to a small collection of daggers of Scythian provenance discovered in Poland comprising only five specimens so far.
Double-edged iron dagger from Legnica
The blade is 19.7 cm , straight,
double-edged with a midrib. The dagger has a 12.5 cm long flanged hilt
terminated by a bar-shaped pommel. Iron blade, hilt and pommel were forged as
one piece while the c. 2mm thin heart-shaped guard was made separately. A small
crack may be observed in the pommel but it probably appeared in the originally
complete bar. It’s actual lenghts is 32.2 cm , however, due to the conservation work
carried out in the 1970s its original size might have changed.
The microscopic observations of the nitched
specimens revealed the simple soft ferrite structure of the item with cementite
grain boundaries and small amounts of pearlite. The metallographic
investigation proved also that in the dagger production no particular material
processing techniques (e. g. quenching, tempering) were involved.
The dagger can be seen at the Copper Museum of Legnica
With the kind permit of the authors.
The
article can be found here:
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