NAVIGATION

Just as copper blades represented a great leap forward from prehistoric flint implements so the discovery of bronze drove pure copper weapons into obsolescence. Bronze is a mixture of two metals, an alloy of copper and tin and it is much harder than copper resulting in stronger weapons that could take and hold a sharp edge better and could also be made narrower and longer. Molten bronze flowed better than copper into moulds and so hilts began to be cast in one piece with the blade, eliminating the weak point of a riveted joint between hilt and blade. Early Bronze Age daggers from Luristan, an area west of modern Iran, were cast in one piece with recesses in the grip to take plates of wood or bone. These are the earliest known examples of grip ‘scales’ and would later become one of the most common methods of grip construction in knife and dagger manufacture throughout the world.