Iron Knife
My object was an iron knife found in the second layer of West Stow. The knife has a straight cutting edge, a curved back, and a flat and wide back. It is one of the longest such knives found in West Stow, 15 centimeters long with the blade making up 9.4 of those centimeters.
Knives like this one would have been a very important part of life in early medieval England. England at our time of study was relatively iron-scarce, thus iron tools with multiple purposes would have been necessary to make the most of the limited iron supply. A knife like this would have many purposes, helpful in labor as a cutting implement and perhaps as a hammering implement with its flat back, as well as potentially allowing for the self-defense of its owner.
I attempted to make a three-dimensional model, but these attempts failed, perhaps due to the knife’s uniform black color and blur with its own shadow. A physical model did not seem plausible given a regrettable lack of forges on the Carleton campus. Thus, I modeled this knife with a scaled drawing. This drawing did in fact provide me with insight – what surprised me most was how small the knife was. Even though it was one of the longest unearthed, it was still what we in the modern day would probably consider a medium or even small knife. Again, this reinforces the notion that iron-scarcity informed people’s choices around tool production.
