4,000-year-old dagger is oldest bronze object ever found in Britain

For more than 4,000 years, a man lay buried in a corner of a field in the English county of Sussex, far from the land of his childhood, holding a rare and precious object that was literally a piece of cutting-edge technology.

Then for another 23 years he lay in a museum store until a chance conversation between two archaeologists led to the unravelling of his story.

The man died of a sword wound and was buried holding his dagger - a weapon the archaeologists say is the oldest bronze object ever found in Britain and one of the oldest in Europe.

He was buried lying on his left side, with his hands clasping the dagger in front of his face. The dagger is an exceptionally rare type: the wooden hilt, long since rotted away, was ornamented with tiny studs, each a little masterpiece of ancient metal work which when new would have gleamed like gold.

Its owner was a fighter. The unhealed sword slash near his elbow probably caused him to bleed to death, and the soil clinging to the bone proves that it was a raw gaping wound when he was buried. He also had another old sword injury near the shoulder, and the blade of his beautiful dagger had been sharpened, proving it was no mere ceremonial object.

The results of scientific tests on his bones and teeth, just announced at a museum in Chichester where his remains are now on display, dated his dagger to 4,200 years ago, the earliest securely dated bronze object ever found in Britain.

It was made at the dawn of bronze-working techniques, when metalsmiths in Britain learned from the continent how to alloy their copper with tin and make a harder and more beautiful metal. Within a few decades bronze had almost wiped out copper work, used for ornaments and weapons which could be sharpened to a murderous edge.