Art thou but a dagger of the mind? Understanding lithic daggers in Europe and beyond

New interpretive approaches, new analytical techniques and a new interest in flint daggers as a product of complex and interwoven technological systems have had a profound effect on our understanding of lithic daggers. Yet this research has generally been conducted within the confines of pre-existing national boundaries and through the lens of many different, sometimes only tangentially connected, national traditions of lithic analysis. We know a considerable amount about individual corpora of lithic daggers, but how these groups of daggers, their production technology and functions relate to each other and oth other contemporary materials and technologies remains a major question.