Casgliadau Arlein

Part of an iron knife. The blade and part of the handle remains. A patch of bone presumably derived from the handle, remains in situ. The instrument appears to have been made of a single sheet of metal and probably had the bone handle pieces rivetted on either side, although one edge may have been sharpened, a knife for piercing rather than cutting may be suggested. Goodall suggests that knives with strip tangs were common from at least the fourteenth century, and this would accord with the late thirteenth-early fourteenth century date suggested for the pottery from the same group as this piece.