EXPERIMENTS IN THE USE OF THE TYPE IV DANISH DAGGER (PART 1)
By Ray Harwood
The classic Danish Dagger style is the type IV, with the
leaf blade and incorporated squared off and stitched handle. The Neolithic Period, “Hindsgavl” Dagger, in the
National Museum in Denmark is of this sort. According to the National Museum in
Denmark “the daggers were prestige objects and do not seem to be usable for
everyday activities”.
Anytime an archaeologist labels an artifact ritualistic, ceremonial
or a prestige item I always get suspicious.
This leads to curiosity and often experimentation. The first step in my Danish Dagger experiment
is to procure a task set of Danish Daggers, Ed Mosher, of Monticello, Indiana is one of the ever growing Number of
modern flintknappers that produce excellent
knapped replicas of this amazingly well-crafted
flint artifact type. I contacted and purchased several type IV daggers from Ed. I supplied Ed with Glass Buttes obsidian for this big mutha, silver sheen.
The first experiment I carried out with the Danish daggers
was processing a deer, gutting, skinning and butchering.
1.
The gutting, removing the entrails, of the deer with a Danish Dagger: First I dispatched a medium sized buck deer
from the high forests of Northern Idaho.
I then hung the animal from a tree by its’ back legs. The tip
of Danish daggers are very sharp and the handle is made so a great deal of
force can be applied, so for initial
slicing incision and gutting the deer the dagger worked quite well for
the initial slicing incision. I made
use of several sized daggers; a smaller one was needed to aid in the removal of
left over gut remanence and fat nodules.
2.
Skinning the deer: I have skinned deer before with flint and
obsidian knives, including Bison, but never with a Danish Dagger. I found a smaller
dagger worked best as the larger ones were to cumbersome for the wrist. The deer hangs upside down you start at the
top and work your way down toward the head. The tip and the upper blade margin were very effective
to remove the skin from the inner thigh crotch- shin area, the cut around the
leg and removal of the scent gland area was done with the tip, sometimes you
have to hold the dagger on the lower blade instead of the plummel for proper
function,.
The tail and torso fallow. Removal of the hide uses a almost
circular cutting while pulling up on the skin.A saw like cutting motion was
used one the front leg skin removal cutting around the leg and peeling. The next step in the skinning was the head
removal. A combination of sawing and hacking was used with the blade margin of
the Danish dagger; the weight of the large dagger was an aid in this process. Decapitaion was effective and withing three
minutes with a large Danish Dagger.
When skinning any game plan on getting cut, the
Dagger is no exception, I lopped off the outer tip of my left thumb right from
the get go. The daggers had enough bulk to separate the hide well from the meat
without taking too much meat off with the hide. A flake is so sharp that it
often does poorly and even can cut the hide, flint flakes are too sharp for
skinning. Once the scent glands are
removed and the hide is cut and skinned from the carcass can be transported to
home for the curing and aging of the meat and butchering.
3.
Aging thje meat on the bone: After the field dressing
and after the decline of the rigor Mortis
the meet was hung and aged for three
days, in under 42 degrees Fahrenheit in a cheese cloth deer bag, for the aging of the meat. The aging
process of the meat happens naturally
when the collagen in the meat is broken down by the natural enzymes.
4.
Deer butchering with the Danish Dagger; While
the carcass hand head down, the shoulders are pulled away from the torso by the leg, with the left hand and the Danish dagger blade held parallel to the rib cage the dagger is
used as a saw like motion and some hacking, similar to the head removal. After
the removal of the shoulders the back straps were removed. The back straps are
the most desired cut on the carcass.
The
Danish dagger is here used as a scraper to removed excess fat tissue. The slicing cut just below the hip bone toward
the spine. This is done with the tip of the Danish dagger. The spine is fallowed with a linear tip sawing
cut toward the shoulder on both sides of the spine. Then the back strap is removed with a “skinning
methodology” and the left hand pulls down on the meat cut. Cutting the carcass
in two at the hip is a similar head and shoulder removal. To cut the sirloin,
the cut starts at the knee down switching the Danish dagger blade
angle 90 degrees. The rest of the
process is the removing the remaing meet and cleaning up the prime cuts.
THE BITTERROOT MONTANA KNAP IN OF 2015
By Ray Harwood
, There were bluegrass music jam sessions, knapping, atlatl throwing, archery shooting, lots of food and it was held in the most beautiful place on earth.
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