I pugnali preistorici della Sardegna

This work is focused on the class of objects universally acknowledged as the most "interesting" in prehistory, that is weapons, and daggers among weapons, the first to be manufactured and highly representative of male and warlike societies. Particularly in Sardinia, the number and quality of findings offer a complex outline that, in the different periods, concerns the acquisition of models and technologies and the elaboration of rituals, following the man till the final funerary location. Therefore, collecting all available data -published and unpublished-, the aim is not simply to increase a partly already known database, but to renew the analysis, by the updating and re-examining of the bibliography and the chronology of the contexts of the discoveries (when known), and going in depth in the comparison of the shapes of the various items, looking in detail after the graphic reproduction, in order to build up the scale and the typology.

In each archaeological facies, each type and/or group and also isolated items difficult to classify are commented, and the results are interesting observations on the apparent indifference toward the practical aspect of the dagger as a "weapon" and, on the contrary, the strong symbolic significance, joined to the intrinsic value as a metal artefact, in a period when metallurgical activity was scarce, mostly experimental and often influenced from the external world. [Publisher's text]