Rare Stone Age weapon now on display at Satakunta Museum

A rare Stone Age weapon, delivered to the Satakunta Museum at the beginning of July, has quickly been made available for public viewing. Leena Koivisto, an archaeologist at the Satakunta Museum, informs that the dagger, made of flint, is now on display in the lobby of the Satakunta Museum located in Pori. It will remain there for visitors to see until the end of the summer.

The dagger will later be transferred to Helsinki to be added to the National Museum’s collections, but efforts will likely be made to exhibit the item again in the Satakunta Museum’s permanent exhibition, says Koivisto.

The 25-centimeter dagger was discovered accidentally in the village of Haveri in Euran Honkilahti, on the shore of Lake Pyhäjärvi, years ago but was only delivered to the Satakunta Museum last week. The item is estimated to be about 4,000 years old.

The dagger had broken into two parts, with two years passing between the discovery of each piece. The parts were found during yard work at a vacation home.

Only about ten flint daggers have been found previously in Finland, and there are no other findings quite like this one.

Flint daggers were made during the late Stone Age and the beginning of the Bronze Age in South Scandinavia, in what is now Sweden and Denmark. Flint does not occur in Finland.

Koivisto assesses to Yle that the item would have been valuable to its bearer. “Most likely, the object held more other values than just utility. It has been suggested that such a showpiece could have been a gift to a trading partner and a sign of the owner’s worth in the community. Kind of like a badge of honor.”