The Find of a Bronze Dagger from Cifer-Pac, Trnava District

The analyzed short dagger with an unevenly rounded/trapezoidal blade base with four openings for rivets was discovered during the systematic surface prospection in the village of Cifer-Pac (Trnava district). X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (ED-XRF) of the dagger's surface confirms that it is made of tin bronze. With regard to the chemical composition of the dagger and typologically close finds of daggers from the Bronze Age in Slovakia and neighbouring territories, we can assume that the artifact was cast in the chronological period between stages BA2-BB1. The dagger from Cifer-Pac extends the group of bronze daggers as well as our knowledge of bronze metallurgy at the end of the Early Bronze Age/beginning of the Middle Bronze Age in Western Slovakia.