Two Knives
Pictured above and below are two knives found during the 2026 dig.
We have found knives like these before. What makes them particularly special is where they were found.
Both were found in graves, one under the skeleton’s elbow, another at its owner’s hips.
As tour visitors to the site will know, grave goods are a rarity in the period we’re exploring at Cookham – the 8th-9th centuries A.D. The only item recovered from the cemetery excavations previously was an iron finger-ring. Grave goods were, however, common in burials of the early Anglo-Saxon era.
As the custom of furnished inhumation waned over the 7th-8th centuries A.D, knives were one of the last categories of object to be deposited in graves. Archaeological discoveries like our knives demonstrate that, contrary to popular perception, the coming of Christianity did not signal the end of grave goods.
The knife in the picture below is particularly fragile and was block-lifted with its surrounding soil. It will be micro-excavated in the laboratory.
