[Jack Savante]

Does anyone know of a dagger typology à la Oakeshott, Petersen but relating specifically to daggers?

I want to learn more about the medieval cruciform dagger but find it hard to get much information on this weapon, as it seems to be relegated to second place to the sword in most studies and books I've come across. Can anyone point me towards some excellent books on the subject?

[Chad Arnow]

There's no such thing that I'm aware of. Good sources would be:

Daggers and Fighting Knives of the Western World - Harold L. Peterson
Daggers and Bayonets - Logan Thompson
The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Knives, Daggers & Bayonets - Tobias Capwell
Posate, Pugnali, Coltelli da caccia: Del Museo nazionale del Bargello - Museo nazionale del Bargello (great pics, but Italian text)
Europaische Hieb und Stichwaffen (European Thrusting and Slashing Weapons) - Hartmut Kolling, Heinrich Muller (pics of all kinds of edged weapons, including lots of daggers. Text is in German.)

Dr. Capwell actually has three books out on daggers, though one appears to be a compilation of the other two.

Daggers are really neat and it's a shame there's not more out there on them. You can find really neat examples here and there is museum and auction catalogues, but you have to hunt for them.

I'm not sure a dagger typology would be as useful as a sword typology, but I'd love to see someone try to make one.

[Jeffrey Faulk]

I will note that the Capwell book, if they didn't edit it down to fit into the bumper volume with the Swords and Polearms book, is pretty slim on medieval daggers. It's got a very few pre-medieval daggers, a seax or two, and then the medievals; a few pages for that, a few pages on the Renaissance era daggers (main gauches, dudgeons, etc), and that's about it, IIRC. Okay for a little study, but I wouldn't rely on it very much. You'd be better off looking at the more specialized volumes that focus on specific parts of history rather than broad overviews.

Dagger typology would be very interesting. Would have to study pretty thoroughly, but off the top of my head, here are some things you could play with:

--Grip shape
--Guard and/or pommel shapes
--Blade shape

So, for example, a simple wood-hilted ballock dagger might be "this is a dagger of ballock type A, without pommel or guard, simple type 5 single edged blade", while a fancy roundel dagger might be "this is a rondel type 3 with flared grip and cast pommel and guard discs of octagonal form and a square-sectioned blade, type 8".

The tricky part is making sure your dating is consistent with the forms that show through history...

[Vincent Le Chevalier]

Though it's not about medieval daggers this article might be of interest:
Some Notes on Parrying Daggers and Poniards

Regards,

[Jack Savante]

Thanks Vincent! That's a very interesting link! Appreciate it!

[Jack Savante]

I think a Dagger typology would make for an interesting study.

I believe that the dagger was more than just a weapon of last resort as it has so often been described, and is due a thorough examination. We only need to look at the relevance and importance of the combat knife in today's conflicts to see that the dagger is far more than a backup weapon and is the centre of particular type of warfare of it's own.