This collection of papers examines the regional variability and socio-technical complexity of Neolithic flint daggers in Europe and beyond. The volume is well edited, the language fluent and most of the figures are nicely reproduced, including some in colour. Following an introduction, 12 papers cover daggers from the Near East, southern and western Europe, northern Europe, southern Scandinavia and eastern Europe; a chapter dealing with the Bronze Age metal and stone daggers of north-east Asia falls somewhat outside the book's general theme—even if it is interesting in its own right. A conclusion summarises some of the threads running through the contributions, and points towards future research. A huge amount of detailed information is presented in the papers, and this review can touch upon only a few of the many interesting aspects covered.

The introduction tackles the issue of dagger definitions—and this turns out to be tricky. Daggers were manufactured in a variety of raw materials, using different methods and techniques, and producing diverse shapes; their use and deposition also varied across time and space. Seen from this perspective, it is curious that the category of ‘dagger’ is still considered useful at all. The introduction suggests that the meaning of daggers is relational and thus only to be understood within specific temporal and regional contexts. This implies that any ambition for an all-encompassing typology is redundant. Yet daggers—hand-held, sharp objects with two edges converging towards the tip—are objects in need of little analogical reasoning in order to be understood; it might even be justifiable to speak about them in essentialist terms. Daggers are still used today and are instantly recognisable. Made in a variety of materials, they featured in hunter-gatherer contexts of the early Holocene in north-eastern Europe and in contemporary Neolithic contexts in the Near East. The mere fact that the volume exists is a confirmation of the importance of historical continuity, and that feels refreshing. After all, typological discussions have been ongoing for well over a century without achieving consensus.

Zimmermann presents the lithic daggers of the Near East, starting with the earliest pressure-retouched blade daggers of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A in Anatolia and northern Syria, and ending with pressure-flaked, pre-dynastic Egyptian knives. With a background in Scandinavian archaeology, I noticed that the former have striking formal and technological similarities with early Mesolithic Kunda points from the Preboreal eastern Baltic area. Is this a coincidence? Future research might shed light on this aspect. In general, Zimmermann's paper provides an excellent framework for the early Anatolian obsidian daggers that most of us only know from the excavations of James Mellaart and Ian Hodder at Çatalhöyük.

Graves-Brown describes dagger-like flint objects from Bronze Age Egypt, and an intriguing paragraph in her paper concerns the reliefs and paintings that depict the manufacture of flint-knives. Modern knappers have not been able to make sense of these paintings, and it has been assumed that the artists misunderstood the production process. Recently, however, Marquant-Lund has managed to replicate daggers consistent with these pictures by using a copper-tipped ‘Ishi stick’ vertically. This illuminates the importance of the distinction between ‘method’ and ‘technique’ developed by the French school of lithic studies: while a lithic production method (the direction, order and sequence of individual flake removals) can be fully reconstructed through refitting, the interpretation of the production techniques (the ways in which the energy is transferred from the knapper to the tool) is dependent on experience and knowledge, and can always be improved upon. The Egyptian daggers were apparently not used for fighting but rather for slaughter. This is in line with the evidence of the Iliad and the Odyssey, where metal daggers are used for this purpose rather than in battle, something Varberg touches upon in her paper on the function of the south Scandinavian flint daggers.

Renewed investigation of British flint daggers, presented by Frieman, reveals that the manufacture of late third-millennium BC British daggers was probably influenced by the production of Scandinavian flint daggers—via Scandinavian dagger types in the Netherlands—and not the other way around. The implication is that the introduction of bifacial arrowheads, archery graves and flint daggers may indicate a short period during which the eastern part of the British Isles was under continental influence.

Great differences are apparent between the geographic regions covered by this book. While relatively few daggers are known from consumption areas such as Italy, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, larger numbers of daggers have been recovered in the production areas in western France, the British Isles, southern Scandinavia and Volhynia (south-east Poland and north-west Ukraine). Seemingly, complex lithic technologies were predominantly reproduced across generations in areas with high-quality raw material such as Grand Pressigny, the British Isles, southern Scandinavia and Volhynia. Each of these production areas is associated with distinct geographically delimited production syntaxes and dagger types. Although the paper by Ihuel et al. describes the Grand-Pressigny blade dagger production as a blade-core technology with a specific platform preparation technique, the production of British, Scandinavian and Volhynian daggers was based on bifacial techniques, each with regional peculiarities resulting in distinct regional products. In consumption areas such as the Czech Republic, Slovakia and north-west Poland, the products of the different regional traditions are mixed, suggesting overlapping prehistoric exchange networks.

In the concluding chapter, Frieman argues that the meticulous studies of regional dagger traditions suggest that the notion of a common ‘dagger idea’ may be flawed. In a way, this is a logical conclusion as commonalities are often obscured by emphasis on ever finer levels of detail. I am, however, not so sure in this case. A common feature of social facts transcending generations and cultures—such as social institutions, laws, myths and technologies—is that their meaning is relational. But this does not necessarily mean that a common core cannot be retained, as the formal properties of social facts can be surprisingly consistent over time, even if meanings change. Perhaps it is such a core that makes daggers so familiar to us today?

In sum, this useful collection can be recommended to any scholar or student with an interest in flint technology and Neolithic archaeology more generally.