Question about a found Case knife.

[SharpBits]

Sounds like a training exercise to train the students to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff, as it were.

 

[abbydaddy]

Hello, BladeForums experts! I have a question.

I have a friend who is studying archeology and is doing some sort of internship involving a "pedestrian survey" which I'm told has to do with mapping out an area of land and documenting anything found there.

She sent me these photos of a pocketknife, and asked if I could give any information, especially regarding its age.

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It is a Case knife, and looks to me to have had two blades. The blades are rusted away, but the backsprings are shiny. I'm hoping a Case expert could narrow down a time frame of when Case started using stainless springs.

A little longer than a penknife, maybe a Muskrat? It looks like white synthetic scales, I'm not 100% certain. I don't know if sitting for years in the elements could affect the color.

I appreciate any information and opinions y'all have, Thanks!

As a professional archaeologist, this is my take:

If she's doing pedestrian survey, then this is a surface find. That means that soil chemistry is going to have minimal effect on preservation, at least as compared to photodegredation from the sun. That means that the color is almost certainly generally correct. If it was yellow delrin the color would be more uneven.

Based on folks comments, it sounds like the stainless springs place the knife manufacture within the last 50 years, so even with a federal nexus on the archaeological project, this knife would be diagnostically modern, so probably not worth further cleaning and investigation (unless it could be tied specifically to an event or person of historical significance).

But if I collected it during a project, I would probably have a tech clean it just to check the tang stamps and confirm it was non-historic. We clean and catalogue everything we collect, but I also usually don't do collection on pedestrian survey.