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The article discusses the acquisitions of the Royal Armouries, Great Britain's national museum dedicated to arms and armor, in 2009. Items examined include a pair of Flemish gauntlets, a North American lever action Henry rifle, and a Kurdish dagger. Firearms acquired by the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds, England are also listed.

The remains of an iron dagger within an iron sheath were found in 1998 at Castlethorpe, Buckinghamshire: the only one recorded in Britain and Ireland. Their typological characteristics are these of early iron-age examples, made somewhere between 600 and 400 B.C. A unique design feature and the circumstances of its deposition are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Correlation between features excavated in advance of a gasp pipeline, and cropmarks photographed some years previously , led to identification of a Saxon rural settlement, occupied from the sixth or seventh century through to the mid-ninth century. It comprised several interconnected enclosures, adjacent to two main trackways. A narrow strip was excavated through the settlement, and five possible sunken-featured buildings, and numerous ditches and pits, were recorded -- most ditches delineated enclosures which had been repeatedly redefined. The pottery assemblage spanned the transition between regional early Saxon and middle Saxon wares. Prehistoric occupation in the vicinity was evidenced by pottery (including beakers), flints and a bronze dagger fragment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]