A small piece of flint can be easier to understand when you picture the larger tool it belonged to. The Met’s bifacial sickle insert, object 15.3.797, was a cutting component rather than a complete handheld sickle.
The museum’s object account explains that several shaped flint inserts were secured in a wooden haft with adhesive. Their edges cut grain stalks. Worn pieces could be sharpened again or replaced, so the cutting edge was not necessarily renewed as one indivisible object.
Look for a relationship between materials
The flint performed one task within an arrangement involving wood and adhesive. This is a useful way to approach ancient technology: ask what each material contributed, rather than treating a tool as a single substance.
For a reading exercise, sketch a curved wooden support and mark several spaces for inserts. Label it “schematic illustration based on the museum description,” not a reconstruction of this exact sickle. The surviving insert does not supply every dimension of the missing tool.
The record also describes gloss associated with use on grain. That is a specialist interpretation of wear, not a reason to identify every shiny stone as an agricultural tool.
Keep the object’s broad dating and the museum’s qualification “probably” when recording its period. The interesting story is already substantial without narrowing the date: a cutting tool could be assembled, maintained, and renewed through the relationship between several small components.