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Teeth from a saw-edged sickle. Used for harvesting the ears of wheat carefully to allow for less wastage and better quality straw for thatching.
These are sickle teeth, from a saw-edged sickle. Saw-edged sickles were used for harvesting the ears of wheat carefully by hand to allow for less wastage and better quality straw for thatching. Nothing is known about the origins of these sickle teeth.

possible sickle teeth: carnelian

MERL 'Handwritten catalogue' form – 'TEETH (SICKLE) // ? Some doubt about these', MERL miscellaneous note [For the file. The Saw-edged sickle.] - 'This differs from the swop-hook in being much thinner and more narrow and lighter and having a saw edge. It is now "extinct" and I have only seen one and that was in action. That was in the North Cotswolds about 1917 and the old couple using it cultivated with the breast plough, pull and push together. // The Egyptians used the same system of reaping by inserting splinters of cornelian into the lower jaw-bones of large mammals and other Near Eastern people used sharp flints in the same way. This I got from Flinders Petre but it was later confirmed by Sir Leonard Woolley... // Here in Europe the saw-edged sickle was used so that by its use the straw (wheat) could be saved whole and uncracked for high class house thatching. The method was that a woman took the sickle in the right hand gathering together a handfull of the standing wheat just under the ear, and the heads were easily cut off with one or perhaps two thrusts and dropped into sacks which were held open by a child. // Thus there was no corn lost by scatter and the sacks could be taken to the thrashing barn and stored safe and dry for hand thrashing with the flail in the wet and slack winter season and at least ten times as much could be kept in the barn than if it had come in on the straw. The woman and child were followed by the scythe men who cut the empty straw and two children who very carefully gathered it up into trusses being beaten if ever found to mix the tops with the bottom of the straw. The trusses were then bound and stacked but very thoroughly wetted before being taken on to the roof thus again preventing much breaking. Thus it took two scythe men, one woman and three children as against two scythe men along for ordinary mowing...'