Thanks, monks, but I'm not out of the woods yet.

file filename.pag and filename.dir both return a very terse answer: data

strings does in fact strip out the garbage, but the records still aren't intact: e.g. fragments of the same reccord appear in many places, inconsistent breaks between records, etc.
I do note that the key for each value is often found at the end of the relevant value string, if that's a clue for any demigods who read this.

I've been trying this on my webhost's Liunx server instead of my own (recently rebuilt) Win32 system, hoping the implementations would differ less from the original Athena, but that also means I can go installing every SBDM_File module I can find.

I've search the DBM answers here over the last 3 years or so, and anything I can get my hands on, still to no avail.
I did see a partial reference to a WhichDBM module - does such a thing really exist?

Since the size of the data isn't huge (dozens of timestamps for 32 people), I'm off to hack at what I got from strings, but it's still very ugly and (after much reading) it seems I'm not the only one who has this kind of question unanswered.
"How do I find out what to use to unwind an old DBM file, original type unknown?"

Thanks again, especially tachyon, for the helpful suggestions.