Bone inventory from sites of the Classical time in the Northern Black Sea region: Technology relating to the manufacture and functions of the tools

Abstract

This paper analyses a collection of bone tools from Classical sites (cities, villages and the necropolis) of the Northern Black Sea region (excavations of 2002–2016 were conducted by archaeologists from the State Hermitage Museum, the Institute for the History of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg and the Demeter Non-Profit Foundation, Kerch). According to archaeozoology, the main sources of raw materials for these tools were bones of domestic large ungulates: sheep/goat bones were used less often, and there are only isolated examples of items made from red deer antlers. Thanks to experimental and use-wear analyses, it was possible to describe the technology for processing bone by craftsmen of the Classical period and also to establish the functional purpose of these artifacts. Special attention should be paid to such artifacts as rasps for hard limestone or marble, anvils for fashioning denticulated working edges of iron sickles and a grinding tool for ochre. For the first time in the academic literature their specific use-wear traces are described, and the work process itself has been reconstructed with the help of written sources and ethnographic data. This study provides new sources for the description of the Classical time production complexes.