Kostenki 4 ground stone tools in the collection of Kunstkamera museum (MAE RAS)

Abstract

Tools made of soft rock materials at the Upper Paleolithic sites are usually represented by pebbles that were used for various domestic purposes without intentional modification of their shape. In the Neolithic period, the anisotropic stone raw materials were processed for manufacturing tools (such as axes, adzes, chisels, etc.) by abrasion — grinding, cutting edge sharpening, surface polishing. During the Upper Paleolithic, the occurrences of this technology use are rare due to the lesser role of woodworking in the life of glacial hunters. An exception is a series of ground tools from the Pavlovian sites in Central Europe, as well as from a few Gravettian sites similar to them by culture in the Kostenki-Borshchevo locality on the river Don. The largest assemblage of the ground tools originating from the site Kostenki 4 (excavations by A.N. Rogachev in 1937–1938) is housed in MAE RAS. Among these items there are rounded biconvex and plano-convex items (discs), rod-shaped and bullet-shaped items, as well as objects and fragments with polished surfaces and edges. The site comprises materials of a full cycle of manufacturing polished products, including a set of raw materials — quartzite abrasive tiles, pebbles and pieces of slate, dolomite, marl. The major part of collection consist of a series of bifacially treated blanks and amorphous items with the localized grindings. Polished discs and rods stand out for their peculiarity even against the background of the Holocene Stone Age ground tools, remaining beyond typological analogies. The traces of utilization such as short scratches and dints have surface localization instead of cutting edges or tips. The function of these objects as retouchers was determined through a traceological examination by S.A. Semenov. However, the presence of commonly used pebble and flint retouchers in the collection, combined with labor costs during grinding and mass production of such items, leaves the question of their usage open. The article presents a description of polished items from the collection of Kostenki 4, stored in the MAE (Kunstkamera) of the Russian Academy of Sciences, as well as the results of studying the issues of their manufacture and functioning.