Man’s slate polished knives in the Old Bering Sea culture and their manufacturing technology (based on the materials of the Ekven burial ground and ethnographic data)

Abstract

Ethnoarchaeological research, which gained great popularity in the second half of the 20th century, has become a new full-fledged source for a variety of socio-economic reconstructions in archaeology, including when characterizing the features of industrial complexes. Developments that combine experimental traceological analysis of tools and ethnographic data play an important role in modeling ancient technologies, especially when ethnographic artifacts are a direct continuation of archaeological traditions, both in terms of their manufacturing method and specific purpose. In this regard, the study of stone knives from the Ekven burial ground of the 1st millennium AD is of great interest, discovered in Chukotka. These products have retained their specific form from antiquity to the present day. The presence in the archaeological and ethnographic collections of these items in varying degrees of processing and use (from blanks to tools with a completely recycled or redesigned working blade) made it possible not only to describe the chain of basic technological operations of their manufacture from the primary processing of raw materials, shaping, processing of the working and edge parts, mounts in the handle, but also to install the tools involved in this production process. The data obtained were verified using experimental work, which confirmed the invariability of the technology for processing slate raw materials and manufacturing archaeological and ethnographic man’s knives from it.