Marks on Arrowheads from Sites of the Piany Bor Culture

Abstract

The article deals with arrowheads from sites of the Piany Bor culture with various marks applied to the items in the process of manufacture and use. In the course of work with museum collections, we managed to identify 38 arrowheads with marks, which come from 15 burials of Piany Bor burial grounds and one settlement monument. The purpose of markings can be different: from casual to purposeful. The analysis has shown that some of the marks are only traces of marking of the material during the manufacture of the item, the other part can be specially applied signs in the process of manufacture or while using. There is no reason to consider the marks as elements of writing systems. Chronologically the considered finds correspond to the I century BC – II century AD. The spread of marks on arrowheads from Piany Bor sites is probably an epochal phenomenon characteristic of the Middle Sarmatian time. The marks are not a direct copying and exact borrowing, but a reworking of the idea of marking of objects, using their own traditions of inscription of marks.