One Type of Bone Artifacts from Olbia and Its Interpretation
Abstract
The study of bone and horn produced items often causes great difficulties for researchers, since it is difficult to determine accurately the true functional purpose of an artifact. In some cases, for example in such as we will describe in the paper, this problem can be solved using ethnographic data.
One of the most numerous categories of finished produced items made of organic raw materials is known in the Soviet, and later in Ukrainian, scientific literature under the term ‘rashpil’ (rasp).
The raw materials for these artifacts were mostly long (metatarsal, metacarpal, and bones of gaskin), less often flat (mandibular), bones of large domestic animals like horse and ox. Less often, deer antlers were used for these purposes. Tools made from the long bones of large mammals were usually first made plane pressing the diaphysis. One or more anatomical sides of the bone were processed, preserving the epiphysis or making it partially or completely plane. In the latter case, the shape of the produced item was close to a parallelepiped.
A characteristic feature of all these tools, regardless of the raw material and the degree of modification, are specific traces on the work surface – a series of parallel or chaotic lines of notches of subtriangular shape. They are applied, obviously, by some thin sharp tool. In the case when the ‘rashpils’ were made of metapodia, the tools with one, two, three, or four working surfaces can be found. A significant number of such artifacts were found in a broken, apparently in the process of operation, form. We know about cases of repeated use of one tool when after it lost the necessary work characteristics, the working surface was made plane again and reused.
Such tools come from many ancient sites of the Northern Black Sea region and Scythian settlements outside the Northern Black Sea region.
For a long time, they were mistakenly considered tools for processing ceramics, bone, tanning of hides, and even stone grinding. Their real purpose, as anvils to put teeth into serrated sickle blade sections, was established after analyzing large amounts of ethnographic data.
References
Aguirre, A, Etxeberria, F. & Herrasti, L. (2004). El yunque de hueso para afilar la hoz metálica dentada [Bone anvils used for sharpening serrated, metal scythes]. Munibe 56. 113-121 [in Spanish].
Anderson, P.C., Rodet-Belarbi, I. & Moreno-García, M. (2014). Sickles with teeth and bone anvils. In van Gijn, A., Whittaker, J. & Anderson, P.J. (Eds.). Exploringand Explaining Diversity in Agricultural Technology. Oxford: Oxbow Books, pp. 118-125 [in English].
Antipina, E. (2013). Po sledam kostianykh «rashpilei» iz antichnykh pamiatnikov Severnogo Prichernomoria [Following bones «rasps» from the antic cities of Northern Black Sea Region]. Prichernorie v antichnoe i rannesrednevekovoe vremia. Rostov-na-Donu, pp. 384-388 [in Russian].
Beldiman, C., Rusu-Bolindeţ, V., Sztancs, D.M. & Bădescu, A. (2014). Bone artefacts from Histria. Materiale şi cercetări Arheologice, 10, 221-241 [in English].
Beldiman, C., Sztancs, D.M., Rusu-Bolineţ, V. & Achim, I.A. (2011). Skeletal technologies, metal-working and wheat harvesting: ancient bone and antler anvils for manufacturing saw-toothed iron sickles discovered in Romania. In Baron, J., Kufel-Diakowska, B. (Eds). Written in Bones. Studies on Technological and Social Contexts of Past Faunal Skeletal Remains. Wrocław: Uniwersytet Wrocławski, pp. 173-186 [in English].
Belov, G., Strzheletskii, S. & Yakobson, A. (1953). Kvartal XVIII(Raskopki 1941 1947 i 1948 gg). [Quarter XVIII. (Excavations 1941, 1947 and 1948)]. Materialy i issledovaniia po arkheologii SSSR, 34. 160-237 [in Russian].
Bruyako, I. & Sekerskaya, E. (2016). Ocherki ekonomiki naseleniia Severo-zapadnogo Prichernomoria v antichnuiu epokhu [Essays on the economy of the population of the North-West Black Sea region in antiguity]. Odessa [in Russian].
Burakov, A. (1976). Kozyrskoe gorodishche rubezha i pervykh stoletii nashei ery [Kozyr hillfort of the turn and the first centuries of our era]. Kyiv: Naukova Dumka. [in Russian].
Gaidukevich, V. (1934). Antichnye keramicheskie obzhigatelnye pechi po raskopkam v Kerchi i Fanagorii v 1929 1931 gg. [Antique ceramic kilns from excavations in Kerch and Fanagoria in 1929 1931]. Izvestiia Gosudarstvennoi akademii materialnoi istorii i kultury. Moskva-Leningrad [in Russian].
Gaidukevich, V. (1958). Raskopki Tiritaki i Mirmekiia 1946-1952 gg. [Excavations of Tiritaki and Mirmekii іn 1946-1952]. Materialy i issledovaniia po arkheologii SSSR, 85, 157-218 [in Russian].
Gál, E. & Bartosiewicz, L. (2012). A radiocarbon-dated bone anvil from the chora of Metaponto, Southern Italy. Antiquity, 86 (331). Retrieved from http://antiquity.ac.uk/projgall/gal331/ [in English].
Kadeev, V. (1970). Ocherki istorii ekonomiki Khersonesa Tavricheskogo v I-IV vv. n.e. [Essays on the History of the Economy of Chersonesos Tauricus in the 1st – 4th centuries AD]. Kharkov: Izdatelstvo Kharkovskogo universiteta [in Russian].
Krapivina, V. (1993). Olviia. Materialnaia kultura I-IV vv. n.e. [Olbia. The Material Culture of the 1st – 4th centuries AD]. Kiev: Naukova dumka [in Russian].
Kruglikova, I. (1966). Bospor v Pozdneantichnoe vremia Ocherki ekonomicheskoi istorii [The Bosporus in the Late Antiquity (Essays on Economic History)]. Moskva: Nauka[in Russian].
Moruzhenko, A. (1988). K voprosu o pamiatnikakh rannego zheleinogo veka v baseine r Vorskla [On the early Iron Age sites in the Vorskla basin]. Sovetskaia Arkheologiia, 1, 33-52 [in Russian].
Nikulitse, I. (1987). Severnye frakiitsy v VI-I vv do n.e. [Northern Thracians in the VI-I centuries BC]. Kishinev: Shtiintsa [in Russian].
Papanova, V. & Liashko, S. (2016). Kostianye izdeliia iz prigorodnykh usadeb Olvii [Bone objects of the suburban estates Olvia choirs]. Eminak, 4, 178-188 [in Russian].
Peters, B. (1986) Kostoreznoe delo v antichnykh gosudarstvakh Severnogo Prichernomoria [Bone carving in the ancient states of the Northern Black Sea region]. Moskva: Nauka [in Russian].
Semenov, S. (1958). Shlifuvalni kistiani znariaddia z Olvii [Bone grinding tools from Olbia]. Arkheolohichni pamiatky URSR, (Vol. VII, pp. 92-97). Kyiv: Vydavnytstvo AN URSR [in Ukrainian].
Valenzuela, A. Moreno-García, M. & Oliver, A. (2019). Archaeological and ethnographic insights on the occurrence and use of bone anvils in Mallorca (Belearic islands, Spaine). Cuadernos de Prehistoria y Arqueología de la Universidad de Granada (CPAG), 29, 293-306 [in English].
Valenzuela, A., Cau, M. & León, M. (2017). Broadening the Scope of Bone Anvils: Direct AMS 14C Dating from the Island of Menorca (Western Mediterranean). Radiocarbon, 59 (1), 61-67 [in English].
Vukovic Bogdanovic, S. & Bogdanović, I. (2016). Late Roman Bone Anvils from Viminacium. In Vitezović, S. (Ed.). Close to the bone: current studies in bone technologies. Belgrade: Institute of Archaeology, 66-70 [in English].
Vysotskaia, T. (1979). Neapol – stolitsa gosudarstva pozdnikh skifov [Naples is the capital of the late Scythian state]. Kyiv: Naukova dumka [in Russian].
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.