Stone Scrapers of the Kurmanakovo IV Site of the Late Bronze Age in the Lower Kama Region: morphological and functional analysis

Abstract

Scrapers as a category of stone inventory of the Late Bronze Age cultures in Kazan Volga River and Kama River’s mouth regions is poorly covered in generalizing studies. Usually, only quantitative indicators of morphologically expressed stone tools from the areas of settlements are given in the literature. In this paper morphological and functional analyses of stone scrapers found mainly in dwelling 1 of the Kurmanakovo IV site are presented. According to the ceramic material, four cultural and chronological horizons are marked out. At the same time, the main horizon associated with the construction of a complex of dwellings on this territory falls on the XIV–XIII centuries BC with the time of the existence of the textile ceramics culture and the Atabayevo stage of the Maklasheyevka culture. Judging by the revealed analogies and spatial analysis, most of the scrapers were related with this cultural chronological horizon. As a result of morphological and functional analyses, five morphological groups of scrapers were identified. Functionally, the scrapers were divided into two groups; scrapers for soft material (hide, skin) and scrapers for hard material (wood). Use-wear study made it possible to increase the number of functional groups of scrapers and identify combined tools among them.

Keywords

• archaeology
• lower kama region
• myosha river
• late bronze age
• textile ceramics culture
• atabayevo stage of the maklasheyevka culture
• dwelling
• scrapers
• morphology
• use-wear analysis