The use of point-impact techniques in stone processing (pecking) in the sites of forest Trans-Urals

Abstract

For processing of stone and manufacture of tools, ancient man mastered a variety of methods and techniques — beating, splitting into flakes and plates, impact and spin retouching, grinding, sawing, drilling and some others. Of these, the least studied and insufficiently covered in the literature is the point-impact technique (pecking). Pecking could have been used both as an auxiliary technique and as the main one. When processing large tools (axes, adzes, pestles), which subsequently were polished, it was an auxiliary method. But when making a circular groove for tying and hollowing out a blind or through hole, it would have become the main one. In the forest Trans-Urals, the pecking technique was already known in the Mesolithic. A treasure hoard containing six stone axes has been found at the Mesolithic settlement of Ogurdino (Perm Krai). The axes were treated by beating and pecking techniques, followed by partial surface polishing. Also, two axe blanks with lugs (trunnions) from the site of Beregovaya IX in the Gorbunovsky peat bog (Sverdlovsk Region) belong to the Mesolithic. The edges of the tools and the protruding lugs were processed by pecking. A perforated disk-pommel in the shape of a kind of disguise was found in the Late Mesolithic layer of the 2nd Beregovaya site in the Gorbunovsky peat bog. A rounded hole 2.8–3.1 cm in diameter was made in the center of the disc by deep pecking on both sides. The majority of the items processed by pecking were found on mixed sites and date to a wide chronological range from the Neolithic to Bronze Age. Some of them represent accidental single finds. Stone sculptures, tops of maces, axes, adzes, plows, chisels, pestles, fishing sinkers, “ironings” were processed using point-impact retouching. Tying lines on hammers made of massive pebbles were designed exclusively by pecking. During the Early Iron Age, the pecking technique only further expanded its application. Moreover, it was used not only for shaping products, but for making complex figured ornaments on sculptures and bas-reliefs.

Keywords

• forest trans-urals
• point-impact technique
• mesolithic — early iron age
• mineral raw materials