Conical bone points in northwestern Lithuania: dating and engraving patterns

Acta Academiae Artium Vilnensis

Abstract

This paper aims to analyse conical bone points from the Palanga and Šarnelė Stone Age sites situated in northwestern Lithuania. Both sites are wetland-type hunter-gatherer sites with good organic preservation. Conical points are part of osseous artefact collections at both sites, but so far, they have been little analysed in the eastern Baltic Stone Age hunter-gatherer material. This paper presents six artefacts, which have been studied from a typological and technological point of view. Their chronology has been supplemented by AMS C dating. Two projectiles are engraved, and their decorative elements have been observed under a stereoscopic microscope. The results indicate that a certain type of conical projectiles had been in use before the appearance of ceramics in hunter-gatherer daily life, but most of the artefacts analysed in this work would fall into the 5th and 4th millennium BC. The decoration found on the surface of two artefacts is typical of the conical points and is prevalent in the eastern Baltic region.