Some technological techniques of making blanks for bone items (based on the materials from the Mstislavsky-4 excavation trench in medieval Pskov)

The excavations carried out in Pskov in 2018 to examine the Mstislavsky-4 excavation trench made in the fill of a fortification ditch and the area around it found an assemblage of bone carving waste including 5714 cut-off epiphyses of the metapodium (Fig. 1). The period of the assemblage accumulation in the occupation layer was dated to the 15th-17th centuries. The collected assemblage of production waste is a valuable source of information on the fabrication of goods from animal bones within the area of the medieval city, in particular, the initial production stage (Fig. 2). The aim of this paper is to provide preliminary results of this assemblage examination. The main result of the initial study of the assemblage is an identified pattern showing how the lower epiphysis of the cattle metapodia was cut off. A ‘two finger rule' was defined. According to this rule, the Pskov bone carvers cut off the lower epiphysis of the cattle at ‘two fingers' from the bone distal canal (Fig. 4). Because it is now clear that the Pskov artisans applied this technological solution, the issue to be addressed based on the results of this analysis is to understand how widespread this practice was, i.e. whether the ‘two finger rule' was an exclusively Pskov phenomenon or this method of making blanks from the central part of the metapodium was also applied in other medieval cities.