Special aspects of working edge treatment of the denticulate tools for ornamenting in Altai mountains and its foothills during eneolithic - early bronze age

The article is devoted to primary generalizing of results, obtained during the study of treatment of tool working edge, which were used for ornamentation of Eneolithic - Bronze Age ceramics in the Altai Mountains and its foothills. It is mentioned that people ornamented by denticulate and non-denticulate tools, but the most numerous are comb stamp. The data on denticulate tools are particularly topical for the solution of the questions of interaction among the population, problems of relative chronology of the sites. We determined the main attributes, characterizing the working edge of the denticulate ornamenting tools (the shape and size of stamps, size, shape and quantity of barbs). Afanasievo culture is characterized by tools with thin straight or roundish working edge with length of 3-5 cm, with small roundish or subrectangular burbs (from 15 to 25). The tools with large rectangular and square burbs (from 5-6 to 10) are typical of Early Bronze Age in Altai Mountains, and tools with small barbs, separated from each other, are specific to Irbinskiy type of ceramics (not over 15). The Bolshemyssk tools are various. Often they left the stamp in the form of bow, sometimes made by chaps of animals sometimes. The marking out of these attributes permitted to find the tools, unusual for the Afanasievo culture and analogous to the prints on ceramics of the Early Bronze Age in Mountain Altai. Also, it gave an opportunity to reveal the identical prints on the Afanasievo vessels from the Mountain Altai and Yenisei River. The analysis of the received data suppose the contacts between different groups of the population during the Early Bronze Age, and also permit to consider the questions of relative chronology of sites.