Weryfikacja śladów użytkowania kościanych szydeł i stilusów – studium eksperymentalne

Awls have been used for perforating various types of materials from the Paleolithic to the early medieval period, until they were replaced by their metal equivalents. Though the technology of the manufacture has changed, the form remained virtually the same, containing of a handle and a shaft. Stiluses are the component of the stationery set, which also consists of the wax tablets. The latter however, very rarely preserve to our times. Bone awls and stiluses are as well the common type of relics found on the early medieval sites. Recent studies were mainly oriented on their chronological and typological classification and on determining the place of their manufacture and the place of their use. Yet, there were no attempts of conducting a use wear analysis, which leads to the appropriate characteristic of these tools, previously obtained in a very generic way, mostly basing on their morphological features which is quite misleading, due to their overall similarity. That was an impulse to undertake research on that field. Conducted experiments and use-wear analysis resulted in obtaining an accessible way to distinguish bone awls from bone stiluses, which enabled authoress to apply this method on genuine artifacts from early medieval sites.