EMAP_2012_Report_6_1.pdf (7.3 MB) - The Heritage Council

knife or other blade – and the ubiquity of the raw material on most sites. This in turn may
limit the potential to find evidence of their manufacture; carving a small piece of bone into a
pin would be a mobile craft, not necessarily one restricted to a particular structure or area,
and hence evidence might be dispersed and difficult to find and identify in excavations. This
may explain the reliance on indirect evidence (bone ornaments and other finished bone items
such as spindle whorls or combs) to suggest bone-working on the sites surveyed. If this does
imply an unspecialised craft, it is interesting that some high-status sites, such as Lagore and
Knowth, are included amongst the sites indicating bone-working (although the latter does
have more direct evidence). Overall, direct evidence for bone-working is rarer, including
unfinished bone pins at Moyne, as well as examples of worked and unworked, polished or cut
bones (see Table 8.11).
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