Serhieieva M. Bone-carving and woodworking crafts in the territory of Southern Rus

This thesis is the first comprehensive study of bone carving and woodworking crafts in the territory of Southern Rus in the interaction of bioeconomic, technical, historical, and cultural factors of their development. For the first time it was conducted a visual analysis of osseous artifacts from Southern Rus with the use of equipment (magnifier and microscope) for studying techniques of their processing. The novelty also lay in the wide use of methods of wood identification for studying a raw material base of the woodworking in Southern Rus. The analysis of products of bone carvers showed that they were of utility value, and in some cases, bone replaced other materials (metal, glass, and wood). The quality of many products and variety of their assortment demonstrated high level of bone carving craft in Southern Rus. The main result of the study of woodworking products was substantiation of principles of their systematization and allocation of their five groups based on the use of different types of raw materials. They are 1) products from timber; 2) products from assortments of timber and their parts or from combination of timber and small-scale wood; 3) products from staves (cooperage); 4) products from small-scale wood; 5) products from other parts of wood (bark, phloem and branches).