Grazing caribou made in Alaska 1910 - Linden Museum Bone carving is creating

art Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas. There is no generally agreed definition of wha ...

tools A tool is an object that can extend an individual's ability to modify features of the surrounding environment or help them accomplish a particular task. Although many animals use simple tools, only human beings, whose use of stone tools dates ba ...

, and other goods by carving animal bones,

antler Antlers are extensions of an animal's skull found in members of the Cervidae (deer) family. Antlers are a single structure composed of bone, cartilage, fibrous tissue, skin, nerves, and blood vessels. They are generally found only on male ...

s, and

horns Horns or The Horns may refer to: * Plural of Horn (instrument), a group of musical instruments all with a horn-shaped bells * The Horns (Colorado), a summit on Cheyenne Mountain * ''Horns'' (novel), a dark fantasy novel written in 2010 by Joe Hill ...

. It can result in the ornamentation of a bone by

engraving Engraving is the practice of incising a design onto a hard, usually flat surface by cutting grooves into it with a Burin (engraving), burin. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or Glass engraving, glass ...

, painting or another technique, or the creation of a distinct formed object. Bone carving has been practiced by a variety of world cultures, sometimes as a cheaper, and recently a legal, substitute for

ivory carving Ivory carving is the carving of ivory, that is to say animal tooth or tusk, generally by using sharp cutting tools, either mechanically or manually. Objects carved in ivory are often called "ivories". Humans have ornamentally carved ivory since ...

. As a material it is inferior to ivory in terms of hardness, and so the fine detail that is possible, and lacks the "lustrous" surface of ivory. The interior of bones are softer and even less capable of a fine finish, so most uses are as thin plaques, rather than sculpture in the round. But it must always have been much easier to obtain. It was important in

prehistoric art In the history of art, prehistoric art is all art produced in preliterate, prehistorical cultures beginning somewhere in very late geological history, and generally continuing until that culture either develops writing or other methods of rec ...

, with notable figures like the '' Swimming Reindeer'', made of antler, and many of the

Venus figurines A Venus figurine is any Upper Palaeolithic statuette portraying a woman, usually carved in the round.Fagan, Brian M., Beck, Charlotte, "Venus Figurines", ''The Oxford Companion to Archaeology'', 1996, Oxford University Press, pp. 740–741 Mos ...

. The

Anglo-Saxon The Anglo-Saxons were a Cultural identity, cultural group who inhabited England in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to settlers who came to Britain from mainland Europe in the 5th century. However, the ethnogenesis of the Anglo- ...

Franks Casket The Franks Casket (or the Auzon Casket) is a small Anglo-Saxon whale's bone (not "whalebone" in the sense of baleen) chest from the early 8th century, now in the British Museum. The casket is densely decorated with knife-cut narrative scenes in ...

is a whale bone casket imitating earlier ivory ones. Medieval bone caskets were made by the Embriachi workshop of north Italy (c. 1375-1425) and others, mostly using rows of thin plaques carved in relief."Casket"

Art Institute of Chicago The Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago's Grant Park, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the world. Recognized for its curatorial efforts and popularity among visitors, the museum hosts approximately 1.5 mill ...

Flat bones were also used by artists and craftsmen to try out their designs, especially by metalworkers. Such pieces are known as "trial-pieces". In July 2021, scientists reported the discovery of a bone carving, one of the world's oldest works of art, made by

Neanderthal Neanderthals (, also ''Homo neanderthalensis'' and erroneously ''Homo sapiens neanderthalensis''), also written as Neandertals, are an extinct species or subspecies of archaic humans who lived in Eurasia until about 40,000 years ago. While th ...

s about 51,000 years ago. Both whalebone (

baleen Baleen is a filter-feeding system inside the mouths of baleen whales. To use baleen, the whale first opens its mouth underwater to take in water. The whale then pushes the water out, and animals such as krill are filtered by the baleen and ...

) and the normal skeletal whale bones were often carved, especially for

scrimshaw Scrimshaw is scrollwork, engravings, and carvings done in bone or ivory. Typically it refers to the artwork created by whalers, engraved on the byproducts of whales, such as bones or cartilage. It is most commonly made out of the bones and teeth ...

and in the Middle Ages.

References

*Osborne, Harold (ed), ''The Oxford Companion to Art'', 1970, OUP, {{decorative arts Carving Bone products *