Tattoo stone tools in the archaeological collection of the Ushki V site (Northeastern Eurasia, Kamchatka)

In the focus of the proposed article, the tattoo is considered as an ancient form of body modification in the Stone Age which arouses interest, first of all, in the technological features of the process. The article presents the results of a study of stone tools with traces of paints, preliminarily identified as tools for tattooing. The traces of paint were identified during microscopic analysis and subsequent study of the pigment spectrum using SEM-EDX. A morphometric study of stone tools from the cultural layer no. 7 of the Ushki V site (Kamchatka Peninsula), dated about 13,000–12,000 years BP, made it possible to suggest their use in working with leather and to reconstruct the types of symbolic behaviour of the ancient population. An important feature of the studied tools is the use of not only two functional types of tools (a cutting tool and a borer) but also their morphological difference, and may be, semantic context.