Bone carving
Bone carving is creating art, tools, and other goods by carving animal bones, antlers, and horns. Practiced by a variety of world cultures, sometimes as a cheaper, and recently a legal, substitute for ivory carving. 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.
Bone carving

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But it must always have been much easier to obtain in regions without populations of elephants, walrus or other sources of ivory. • Illustration — Viking whalebone plaque from Lilleberge, Norway, 9th-century. • Illustration — Grazing caribou made in Alaska c. 1910 - Linden Museum It was important in prehistoric art, with notable figures like the Swimming Reindeer, made of antler, and many of the Venus figurines. The Anglo-Saxon Franks Casket 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. • Illustration — A face carved on a piece of curved bone. The face is framed by hair and part of a winged head-dress remains. Coptic 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 Neanderthals about 51,000 years ago. Both whalebone (baleen) and the normal skeletal whale bones were often carved, especially for scrimshaw and in the Middle Ages.
Indians of Mexico--Bone carving; Oracle bones; Scrimshaws; Indians of Mexico--Bone carving; Oracle bones; Scrimshaws. Established heading in Library of Congress Subject Headings.
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The biographical narrative on this page is based on the Wikipedia article Bone carving, revision 1349398533 (EN edition), by its contributors. VALÉORINE has edited that text and built its own documentary record around it. The reused material is available under CC BY-SA 4.0, and this page's reuse of it is offered under the same licence. Everything else on this page — the chronology, the holdings, the evidence, the plates and the connections — is VALÉORINE's own record. Sources and licences.
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These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.plaque / food-tray / culinary equipment / chopping-board. British Museum.
- 2.Sims, Margaret E. Tusk or Bone? An Example of Ivory Substitute in the Wildlife Trade. Ethnobiology Letters. 2. 40–45. 2011. 10.14237/ebl.2.2011.27.
- 3.Osborne, 145
- 4.Osborne, 145
- 5."Casket", Art Institute of Chicago
- 6.Feehly, Conor. Beautiful Bone Carving From 51,000 Years Ago Is Changing Our View of Neanderthals. ScienceAlert. 6 July 2021.
- 7.Leder, Dirk. A 51,000-year-old engraved bone reveals Neanderthals' capacity for symbolic behaviour. Nature Ecology & Evolution. 594. 9. 1273–1282. 5 July 2021. 10.1038/s41559-021-01487-z.
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Bone carvingLibrary of Congress
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The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 14 August 2026.
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