Carving an Antler Comb — Mesolithic Personal Grooming and Textile Tool

Antler combs are among the most frequently recovered personal artefacts from Mesolithic and Neolithic sites across Europe and Scandinavia. Red deer antler was the preferred material because it combines the workability of bone with superior toughness — antler is composed of approximately 60% calcium phosphate and 40% collagen, giving it a natural resistance to splitting that bone lacks. Combs served dual purposes: personal grooming (delousing was a daily necessity) and textile preparation (combing plant fibres like nettle and flax before spinning). The manufacturing technique is straightforward but demands patience: the antler is soaked to soften it, the tooth outline is scored deeply on both faces using a flint burin, and individual teeth are freed by snapping out the waste material between score lines. Archaeological examples from Erteboelle and Star Carr show teeth spaced 3 to 4 mm apart with remarkable uniformity, demonstrating that prehistoric craftspeople achieved precision through careful layout rather than complex tooling.