Stone disks from the Botai settlement

Round stone objects with a hole in the center are one of the most numerous and original categories of stone inventory of the Botai settlement. The interest in them is caused, in fact, by the fact that, despite their fairly widespread popularity and distribution on monuments of the turn of the Stone and Bronze Ages, they are usually found in single and not always expressive copies.

The diameter of the disc is usually from 3.5 to 11 centimeters, and the minimum inner diameter of the hole is from 6 mm to 2.2 centimeters. The edge can be beveled or flat, sometimes rounded. The raw materials are soft, fine-grained, such as sericite. The surface of the products is treated only with abrasive technology.

There are many versions about the purpose of these artifacts. Small-diameter discs are well known to archaeologists as spinning wheels, but there are significant objections to this interpretation of the products of this group.