Bone carving is the act of creating art forms by carving into animal bones

Bone

Bones are rigid organs that constitute part of the endoskeleton of vertebrates. They support, and protect the various organs of the body, produce red and white blood cells and store minerals. Bone tissue is a type of dense connective tissue...

 and often includes the carving of antler

Antler

Antlers are the usually large, branching bony appendages on the heads of most deer species.-Etymology:Antler originally meant the lowest tine, the "brow tine"...

s and horns. It can result in the ornamentation of a bone, or the creation of a figure. It has been practiced by a variety of world cultures, sometimes as a cheaper substitute for ivory carving

Ivory carving

Ivory carving is the carving of ivory, that is to say animal tooth or tusk, by using sharp cutting tools, either mechanically or manually. The ancient craft has now virtually ceased, as since CITES it is illegal under most circumstances throughout the world....

. It was important in prehistoric art

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 record-keeping, or it makes significant contact with another...

, with notable figures like the Swimming Reindeer

Swimming Reindeer

The Swimming Reindeer is the name given to a 13,000 year old sculpture of two swimming reindeer conserved in the British Museum. The sculpture was made in France by carving the tip of a mammoth tusk...

(antler), and many of the Venus figurines

Venus figurines

Venus figurines is an umbrella term for a number of prehistoric statuettes of women portrayed with similar physical attributes from the Upper Palaeolithic, mostly found in Europe, but with finds as far east as Irkutsk Oblast, Siberia, extending their distribution to much of Eurasia, from the...

. The Anglo-Saxon

Anglo-Saxon art

Anglo-Saxon art covers art produced within the Anglo-Saxon period of English history, beginning with the Migration period style that the Anglo-Saxons brought with them from the continent in the 5th century, and ending in 1066 with the Norman Conquest of a large Anglo-Saxon nation-state whose...

 Franks casket

Franks Casket

The Franks Casket is a small Anglo-Saxon whalebone chest from the seventh century, now in the British Museum. The casket is densely decorated with knife-cut narrative scenes in flat two-dimensional low-relief and with inscriptions mostly in Anglo-Saxon runes...

is a bone casket imitating earlier ivory ones.

Bone was also used by artists and craftsmen to try out their designs, especially by metalworkers. Such pieces are known as "trial-pieces".