The article describes the features of the bone and antler artifacts of the final Paleolithic and Mesolithic complexes of European Russia as the archaeological sources. Unlike stone tools the main specificity of organic artifacts is its nature, degree of preservation and dimensional pre-programming. The dominant dimensional natural functional conditionality of the form of bone and horn artifacts inevitably dominates the similarity of artifacts and collections, gives them an uncharacteristic "cultural" content, and defines natural, not cultural similarities of the same types of bone and horn tools together. In some cases, the community of forms and this "similarity" of bone and horn tools is due to the feature of the raw materials and the technology of its processing, not the traditions of the population. At the same time we are trying to identify cultural significant signs that determine the feature of the organic artifacts as archaeological sources. Set of tools and its manufacturing technology (set of processing methods of bone and horn is not very large) are not culturally significant, the feature shape, degree and nature of the use of secondary processing in the manufacture of certain tools, special stylistic decoration methods and ornamentation have a paramount importance.