Archaeologists Baffled By A 2,000-Year-Old Skeleton Found In Scotland With Its Brain Scooped Out And Its Bones Turned Into Tools

The study does not have definitive answers to either question.

Use-wear analysis — the microscopic examination of tool surfaces for the traces of specific activities — might in principle reveal something about what activities were performed with the worked bones, but the relevant observations from the published study are focused on the evidence of modification rather than the evidence of use.

The working of the femur — a large, dense leg bone — into a tool is described separately in the study, with the observation that there is evidence of use of at least this bone as an implement of some kind before it was returned to the burial.

This is a significant detail: at least one of the modified bones appears to have been used as a tool, not merely worked into a tool form and then immediately redeposited.