First evidence of human bone pendants from Late Mesolithic Northeast Europe

•Twelve out of 37 bone pendants from Late Mesolithic Yuzhniy Oleniy Ostrov studied by the method of Zoological Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS) are made of human bone.•Three out of 177 graves have human bone pendants.•Our microwear study shows that the production of the human bone artefacts did not involve any other reshaping than grooves and planing/scraping before making grooves.•Raw material for some of the pendants was in a fresh or semi-fresh state.•Human and animal bone pendants were produced in the same way as animal tooth pendants.•Traces of wear indicate that the items were used prior to their deposition in graves.