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Ust-Vagilsky Hill is an unusual cult site in the form of a hill with a diameter of about 50 m and a height of up to 6 m is located in the upper reaches of the Tavda river (Garinsky district of the Sverdlovsk region). All epochs from the Mesolithic to the Middle Ages are represented on the hill. Each epoch is characterized by its own features. For the Mesolithic, this is a geometric microlith and an arrowhead on a narrow plate. Ceramic vessels with anthropomorphic images stuck on their corollas were widely used in the Neolithic era. The Neolithic is also characterized by large nucleus and tools on wide (1.5–2.5 cm) plates of light gray weakly siliceous rock. The Eneolithic is represented by ceramic vessels decorated with a variety of geometric patterns from the impressions of a comb stamp, as well as polished arrowheads typical of this era, pendants made of dark red pyrophyllite slate, and the pommel of a mace. The transition period from late Bronze to Early Iron is characterized by ceramics of the Vagil type and remnants of metallurgical production in the form of pieces of slag, baked and crusted clay, and fragments of ceramics. This complex includes ornamental fishing sinkers, individual stone products and a clay stamp, which gives prints of a single-row fine-toothed wave. Among them are arrowheads in the form of wide isosceles triangles and scrapers, from the back and from the abdomen treated with flat retouching. The epoch of the Middle Ages is represented by ceramics of the Zelenogorsk type, an iron knife and bone tools (a dagger, a spearhead, arrowheads and points). The sacrificial character of the complexes is emphasized by the presence of ochre and non-utilitarian products: the pommel of a mace, pendants made of pyrophyllite slate, and individual clay products.

The article analyzesthe complex of stone products from the Yuryinskoe settlement excavated by V. F. Starkov in 1964. The settlement is located on the south bank of Kocharovsky peat (Sverdlovsk region). In the centreof the settlement,a famous cultic site of the Neolithic epoch –Kocharovsky hill –is situated. On the settlement,a small admixture of Mesolithic and Eneolithic stone products is presented. Mesolithic is represented by micronuclei and insert plates. The Eneolithic complex consists of single arrowheads and platesof regular faceting from rare types of jasper. The main part of the stone inventory belongs to the Neolithic epoch. The stone splitting technology was fo-cused on obtaining plates 1.5–2.5 cmwide. The plates were processed mainly by dorsal retouching. The plates served as the initial semi-finished product for the manufacture of knives, arrowheads, spear-head, scrapers,and points. Dou-ble-sided retouching was used to process arrowheads and knives. For the manufacture of chopping tools (axes and adzes) and knives, abrasive technique was also used. From other products on the settlement, abrasives, tool blanks, slats, pestles, a bump and fishing sinkers were identified. A special feature of the complex is the presence of a large number (up to 57 %) of stones without processing, pebbles and debris. On the settlement,a variety of mineral raw materials obtained from local sources were used. Almost 30% of the products have preserved the primary crust. In the collection,the products made of gray siliceous rock, siliceous shale and volcanomictic sandstone dominated. Flint, chalcedony, quartz, jasper, quartzite, granodiorite, sandstone and slate were applied less frequently. Tuff, car-nelian and asbestos were used only singly.

Hoards are a rare and informative type of archaeological sources. Different definitions of hoards are given in dictionaries and in special literature: "hoards-treasures", "hoards of the caster", "trading hoards", "household hoards", "cult hoards", "sacrificial hoards", "votive hoards", "ceremonial-votive hoards", "hoards-offerings", "production hoards", "hoards of raw materials", "hoards of the master", "hoards-satchel sets", etc. Hoards are often found by accident and usually not by archaeologists. At the same time, the hoard is not always passed to specialists in full. A finder of the hoard can remove one or more items from it or, on the contrary, add items lying nearby to the hoard. All these factors reduce the degree of information content of hoards found by random people. The location of the hoard in relation to the relief and borders of the archaeological site is not always fixed. Also, the mineral raw materials of products from the hoard are not always described. Some researchers do not provide images of all the finds from the hoard in their publications and do not indicate the metric indicators of the items in the hoard. Quite often, any accumulation of finds on the site is considered as a hoard without additional arguments. But the accumulation of objects in the cultural layer of sites may be not a hoard, but a production set at a home workshop. It is proposed to refer to the actual hoards, first of all, the hoards found outside the cultural layer of settlements (sites). Hoards are also tightly packed products, which indicates that they were in some kind of container. Accumulations of products buried in a hole and covered with a stone or slab can also be called hoards. In other cases of the accumulation of items interpreted by the author as a hoard, the word "hoard" must be taken in quotation marks. Failure to comply with special requirements for the study and publication of hoards reduces the information capacity of hoards as archaeological sources.