{"id":"EVANS1975-001","label":"Glenviggan thunder-spade","people_or_site":"James McBride's turf bank, Glenviggan, near Draperstown","country_current":"United Kingdom","historic_region":"Glenviggan townland, Six Towns, Co. Londonderry, Northern Ireland","macroregion":"Europe","local_name":"thunder-spade","source_term":"bull-roarer (Gunn's exhibit label); possible bull-roarer (Evans)","source_language":"English","object_description":"A yew-wood blade with a long integral handle: 7.5 in. overall, of which the handle takes 3.25 in.; just under 2 in. wide and 0.2 in. thick. Three fire-smoothed hourglass perforations survive — one neatly made at the tip, two crude and mismatched at the shoulders, their purpose unexplained.","function_summary":"Identified locally as a children's 'thunder-spade.'","attestation_type":"archaeological_find","source_key":"evans1975_glenviggan_ldy044_003_yew_bullroarer","source_type":"archaeological_report","source_url":"https://www.jstor.org/stable/20567743","page_or_plate":"Evans 1975, pp. 16-18, Fig. 7 (x 1/2); Welsh & Welsh 2022, p. 258, Fig. 299","map_confidence":"high","plot_status":"candidate_only","coordinate_basis":"Published grid reference for the find spot, Irish Grid H 690 880 (easting 269000 / northing 388000 in Irish Grid, EPSG:29903 / TM65), transformed to WGS84.","jade_complex_role":"","blurb":"In spring 1963 a turf-cutter in James McBride's bank at Glenviggan, near Draperstown, brought up a long yew blade with an unusually long handle, forty inches down in the peat. A schoolmaster exhibited it as a bull-roarer 'resembling the Australian turndun and Greek rhombos'; an old man in the district had recognized it as a 'thunder-spade,' a children's toy from his own boyhood. Three fire-smoothed hourglass holes survive — one neat, at the tip, two crude and unexplained at the shoulders — leading one specialist to suspect instead the hilt of a broken wooden sword. Estyn Evans held his ground: 'until a better explanation is forthcoming I prefer to regard the discovery as a bull-roarer.' Peat near the find spot, gathered two years later, puts the surrounding bog at roughly 110 BC — a date on the ground, not the blade.","pull_quote":"the two at the shoulders are crudely made, irregular and unmatched. Their purpose is a mystery … at any rate the sound emitted did not appear to change when I covered them with selotape.","pull_quote_translation":"","pull_quote_cite":"Evans 1975: 16-18","term_gloss":"thunder-spade: a local Co. Londonderry/Tyrone/Armagh-Down name for a children's toy bullroarer, probably a popular variant of the older names thunder-spell/thunder-spale (spale/spell/spall = a wood or stone chip); Irish cuirin buirthe, \"little roaring board\" (per Brendan Adams).","cls":"unknown","class_label":"Function not recorded","color":"#6B7884","is_candidate":true,"flags":["toy_survival"],"f_jade_complex":false,"f_women_taboo":false,"f_women_special":false,"f_snake":false,"f_archaeology":true,"archaeology_kind":"object","date_display":"c. 200 BC–AD 65","date_qualification":"Nearby peat calibration; object not directly dated.","date_basis":"associated_context","date_confidence":"low","date_citation":"evans1975_glenviggan, Evans 1975 pp. 16–18 fig. 7; UB-546; OxCal 4.4.4 with IntCal20; Reimer et al. 2020","sources":[{"citation":"E. Estyn Evans, “An Archaeological Miscellany,” Ulster Journal of Archaeology 3rd ser. 38 (1975), pp. 12-18, at pp. 16-18, fig. 7","url":"https://www.jstor.org/stable/20567743","archive":"https://web.archive.org/web/20220419213957/https://www.jstor.org/stable/20567743"},{"citation":"Rachel Welsh and Ronan Welsh, The Prehistoric Artefacts of Northern Ireland (2022), p. 258, fig. 299, object LDY 044:003"}],"source_citations":"E. Estyn Evans, “An Archaeological Miscellany,” Ulster Journal of Archaeology 3rd ser. 38 (1975), pp. 12-18, at pp. 16-18, fig. 7; Rachel Welsh and Ronan Welsh, The Prehistoric Artefacts of Northern Ireland (2022), p. 258, fig. 299, object LDY 044:003","source_display":"E. Estyn Evans, “An Archaeological Miscellany,” Ulster Journal of Archaeology 3rd ser. 38 (1975), pp. 12-18, at pp. 16-18, fig. 7; Rachel Welsh and Ronan Welsh, The Prehistoric Artefacts of Northern Ireland (2022), p. 258, fig. 299, object LDY 044:003","date_citation_display":"Evans 1975 pp. 16–18 fig. 7; UB-546; OxCal 4.4.4 with IntCal20; Reimer et al. 2020","object_display":"A yew-wood blade with a long integral handle: 7.5 in. overall, of which the handle takes 3.25 in.; just under 2 in. wide and 0.2 in. thick. Three fire-smoothed hourglass perforations survive — one neatly made at the tip, two crude and mismatched at the shoulders, their purpose unexplained.","function_display":"Identified locally as a children's 'thunder-spade.'","confidence_display":"high","attestation_label":"archaeological find","etymology_hedge":"","people_key":"james mcbride","display_name":"Glenviggan thunder-spade","image":{"full":"assets/objects/EVANS1975-001_evans1975_fig7.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/EVANS1975-001_evans1975_fig7_thumb.jpg","credit":"E. Estyn Evans, 'An Archaeological Miscellany,' Ulster Journal of Archaeology 3rd ser. 38 (1975), fig. 7, p. 16. © Ulster Archaeological Society","license":"In copyright -- published line drawing rehosted at reduced scale for identification","source_page":"https://www.jstor.org/stable/20567743","rehosted":true,"representative":false,"caption":"Evans’s fig. 7: the yew blade, its well-made terminal hole now broken open, the shoulder holes, edge profile, and inch scale."},"slug":"evans1975-001-james-mcbride-s-turf-bank-glenviggan-near-draperstown"}