{"id":"PEUR2026-001","label":"La Paloma cave Magdalenian bramadera","people_or_site":"La Paloma cave","country_current":"Spain","historic_region":"Asturias / Soto de Las Regueras; Middle Magdalenian","macroregion":"Europe / Iberia","local_name":"bramadera","source_term":"bramadera","source_language":"Spanish","object_description":"A fragmentary, undecorated bone blade, from a Middle Magdalenian level.","function_summary":"Whirled-cord aerophone; site-level member of the Southwestern European Paleolithic bramadera corpus.","attestation_type":"secondary_catalog","source_key":"barandiaran2015_kobie","source_type":"archaeological_synthesis","source_url":"https://www.bizkaia.eus/fitxategiak/04/ondarea/Kobie/PDF/7/Kobie_BAI_06_web-7.pdf","page_or_plate":"p. 152","map_confidence":"medium","plot_status":"plot_with_caveat","coordinate_basis":"Cueva de La Paloma public site coordinate; not object-level provenience GPS.","jade_complex_role":"","blurb":"Among roughly thirty perforated bone objects scattered across Magdalenian sites in northern Spain and southwestern France, one is a plain, fragmentary blade from the cave of La Paloma at Soto de las Regueras in Asturias. Ignacio Barandiarán Maestu lists it among the Iberian bramaderas: a slim, lenticular lath, usually cut from the rib bone of a medium-to-large grazing animal, pierced at one end for a cord. Tied to a long string and whirled rapidly, such an object hums and roars — the function archaeologists infer from its shape and from later ethnographic parallels, the Australian churinga among them. The La Paloma piece is undecorated and survives only as a fragment, recovered from a level Barandiarán assigns to the Middle Magdalenian; unlike the engraved specimens — the reindeer-bearing rombo from El Pendo, the abstractly incised holotype from Lalinde — it carries no ornament at all. Peyrony's old suspicion was that the ordinary versions were made of wood and have simply rotted away, leaving only the rare bone ones behind.","pull_quote":"En la franja septentrional de la Península hay: una fragmentaria (no decorada) de La Paloma (Asturias) hallada en un nivel del Magdaleniense medio","pull_quote_translation":"In the northern strip of the Peninsula there is: a fragmentary (undecorated) one from La Paloma (Asturias), found in a Middle Magdalenian level","pull_quote_cite":"Barandiarán Maestu 2015, La bramadera de hueso, Kobie BAI 6:152","term_gloss":"bramadera (Spanish): the standard term for the bullroarer or whirled aerophone; here applied by Barandiarán to perforated Magdalenian bone laths.","cls":"unknown","class_label":"Function not recorded","color":"#6B7884","is_candidate":false,"flags":[],"f_jade_complex":false,"f_women_taboo":false,"f_women_special":false,"f_snake":false,"f_archaeology":true,"archaeology_kind":"object","date_display":"c. 15,000–12,000 BC","date_qualification":"Middle Magdalenian level; the object is not directly dated.","date_basis":"stratigraphic","date_confidence":"high","date_citation":"barandiaran2015_kobie, p. 152","etymology":"Spanish bramadera, \"the roarer,\" is built on the verb bramar, to roar or bellow. It names a children's whirling toy that, the Real Academia says, makes a noise like the roar of the wind; Barandiarán applies it to the perforated bone laths.","literal_gloss":"the roarer (thing that bellows/roars, like the wind)","semantic_cluster":"motion_sound,weather,toy_or_game","etymology_confidence":"high","sources":[{"citation":"Ignacio Barandiarán Maestu 2015, 'La bramadera de hueso', Kobie BAI 6:149-158, at p. 152","url":"https://www.bizkaia.eus/fitxategiak/04/ondarea/Kobie/PDF/7/Kobie_BAI_06_web-7.pdf","archive":"https://web.archive.org/web/20240530134905/https://www.bizkaia.eus/fitxategiak/04/ondarea/Kobie/PDF/7/Kobie_BAI_06_web-7.pdf"}],"source_citations":"Ignacio Barandiarán Maestu 2015, 'La bramadera de hueso', Kobie BAI 6:149-158, at p. 152","source_display":"Ignacio Barandiarán Maestu 2015, 'La bramadera de hueso', Kobie BAI 6:149-158, at p. 152","date_citation_display":"Barandiaran 2015 Kobie, p. 152","object_display":"A fragmentary, undecorated bone blade, from a Middle Magdalenian level.","function_display":"Whirled-cord aerophone; site-level member of the Southwestern European Paleolithic bramadera corpus.","confidence_display":"medium","attestation_label":"secondary catalog","etymology_hedge":"","people_key":"paloma cave","display_name":"La Paloma cave Magdalenian bramadera","image":{"full":"assets/objects/hunt_2026_10_03/PEUR2026-001_munibe1971_fig3.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/hunt_2026_10_03/thumbs/PEUR2026-001_munibe1971_fig3_thumb.jpg","credit":"I. Barandiarán, “La Cueva de la Paloma (Asturias)”, Munibe 23 (1971), fig. 3, p. 261","license":"No explicit license or rights statement found in the source PDF.","source_page":"https://www.aranzadi.eus/fileadmin/docs/Munibe/1971255283.pdf","rehosted":true,"representative":false,"caption":"Magdalenian bone and antler finds from La Paloma, Asturias; the bullroarer fragment, d, is drawn face-on and in profile at lower left."},"slug":"peur2026-001-la-paloma-cave"}