{"id":"PEUR2026-002","label":"Altamira cave bramadera","people_or_site":"Altamira cave","country_current":"Spain","historic_region":"Cantabria / Altamira; advanced Solutrean or Magdalenian attribution debated","macroregion":"Europe / Iberia","local_name":"bramadera","source_term":"bramadera","source_language":"Spanish","object_description":"A single fragmentary, undecorated bone sliver.","function_summary":"Not recorded.","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 and n. 8","map_confidence":"low_medium","plot_status":"plot_with_caveat","coordinate_basis":"Altamira cave site coordinate; not object-level provenience GPS.","jade_complex_role":"","blurb":"Among the bone tools that Hugo Obermaier dug from Altamira in 1924 and 1925, and that passed to the prehistory museum at Santander, is a single fragmentary, undecorated sliver that Ignacio Barandiarán Maestu catalogued in 1966 as a bramadera — a bullroarer. He found it filed under the label \"Solutrense,\" from a level of the very late Solutrean, when the new Magdalenian techniques were beginning to infiltrate. The piece belongs to a corpus of such objects from the Cantabrian coast to the Dordogne — thirty-four catalogued in all, most cut from rib bone into a thin spindle shape, 80 to 190 millimetres long and barely a couple of millimetres thick, pierced at one end for a cord. Whirled fast on a long line they hum and bellow, the larger blades giving the deeper note; Barandiarán reaches for the Australian churinga as the standing ethnographic parallel.","pull_quote":"una fragmentaria (no decorada) de Altamira y una completa/reconstituida (decorada) del Pendo (Cantabria) cuyas atribuciones pueden discutirse (¿la de Altamira en el Solutrense, desde luego avanzado…)","pull_quote_translation":"a fragmentary (undecorated) one from Altamira and a complete/reconstituted (decorated) one from El Pendo (Cantabria) whose attributions can be disputed (that of Altamira to the Solutrean, certainly an advanced one…)","pull_quote_cite":"Barandiarán Maestu 2015, Kobie BAI 6:152","term_gloss":"bramadera: Spanish for \"bullroarer,\" the standard term for the Paleolithic bone aerophones of this corpus.","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. 22,000–17,000 BC","date_qualification":"Late Solutrean label; object not directly dated.","date_basis":"catalogue_attribution","date_confidence":"low","date_citation":"barandiaran2015_kobie, pp. 153–154 and n. 8","etymology":"Spanish bramadera, \"the roarer,\" comes from bramar, to bellow or roar. It is the name of a children's whirling toy, which the Real Academia defines as making a noise like the roaring of the wind.","literal_gloss":"the roarer / bellower","semantic_cluster":"motion_sound / weather","etymology_confidence":"medium","sources":[{"citation":"Ignacio Barandiarán Maestu, 'La bramadera de hueso,' Kobie BAI 6 (2015): 149-158","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, 'La bramadera de hueso,' Kobie BAI 6 (2015): 149-158","source_display":"Ignacio Barandiarán Maestu, 'La bramadera de hueso,' Kobie BAI 6 (2015): 149-158","date_citation_display":"Barandiaran 2015 Kobie, pp. 153–154 and n. 8","object_display":"A single fragmentary, undecorated bone sliver.","function_display":"Not recorded.","confidence_display":"low to medium","attestation_label":"secondary catalog","etymology_hedge":"","people_key":"altamira cave","display_name":"Altamira cave bramadera","image":{"full":"assets/objects/shared/eu_altamira.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/shared/eu_altamira_thumb.jpg","alt":"An engraved bone blade in the Museo de Altamira, upright in a clear stand with cord attached and incised bands down its face.","credit":"Museo de Altamira (via Wikimedia)","license":"Public Domain Mark","source_page":"","rehosted":true,"representative":true,"caption":"An engraved bone blade in the Museo de Altamira."},"slug":"peur2026-002-altamira-cave"}