{"id":"PEUR2026-012","label":"Balmori bull plaque","people_or_site":"Cueva de Balmori (Vega del Sella excavations, 1914-1917)","country_current":"Spain","historic_region":"Llanes, Asturias","macroregion":"Europe / Iberia","local_name":"","source_term":"","source_language":"Spanish","object_description":"Broad, completely flat bone plaque, 196.4 mm long as preserved, 54-60 mm wide through most of the body and 5.5-6.8 mm thick, engraved with a large bovine whose sex is marked; a broken-out hole survives at one end and a second hole is bored through the body.","function_summary":"Not recorded. Jordá Cerdá raised the bullroarer reading as a question; the recent study treats it as a suspended plaque whose lower edge was first used to work soft materials.","attestation_type":"archaeological_find","source_key":"jorda1977_historia_asturias","source_type":"archaeological_synthesis","source_url":"https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=8050172","page_or_plate":"Jordá 1977 p. 134; Jordá & Blázquez 1978 p. 51; Boneta et al. 2018 pp. 23-28, figs. 1-4","map_confidence":"medium","plot_status":"candidate_only","coordinate_basis":"Wikidata Q43153926 Balmori cave coordinate; site-level.","jade_complex_role":"","blurb":"A great wild bull fills this flat bone plaque, its horns reaching toward one end and its sex carefully marked. It came out of Balmori cave, above the Asturian coast, in excavations of 1914 to 1917: nearly twenty centimetres of bone, broad and thin, with an old hole torn out at one end and a second bored through the body. Writing the prehistory of Asturias in 1977, Francisco Jordá Cerdá wondered whether it was a bramadera, a bullroarer.","pull_quote":"","pull_quote_translation":"","pull_quote_cite":"","term_gloss":"","cls":"unknown","class_label":"Function not recorded","color":"#6B7884","is_candidate":true,"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. 17,000–9500 BC","date_qualification":"Magdalenian to Azilian by attribution; the plaque itself is not dated.","date_basis":"cultural_phase","date_confidence":"low","date_citation":"jorda1977_historia_asturias; Boneta, Liesau and Pérez-García 2018, Kobie Paleoantropología 36, p. 27","sources":[{"citation":"Francisco Jordá Cerdá, Historia de Asturias I: Prehistoria (1977), p. 134","url":""},{"citation":"Iratxe Boneta, Corina Liesau and Adán Pérez-García, Kobie Paleoantropología 36 (2018): 21-30","url":"https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=8050172"}],"source_citations":"Francisco Jordá Cerdá, Historia de Asturias I: Prehistoria (1977), p. 134; Iratxe Boneta, Corina Liesau and Adán Pérez-García, Kobie Paleoantropología 36 (2018): 21-30","source_display":"Francisco Jordá Cerdá, Historia de Asturias I: Prehistoria (1977), p. 134; Iratxe Boneta, Corina Liesau and Adán Pérez-García, Kobie Paleoantropología 36 (2018): 21-30","date_citation_display":"Jorda 1977 Historia Asturias; Boneta, Liesau and Pérez-García 2018, Kobie Paleoantropología 36, p. 27","object_display":"Broad, completely flat bone plaque, 196.4 mm long as preserved, 54-60 mm wide through most of the body and 5.5-6.8 mm thick, engraved with a large bovine whose sex is marked; a broken-out hole survives at one end and a second hole is bored through the body.","function_display":"Not recorded. Jordá Cerdá raised the bullroarer reading as a question; the recent study treats it as a suspended plaque whose lower edge was first used to work soft materials.","confidence_display":"medium","attestation_label":"archaeological find","etymology_hedge":"","people_key":"cueva balmori","display_name":"Balmori bull plaque","image":{"full":"assets/objects/up_europe_2026_11/PEUR2026-012_boneta2018_fig2.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/up_europe_2026_11/thumbs/PEUR2026-012_boneta2018_fig2_thumb.jpg","alt":"A flat, roughly leaf-shaped bone plaque photographed on both faces, with a hole through its body, above a line tracing of the bull engraved on its front: head low at the left, back and horns stretching right.","credit":"Iratxe Boneta, Corina Liesau and Adán Pérez-García, Kobie Paleoantropología 36 (2018), fig. 2; Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, Madrid, PH10453","source_page":"https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=8050172","rehosted":true,"representative":false,"caption":"The Balmori plaque, front and back, with a tracing of its engraved bull."},"slug":"peur2026-012-cueva-de-balmori-vega-del-sella-excavations-1914-1917"}