The Bullroarer Atlas

No. ABOLTINS2024-002

Riga Alksnāja Street rib bullroarer

Latvia · Riga old town · Europe · Baltic

Play / practical

Archaeological date13th–17th centuries ADAlksnāja Street site range; object undated.
Excavation drawing of the Alksnāja Street rib plate (VI 258:69), with an irregular expanded end pierced by a hole and faint transverse marks across the long blade.
Plate I. The Alksnāja Street rib plate (VI 258:69) in the excavation drawing. Image source

Beneath Alksnāja Street, archaeologists found up to five metres of Old Riga's undisturbed household layers: timber buildings, ovens stacked one above another, and the debris of fishing and boneworking. From this thirteenth- to seventeenth-century city life came a fourteen-centimetre bullroarer cut from a cattle rib. Its broad blade narrows sharply into a waist beneath the suspension hole—the same rib-bone design recognized at Cēsis Castle and among medieval snorrebot farther west.

Līdzīgs priekšmets, kas līdz šim nav ticis identificēts, iegūts arī Rīgā, izrakumos Alksnāja ielā.

A similar object, which until now had not been identified, was also recovered in Riga, in the excavations on Alksnāja Street.

Viesturs Āboltiņš, Cēsu pils raksti V (2024), p. 52

Particulars

Object
Bullroarer cut from a cattle rib (VI 258:69), 14 cm long, 2.3–3.4 cm wide and 0.7 cm thick, with a waist cut into the narrower end below a round suspension hole. Excavated from deposits of thirteenth- to seventeenth-century Riga.
Function
Entertainment object: whirled on a cord at one end to produce a low, roaring or clattering sound.

Sources

  1. Silvija Tilko, 'Kaula un raga izstrādājumi no arheoloģiski pētītās Alksnāja ielas Rīgā,' Arheoloģija un etnogrāfija 29 (2016), p. 111; fig. 5 no. 8, p. 110 View · archived
  2. Viesturs Āboltiņš, 'Cēsu pilī iegūtie dzīvnieku skeleta materiālu priekšmeti,' Cēsu pils raksti V (2024), p. 52 View · archived

Part of The Bullroarer Atlas, companion to The Eve Theory of Consciousness.