ABOLTINS2024-002 - archaeological find
Riga, Alksnāja Street 11/13 excavations
Latvia - Riga old town - Europe - Baltic
Function not recorded Candidate only
Alksnāja Street runs through the old warehouse quarter of Riga, and its excavations turned up the bone debris of the Hanseatic city's daily life from the thirteenth century to the seventeenth. Among the objects no one could place was a roughly worked plate sawn from a cattle rib, fourteen centimetres long, a waist cut into its narrow end below a round hole. Silvija Tilko, publishing it in 2016, could only guess: perhaps a child's toy sword. Then the Cēsis Castle rib blades were recognized as bullroarers, and Viesturs Āboltiņš pointed to the Riga plate as their unidentified kin — same rib, same terminal hole, a waist where the cord would seat. No cord or use-trace survives and no replica has yet been swung; the toy sword and the roaring blade both remain in play.
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
- Object
- Roughly worked plate sawn from a cattle rib, 14 cm long, 2.3-3.4 cm wide, 0.7 cm thick: a waist cut into the narrower part and a round hole in the upper end (inventory VI 258:69, fig. 5 no. 8). From deposits of 13th-17th-century Riga.
- Function
- Use unrecorded: Tilko published it as an object of unclear purpose, possibly a children's toy sword; Āboltiņš identifies it as a parallel to the Cēsis Castle rib bullroarers. No cord, use-trace, or replica test is recorded.
- Map confidence
- high - OpenStreetMap building centroid for Alksnāja iela 11, Riga — a site-level anchor for the 11/13 excavation, not the find's exact spot.
- Source location
- Tilko 2016 p. 111, fig. 5 no. 8 (p. 110); Āboltiņš 2024 p. 52