BARAVITALLA2026-001 - archaeological find
Baravitalla three-boss bone plaque
Italy - Cava d'Ispica - province of Ragusa, Sicily - Europe - Mediterranean
Sacred / spirit Candidate only
osso a globuli Italian / English
Source term: osso a globuli / bossed bone plaque
osso a globuli (Italian): 'bossed bone', the Sicilian Early Bronze Age carved bone plaque worked with rows of raised knobs; English 'bossed bone plaque'.
Among the round huts of a walled village at the head of Cava d'Ispica, a hearth held a small black plaque of bone: three raised knobs in a row, the edges scored with fine lines, and a hole drilled clean through the top. That hole is what sets this piece apart from most of its Sicilian relatives, whose perforations sit inside the bosses and lead nowhere; here a cord could actually have been tied. Duccio Belgiorno, who once ran the Modica museum where the plaque is now kept, proposed that these bossed bones were ritual bullroarers. Nobody has yet spun a copy to find out.
gli ossi a globuli potrebbero essere strumenti musicali a carattere rituale del tipo 'rombo' (bull roarer)
the bossed bones could be ritual musical instruments of the 'rombo' (bullroarer) type
Duccio Belgiorno, quoted in Crescimanno, 'Ossi a globuli di Castelluccio - Noto (SR)', Preistoria in Italia
- Object
- A black, flat-based bone plaque bearing three raised circular bosses and incised margins, with a true suspension hole pierced at the top — unlike most plaques of this Sicilian class, whose holes sit within the bosses themselves. No dimensions are published for this piece.
- Function
- Not recorded, though proposed as a ritual bullroarer given its suspension hole.
- Map confidence
- medium - Published site coordinate for the prehistoric village of Baravitalla at the head of Cava d'Ispica, from the Sicilia in Rete site record; not a hut or hearth coordinate.
- Source location
Page references
Di Stefano, fig. 7, '7 - Osso a globuli da Baravitalla'; Mercadante 2018, catalogue no. 13ci