Grotte des Ours thin bone blade

Ghar-Zahar

Ghar-Zahar: the cave's local Arabic name, which Debruge renders 'grotte qui gronde', 'the cave that rumbles', for its echo.

People around Constantine called it Ghar-Zahar, the cave that rumbles, for the echo inside. When A. Debruge dug there in 1908 he renamed it the Grotte des Ours, after the many bear bones in its floor. Ruined dolmens stood on the plateau above, and among the Neolithic pottery, flint and polished bone inside lay this blade, broken in two, its halves some way apart and stained differently by the soils that held them. Fitted back together it runs eighteen centimetres. Both faces were scraped and polished and the edges thinned all round to barely two millimetres; a hole drilled from both sides pierces the broad end, and the narrow half curves away to a rounded tip.

Particulars

Object

Thin blade of bone, 18 cm long, 2 cm wide at the broad end narrowing to 8 mm, and barely 2 mm thick; scraped and polished on both faces and thinned all round, with a hole drilled from both sides at the broad end. Found in two pieces and rejoined.

Function

Not recorded.