DIET2016-002 - archaeological find
Körtik Tepe
Turkey - Upper Tigris - southeastern Anatolia - Near East
Function not recorded
Source term: decorated perforated bone plaques / bullroarer
Seven decorated bone plaques from Körtik Tepe, a Pre-Pottery Neolithic settlement on the Upper Tigris, were recovered from graves, the more complete examples perforated at the narrow end so they could be fixed to a cord. The carving is precise: two goats stacked in profile with eye and body-center left blank; a snake rendered as wavy lines ending in a triangular head; a scorpion or centipede inside concentric circles, the bone still carrying traces of ochre; a painted panel of red lines and black triangles; and a band of three snakes worked as rows of hatched rhomboids. Oliver Dietrich and Jens Notroff grouped these with similar perforated bone objects from Göbekli Tepe, Hasankeyf Höyük, and Nahal Hemar Cave and proposed they were bullroarers, instruments swung on a long cord to make sound; a hardwood replica built to the same forms and dimensions produced a deep vibrating tone. The identification stays undecided, since the southeastern Turkish plaques are a little different in shape from known bullroarers and their original use is not established.
An experimental reproduction of the presumed PPN bullroarers of hard wood serves its function very well and produces a deep vibrato sound.
Dietrich and Notroff 2016, Neo-Lithics 1/16:28-29
- Object
- Decorated bone plaques from funerary contexts, carved with goat, snake, scorpion/insect, painted geometric, and rhomboid snake-band motifs; some perforated at the narrow end.
- Function
- Archaeological bullroarer row; original use is unclear.
- Map confidence
- low - DEFC/OREA Körtik Tepe WGS84 site coordinate; archaeological bullroarer use remains unclear.
- Source location
- Neo-Lithics 1/16 pp. 27-29; Appendix objects 5-11