The Bullroarer Atlas

DIET2016-004 - archaeological find

Nahal Hemar Cave

Israel - Judean Desert - Dead Sea region - Near East - Levant

Function not recorded Candidate only

A Cypriot bullroarer in the Pitt Rivers Museum: a smooth flat wooden slat with a cord looped through a hole near one end — shown for the...
Representative image. A Cypriot bullroarer in the Pitt Rivers Museum: a smooth flat wooden slat with a cord looped through a hole near one end — shown for the general Near Eastern form, not the two carved bone objects, a perforated plaque and an incised fragment, recovered from the Nahal Hemar Cave dump layer. © Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (acc. 1914.53.10) Image source

Source term: elongated bone plaques / possible bullroarer comparison

Two small decorated bone objects from a dump layer inside Nahal Hemar Cave, a cave set in a cliff in the Judean Desert near the Dead Sea, are among thirteen elongated, one-perforated-end pieces that Oliver Dietrich and Jens Notroff list as comparanda for a possible Pre-Pottery Neolithic bullroarer. The first is a trapezoidal plaque tapering to a perforated narrow end, carved with nearly parallel lines running in from both sides toward the centre; the second is a flat fragment incised with chevron-like designs. Both came from the 1983 excavation by Ofer Bar-Yosef and David Alon, which yielded one of the richest ritual assemblages of the Levantine Neolithic: asphalt-decorated human skulls, a carved stone mask, bone figurines, and flax cordage, dated to the later Pre-Pottery Neolithic B in the eighth millennium BC. The narrow perforation would let such an object be tied to a cord and swung, and a hardwood replica built to the proportions of the group produces a deep vibrato sound; but the authors note these pieces differ from the usual bullroarer shape, and their function is left unresolved.

Elongated bone plaque, trapezoidal, tapering towards one end. Single (terminal?) perforation towards smaller end. Simple carved decoration consisting of almost parallel lines running horizontally and slightly downwards from both sides of the bone object towards the centre.

Dietrich and Notroff 2016, Neo-Lithics 1/16:29, Appendix 1 no. 12 (Nahal Hemar Cave)
Object
Two decorated bone objects from a cave dump layer: a trapezoidal perforated plaque and a flat incised fragment.
Function
The Nahal Hemar objects are formal comparanda for the PPN candidate group; their function remains unresolved.
Map confidence
low - representative coordinate; source passage does not warrant a precise findspot
Source location
Neo-Lithics 1/16 pp. 27-29; Appendix 1 nos. 12-13 (Nahal Hemar Cave)

View source Open this point on the interactive map