DIET2016-007 - archaeological find
La Roche de Birol
France - Dordogne - Europe - Upper Paleolithic
Function not recorded
Source term: Paleolithic bullroarer / Magdalenian churinga
Around twelve thousand years ago, in a Magdalenian camp in the Dordogne, someone shaped a slip of reindeer antler into a slender fish-without-a-tail, drilled it for a cord, painted it with red ochre, and then incised it with neat ranks of parallel lines and dots. Pulled from the cave of La Roche de Birol (also called de Brie) near Lalinde in a hastily dug 1927 excavation, it became the first object European prehistory ever recognized as a bullroarer: Denis Peyrony, who published it in 1930, called it a rhombe; Abbe Henri Breuil pronounced it the first complete Magdalenian "churinga" ever found and likened its plain geometry to the sacred whirring boards of Aboriginal Australia. The identification has held up: even Andre Leroi-Gourhan, the lone skeptic, conceded that a replica "behaves like a bullroarer" when swung, and Marcel Dauvois's acoustic experiments confirmed the piece sounds. What it once meant, who was allowed to hear it, and who had to flee its voice are lost with the people who made it; the ochred original now rests in the Musee d'Archeologie nationale at Saint-Germain-en-Laye.
La primera bramadera reconocida por la Arqueología prehistórica se recuperó en 1927 en una excavación mal documentada que hizo L. Peyrille en la cueva de La Roche de Birol (o de Brie) en Lalinde (Dordogne).
The first bullroarer recognized by prehistoric archaeology was recovered in 1927 in a poorly documented excavation carried out by L. Peyrille in the cave of La Roche de Birol (or de Brie) at Lalinde (Dordogne).
Barandiarán Maestu 2015:152
- Object
- Engraved reindeer-antler pendant with incised geometric decoration, pierced for suspension, from La Roche de Birol at Lalinde, Dordogne (Magdalenian, c. 12,000 BP).
- Function
- Positively identified Magdalenian bullroarer/churinga (Peyrony, Breuil, Dauvois acoustic test, Barandiaran 2015).
- Map confidence
- high - Grotte de la Roche / abri de la Roche de Birol, Lalinde; cave site coordinate (Wikipedia 44 50 14 N, 0 43 06 E = 44.8373, 0.7183), near the hameau de Birol. Object-level provenience GPS not published.
- Source location
- Neo-Lithics 1/16 p. 28; Morley 2003 pp. 34-35 Fig. 3.1-2; Dauvois 1989; Field 1954 Man 54 p. 162; Barandiaran Maestu 2015 Kobie BAI 6 p. 152; image: Javier Trueba/Science Photo Library "Stone Age (Magdalenian) bullroarer, La Roche Cave, Lalinde".