DIET2016-008 - archaeological find
Abri de Laugerie Basse
France - Dordogne - Les Eyzies - Europe - Upper Paleolithic
Function not recorded
Source term: decorated Paleolithic bullroarer candidate
From the Magdalenian rock shelter of Laugerie-Basse, in the Vezere valley at Les Eyzies-de-Tayac, comes a slender perforated piece about 107 millimetres long that ranks among a handful of French Palaeolithic objects read as bullroarers. Michel Dauvois illustrated it in his 1989 survey of Palaeolithic sound as one of seven likely Solutrean and Magdalenian specimens, and Iain Morley, reviewing that work, judged that for these pierced and engraved pieces interpretation as bullroarers "remains by far the most likely attribution of their purpose." What the roar may once have meant is lost: no use-wear or context survives to fix its use, and the reading rests on form and acoustics, not on any recorded rite.
Fig. 3.2(3) is from Laugerie Basse, Les-Eyzies-De-Tayac, Dordogne, and is 107mm long ... in the case of the Solutrean and Magdalenian examples described above, interpretation of them as bullroarers remains by far the most likely attribution of their purpose.
Morley 2003, The Evolutionary Origins and Archaeology of Music (DCRR-002), pp. 35-36
- Object
- Dietrich and Notroff cite Abri de Laugerie Basse among French Paleolithic items with likely bullroarer function and experimental sound-making comparanda.
- Function
- This is a named European archaeology comparison row, not ethnographic distribution evidence.
- Map confidence
- low_medium - representative coordinate; source passage does not warrant a precise findspot
- Source location
- Morley 2003 (DCRR-002) pp. 34-36, Fig. 3.2 no. 2 (Laugerie Basse, 107 mm); after Dauvois 1989: 10