DIET2016-009 - archaeological find
Lespugue
France - Haute-Garonne - Pyrenees - Europe - Upper Paleolithic
Function not recorded
Source term: decorated Paleolithic bullroarer candidate
Among the handful of objects from Solutrean France read as bullroarers is a perforated piece from Lespugue, in the gorges of the Save in the Haute-Garonne, the same rich cluster of shelters that later yielded the ivory Venus. Iain Morley figures it among Palaeolithic bullroarers at 90 millimetres long, set beside a larger Solutrean example of 190 millimetres from Badegoule in the Dordogne. The drawing and the lengths come from Michel Dauvois, whose experimental work in the late 1980s showed that such Paleolithic pieces will sound when whirled on a cord. Whether these particular objects served as bullroarers rests on that experiment and on their shape, not on any observed use, so the identification remains a likely one rather than a settled one.
3. Solutrean; Lespugue, Haute Garonne. Length 90mm. 4. Solutrean; Badegoule, Dordogne. Length 190mm.
Morley, The Long-Forgotten Melody? Music in the Mesolithic, bullroarers figure (image after Dauvois 1989)
- Object
- Dietrich and Notroff cite Lespugue among prominent Paleolithic items with likely bullroarer function.
- Function
- This row keeps Lespugue visible as a named archaeology lead while leaving primary-source checking for the final pass.
- Map confidence
- low_medium - representative coordinate; source passage does not warrant a precise findspot
- Source location
- Neo-Lithics 1/16 p. 28; Morley 2003 pp. 34-35 Fig. 3.1-2; Dauvois 1989