The Bullroarer Atlas

DORST2011-001 - archaeological find

Voorstraat snorrebot strip

Netherlands - South Holland - Dordrecht, Leeuwenburg-Mijnsherenherberg on the Voorstraat - Europe - Low Countries

Archaeological datec. 1650–1700 ADCess-cellar S86 use phase; object not directly dated.

Function not recorded Candidate only

The bone snorrebot from beerkelder S86, Dordrecht Voorstraat 244.
The bone snorrebot from beerkelder S86, Dordrecht Voorstraat 244. Image source

snorrebot Dutch

Source term: onbekend voorwerp / zogeheten snorrebot

snorrebot: Dutch for a 'whirring bone,' a cord-swung humming toy.

A polished strip of ivory lay in a seventeenth-century cess cellar beneath Voorstraat in Dordrecht. Its single end hole could have held the cord of a children's humming toy — a Dutch snorrebot, or 'whirring bone' — swung overhead to raise and lower its note. But the same polish that makes the toy interpretation attractive may have come from work: the strip could instead have been a small weaving sword or a shoehorn.

Het gaat hier waarschijnlijk om een zogeheten snorrebot, een soort kinderspeelgoed dat aan een draad boven het hoofd rondgeslingerd wordt en daarbij een snorrend geluid laat horen.

This is probably a so-called snorrebot, a kind of children's toy that is swung around on a thread above the head and thereby lets a whirring sound be heard.

Dorst, Graven naar de Graaf, Dordrecht Ondergronds 5 (2011), p. 60
Object
A lightly curved strip of bone, probably ivory and possibly walrus ivory, 10.4 x 2.3 x 0.5 cm: slightly hollow on one face, convex on the other, of very fine structure and high polish, pierced once near one end; small facet scars mark where fragments have sprung off the opposite end.
Function
Not recorded.
Map confidence
high - OpenStreetMap address point for Voorstraat 244, Dordrecht Centrum - the excavated street address itself, so a plot-level anchor rather than a coordinate for cess cellar S86 within the plot.
Source location
Page references

Dorst 2011, printed pp. 58-60, Fig. 74; notes 173, 180 and 181 on printed p. 65

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