The Bullroarer Atlas

No. DUARTE2020-001Europe

Llonín bone plaque

Spain · Llonín Cave · Asturias · Europe

Function not recorded

Archaeological datec. 15,000–12,000 BCBroad Middle Magdalenian MM2 cultural range; Level X object not directly dated.
The La Roche cave engraved bone bullroarer.
Plate I. Representative — not this record’s object. The La Roche cave engraved bone bullroarer. CC BY 4.0 · Image source

Source term: possible bull-roarer / espátula-bramadera

espátula-bramadera: Spanish, 'spatula-bullroarer', the excavators' earlier name for the piece.

A needle lay inside a bone tube in square I-3 of Llonín’s anterior cone, beside another needle and five more tubes. Two further needles came from the neighbouring square, H-3, where the excavators also found a perforated bone disc and this bone plaque, which they list as a possible bullroarer. Shell pendants outnumbered points and other artefacts in this layer: a concentration of small tools and ornaments, blurred by movement within the cone, with a sounding blade among them.

a perforated bone disc and a possible bull-roarer appeared in the same square

Duarte Matías and de la Rasilla Vives 2020:331

Particulars

Object
Bone plaque represented by proximal and distal fragments from square H-3, at depths of -900 and -935 cm; the excavation identifies them as an indirect refit of one object.
Function
Not recorded.

Sources

  1. Elsa Duarte Matías and Marco de la Rasilla Vives, “The bone industry collections from La Viña and Llonín” (2020), p. 326 table 3, p. 331, table 5, p. 349 View · archived
  2. Fortea et al. (1991), p. 13

Part of The Bullroarer Atlas, companion to The Eve Theory of Consciousness.