The Bullroarer Atlas

No. ERDALKIRAN2022-001

Barcın Höyük pierced rib blade

Turkey · Yenişehir plain, Bursa province, Marmara region; Late Neolithic · Near East · Anatolia

Function not recorded Candidate only

Archaeological datec. 6600–6000 BCLate Neolithic Layer VI context; object not directly dated.
Line drawing of a narrow drop-shaped bone blade with a round hole at its broad top, shown front and back, with a thin side profile between them and small cross-section outlines to the left.
Plate I. Drawing of the Barcın Höyük rib blade: both faces, the thin side profile and three cross-sections. Image source

Source term: dokuma mekiği (bone shuttle)

For six centuries the farmers of Barcın Höyük rebuilt their houses side by side on one small mound in the Yenişehir plain. They grew wheat, barley and lentils, kept cattle, sheep and goats, still hunted, and, as residues in their earliest bowls show, were already processing milk. Of the more than three thousand bone tools found in the village, forty-three belong to one family: ribs split lengthwise into thin blanks, ground flat and drilled from both faces near the broad end. This one survives complete, a slim drop of bone with a clean eye at its head, tapering to a point.

Particulars

Object
Complete thin blade of split rib bone, drop-shaped, broad and rounded at the head and tapering to a point, with a hole drilled from both faces through the head. One of 43 such blades from the village; the complete large examples run 6–8 cm long.
Function
Not recorded.

Sources

  1. Mücella Erdalkıran, 'Late Neolithic Bone Shuttles from Barcın Höyük', TÜBA-AR 31 (2022): 97–106, fig. 5 View
  2. Hadi Özbal, Adrià Breu et al., 'From bowls to pots: changing vessel technology and milk processing at Barcın Höyük', PLoS ONE 19(5) (2024): e0302788 View

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