EUROPE-006 - secondary catalog
Aitzbitarte IV cave
Spain - Magdalenian Cantabrian (Errenteria, Gipuzkoa) - Europe - Iberian Peninsula
Sacred / spirit
bramadera
bramadera: Spanish for a bullroarer; also called zumbador or rombo.
Etymology. 'Roarer/bellower' — named because the whirled sound is "like the bellowing of the wind"; a Castilian term shared with the children's noise-toy bramador or zumbador. (medium confidence)
Four flat bone strips from the cave of Aitzbitarte IV, near Errenteria in Gipuzkoa, have been read as bullroarers — bramaderas, in Spanish — recovered by José Miguel de Barandiarán's excavations of 1963 and 1964 and kept in the municipal museum at San Sebastián. The most complete is a plano-convex sliver of bone about 106 by 15 mm, a small suspension hole near one end and the other tapering to a point, its only decoration plain longitudinal scratches grouped at each tip; it came from subnivel Ib, the transition from final Magdalenian to Azilian. Two distal fragments came from the Upper Magdalenian level III and one from the final-Magdalenian level II. In the original dig logs the pieces were entered tentatively — one as "an end of bone leaf, pointed (bramadera?)", another as "a bone plaque pointed at one end (half a bramadera?)" — so the identification is not certain for all four. The type is taken to be whirled on a long cord to make a roaring hum, on the analogy of the Australian churinga.
varilla de hueso plana, con orificio de suspensión (bramadera)
flat bone rod, with a suspension hole (bullroarer)
Barandiarán, «Bramaderas» en el Paleolítico Superior peninsular (Pyrenae), quoting J. M. de Barandiarán's excavation report on Aitzbitarte IV (Campaña de 1964)
- Object
- Four bone bramaderas (one complete, three fragmentary) from Magdalenian superior to Azilian transition levels.
- Function
- Whirled-cord aerophone.
- Map confidence
- high - approximate territory centroid (mining 2026)
- Source location
- pp.151-152
- Spirit voice