Los Azules dotted deer-bone blade

Source term: espátula (spatula)

At the end of the Ice Age, Azilian hunters lived in the mouth of Los Azules cave, on the slope of Monte Llueves at Cangas de Onís, and the ash of their hearths, their flint and their kitchen bones piled up deep across the floor. In that same layer they buried a man, laid on his back in a shallow pit against the cave wall, with a painted pebble among the stones at his head, red ochre heaped over a cluster of his tools, and a harpoon that looks never to have been used. The deposit also gave up this long blade of deer foot bone, still whole. Rows of tiny pricked dots run down both faces, following the bone's natural groove, a run of short notches crosses one edge, and the bone's own opening pierces its broader end.

La espátula de Los Azules está decorada con series de puntos grabados alineados longitudinalmente a lo largo de las dos caras de la pieza.

The Los Azules spatula is decorated with series of engraved dots aligned lengthwise along both faces of the piece.

Juan A. Fernández-Tresguerres Velasco, El Aziliense en las provincias de Asturias y Santander (1980), p. 158

Particulars

Object

Complete flat blade of deer foot bone (metapodial), 24 cm long, about 3 cm wide and 8.6 mm thick, keeping the bone's natural groove down one face and its natural foramen as a hole at the broader end. Both faces carry lengthwise rows of tiny engraved dots, and one edge a row of short notches.

Function

Not recorded.