Obre I saw-toothed bone arc

nazobčana brnivka

Source term: nazobčana brnivka / toothed bullroarer / rhombe dentelé

nazobčana brnivka: Slovenian, 'toothed bullroarer' — Omerzel Terlep's caption for the drawing; brnivka is her general term for a whirred sound-maker, the same word she uses of the Potočka zijalka point.

Teeth run down both edges of this bent strip of bone, and at its one surviving end a small round head is pierced for a cord. It comes from Obre I in central Bosnia, the earliest village on the site, where Starčevo-Impresso farmers kept herds, hunted, and gave far more care to bone than to stone. Alojz Benac, who dug the village, found its polish and form so fine that he ranked it a true work of art. It lay with the settlement's few treasures — an amber pendant, a worked Spondylus shell — within or beside its cult structures. Krešimir Galin, surveying the ancient instruments of Yugoslavia, counted it among the bullroarers of the early Neolithic.

The bull roarers of the early Neolithic correspond to comparative specimens of bull roarers found in Bosnia and Hercegovina, from the site of Obre (Fig. no. 37) (A. Benac, 1979, 363)...

Krešimir Galin, 'Archeological Findings of Musical Instruments in Yugoslavia', Narodna umjetnost Special Issue 2 (1988), p. 136

Particulars

Object

A curved strip of carefully polished bone, saw-toothed along both edges, widening at its surviving end into a small head pierced by a round hole; the other end is broken. Excavated at Obre I in the Starčevo-Impresso phase I levels.

Function

Not recorded.