The Bullroarer Atlas

GALIN1988-001 - candidate identification

Saw-toothed perforated bullroarer

Bosnia and Herzegovina - Bosnia-Herzegovina (site unresolved; probably Obre, Kakanj) - Europe

Archaeological datec. 6200–4900 BCObre site horizon; the object is not directly dated.

Function not recorded Candidate only

Omerzel-Terlep’s fig. 7: the toothed Bosnia-Herzegovina bullroarer drawing.
Omerzel-Terlep’s fig. 7: the toothed Bosnia-Herzegovina bullroarer drawing. Image source

nazobčana brnivka Slovenian / English / French (caption); English (Galin)

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.

A long curved sliver, saw-toothed edge to edge, swells at the top into a small pierced head — and that is all that survives: not the object, which no one has ever located, but a single printed drawing, captioned in three languages as a toothed bullroarer. Krešimir Galin, who reproduced it in 1988, linked a nearly identical figure to Obre in central Bosnia and called it Early Neolithic, but his own plate was never scanned, and three other unillustrated Bosnian toothed bones — one Bronze Age, one Iron Age — remain equally plausible matches. The hole for its cord is still visible.

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
Object
Known only from a published drawing: a long, strongly curved strip densely saw-toothed along both edges, widening at the top into a small head pierced by a single round hole; the lower end is blunt and apparently broken. No material, dimensions, or collection number survives for the object itself.
Function
Not recorded.
Map confidence
low - Obre archaeological site anchor in the Trstionica valley near Kakanj, central Bosnia. The coordinate depends entirely on the probable-not-proven identification of this drawing as Galin's Fig. 37; if the Obre identity fails, the coordinate fails with it and the row reverts to country-level with no point.
Source location
Page references

Omerzel Terlep 1998, printed p. 155 fig. 7 and p. 169; Galin 1988 p. 136 and Fig. 37 (plate pp. 147-148, not digitized)

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