HAKVOORT2013-001 - archaeological find
Middenbeemster, Keyserkerk cemetery (charnel pit, feature 114)
Netherlands - North Holland - Beemster polder - Europe - Low Countries
Play / practical
snorrebot Dutch
Source term: snorrebot (zoemhout/snorhout)
snorrebot = Dutch, 'whirring bone' (snorren, to whirr + bot, bone); the report also gives the synonyms zoemhout and snorhout, 'humming-wood' and 'whirring-wood'.
Five uneven teeth bite into one end of a bone blade found beside the Keyserkerk in the Beemster polder. At the other end a single hole once carried the cord. Swung in a circle, the 13.5-centimetre slat spun on its own axis and gave a humming, whirring voice — a typical children's toy of the Dutch Middle Ages and the centuries after. It surfaced in a charnel pit, among bones cleared from older graves as the churchyard was reworked; the excavators wondered whether it had once been laid with a buried child, though the pit cannot prove it.
Door luchtwervelingen gaat het plaatje om zijn as tollen waarbij het een zoemend of snorrend geluid voortbrengt.
Air turbulence sets the little plate spinning on its axis, producing a humming or whirring sound.
Hakvoort, De begravingen bij de Keyserkerk te Middenbeemster (2013), p. 66
- Object
- Bone blade 13.5 cm long, 2.4-2.8 cm wide, 0.4 cm thick: rounded top with a 0.5 cm cord hole, bevelled sides, five notches of differing depth at the lower end; exact report photograph (fig. 34).
- Function
- A children's toy: swung in a circle on a cord through the terminal hole; airflow spins the blade on its axis for a humming, whirring sound.
- Map confidence
- high - Centroid of the four RD excavation corners in the report colophon (RD 122872.5/506767.5 -> WGS84); an excavation-area anchor beside the Keyserkerk, not the object's individual findspot.
- Source location
- p. 66, section 7.1.3, fig. 34
- Toy / secular survival