Coucoulu salmon-engraved rib blade

Source term: spatule aux poissons (fish spatula)

A salmon or trout swims down this long, thin blade of reindeer rib, drawn with its fins, its spotted flank and a lateral line bristling with tiny barbs. In front of its jaw sits the tail of a second fish, laid head to tail beneath the first, and the narrow end of the blade is itself carved as a fish's tail. André Leroi-Gourhan, who published it, wondered whether the row of circles and strokes at the far end showed spawning: the hen fish sweeping a nest in the gravel, the cock circling, the round eggs. Magdalenian carvers made a whole family of these fish-tailed blades across southwestern France and northern Spain, and he counted this one, from a cave at Calviac in the Dordogne, among the most remarkable.

Le poisson est, sans doute possible, un salmonidé.

The fish is, beyond any doubt, a salmonid.

André Leroi-Gourhan, Gallia Préhistoire 14(2) (1971), p. 256

Particulars

Object

Thin blade cut from a reindeer rib, 22.8 cm long and about 3 mm thick, curved in both directions by the natural shape of the rib. One end narrows to a neck and a small expanded tip carved as a fish's tail; one face is engraved with a salmonid, the tail of a second fish, and a row of circles and short strokes. The neck end was broken and has been rejoined.

Function

Not recorded.