Aizkoltxo engraved rib plaque

Source term: adorno-colgante / quizás una bramadera

bramadera: Spanish bullroarer; adorno-colgante: ornament-pendant

A halved rib, sawn and rubbed down into a narrow plate and pierced once at the end, engraved on both faces with a hind, two water animals and a scatter of X-marks. It came out of a fissure at Aizkoltxo, in the Basque hills above Mendaro, in fill washed down from a Final Magdalenian floor about fourteen thousand years old. The hole is worn bright and one broken edge has a lustre, which the excavators read as long, hard use: hung as an ornament, they thought, or perhaps whirled as a bramadera. Only the polish speaks to how it moved.

El soporte es un objeto de adorno-colgante … o quizás una bramadera.

The support is an ornament-pendant … or perhaps a bullroarer.

Ochoa et al. 2023:9, section 6.1

Particulars

Object

Fragmentary halved rib plate shaped by sawing and abrasion, with one biconical terminal perforation made by bipolar rotation; the largest fragment is 60.2 x 21.1 x 4.0 mm, and the faces carry a hind, two aquatic zoomorphs, X-motifs, and other engravings.

Function

Not recorded. Wear on the perforation and a lustrous fracture edge show prolonged handling, but not which use.