OMERZEL1998-002 - archaeological find
Potočka perforated rib fragment
Slovenia - Potočka zijalka - eastern Karawanks - Europe
Function not recorded Candidate only
Source term: skoz in skoz preluknjan fragment rebra jamskega medveda / svojstvena brnivka; rebro z luknjo (brnivka?)
brnivka: Slovenian bullroarer or whirring sound-maker; svojstvena brnivka: "unusual/idiosyncratic bullroarer", Omerzel-Terlep's own hedged category for this fragment; rebro z luknjo: "rib with a hole", her 1999 wording.
High in the eastern Karawanks, in a cave mouth Ice Age hunters used and cave bears died in, excavators recorded a fragment of bear rib punched clean through with a hole. It came from layer 7 near the entrance, in ground about 37,000 to 33,000 years old. Decades later Mira Omerzel-Terlep read the old excavation notes and wondered whether it might be an unusual bullroarer, then repeated the thought the following year with a question mark attached. She could go no further: nobody recorded the fragment's size, its catalogue number, or, crucially, where on the bone the hole sat, and the rib itself appears to have been lost in the war.
Med svojstvene brnivke bi lahko morda šteli tudi skoz in skoz preluknjan fragment rebra jamskega medveda ...
Among unusual bullroarers one might perhaps also count a cave-bear rib fragment perforated all the way through ...
Mira Omerzel-Terlep, Etnolog 8 (1998), printed p. 171
- Object
- A fragment of cave-bear rib perforated all the way through, recovered from the cave's entrance triangle between measuring points 15, 17 and 18, in layer 7. No dimensions, no catalogue or inventory number, no statement of where on the fragment the hole sits, no outline, no manufacture traces, no weight, no cord and no use-wear study have been recovered from any source. A third, distinct Potočka object: not the perforated bone point no. 75 (OMERZEL1998-001) and not the complete perforated cave-bear mandible, which is held closed. Not to be confused with Brodar 1999 plate 6 no. 9, a different rib fragment carrying half a hole at a break.
- Function
- Not recorded.
- Map confidence
- medium - Potočka zijalka cave-entrance anchor; the fragment's position in the entrance triangle between measuring points 15, 17 and 18 is an excavation-grid reference, not a geographic coordinate.
- Source location
Page references
Omerzel-Terlep 1998, Etnolog 8, printed p. 171 and note 73; Omerzel-Terlep 1999, Etnolog 9/2, printed p. 20; Brodar and Brodar 1983, pp. 31, 155, 166