Potočka perforated rib fragment

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"; rebro z luknjo: "rib with a hole".

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

Particulars

Object

A fragment of cave-bear rib perforated all the way through, recovered from layer 7 in the cave's entrance triangle, between measuring points 15, 17 and 18.

Function

Not recorded.