The Bullroarer Atlas

PEUR2026-004 - archaeological find

Raymonden / Chancelade

France - Dordogne - Chancelade; Magdalenian superior - Europe - Upper Paleolithic

Function not recorded

Plate I, no. 16 from Hardy's 1891 report on the Raymonden excavation at Chancelade: an elongated bone blade tapering to a point, engraved with...
Representative image. Plate I, no. 16 from Hardy's 1891 report on the Raymonden excavation at Chancelade: an elongated bone blade tapering to a point, engraved with clusters of short diagonal strokes and pierced with a single drilled hole partway along its length. It comes from the same dig as the bramadera fragment documented here, though it is not confirmed to be the very piece. Michel Hardy, La station quaternaire de Raymonden à Chancelade (1891), pl. I no. 16 Public domain Image source

bramadera / rhombe Spanish

Source term: bramadera fragmentaria

bramadera (Spanish) / rhombe (French): a bull-roarer.

Etymology. Spanish bramadera (French rhombe), "the roarer," comes from bramar, to bellow or roar. (medium confidence)

The famous engraved bone from the Raymonden shelter at Chancelade, in the Dordogne, is usually read as a butchery scene: tiny schematic men ranged along a barred line taken for a bison's spine, with the animal's head, vertebral column and a pair of legs all that remain of it, and a broken suspension hole at one end. Ignacio Barandiarán Maestu sets it instead among the thirty-odd recognized Paleolithic bone bull-roarers of southwest Europe. He counts two decorated “pendant” fragments from poorly controlled nineteenth-century digs — this one and another from the grotte des Eyzies — as bramaderas fragmentarias, the Raymonden piece assigned on the style of its figures to the upper Magdalenian. It shares a rare detail with the bull-roarers of El Pendo and Bourrouilla: rather than a simple hole, its suspension end is worked into a subcircular ring set off by lateral notches. The shelter was dug by M. Hardy and M. Féaux in 1887-88, and the object is now in the museum at Périgueux. Whether the plaque was ever whirled on a cord or only hung as an ornament, Barandiarán leaves open.

sendos trozos de ‘colgantes’ decorados (me parecen bramaderas fragmentarias) de Raymonden/Chancelade y de ‘grotte des Eyzies’ se recuperaron en excavaciones no bien controladas del XIX y, atendiendo al estilo de sus figuras, se han adscrito respectivamente al Magdaleniense superior y al Magdaleniense final

two pieces of decorated ‘pendants’ (to me they look like bull-roarer fragments) from Raymonden/Chancelade and from the ‘grotte des Eyzies’ were recovered in poorly controlled nineteenth-century excavations and, going by the style of their figures, have been assigned respectively to the upper Magdalenian and the final Magdalenian

Barandiarán Maestu 2015, La bramadera de hueso, Kobie BAI 6:152
Object
A decorated, engraved bone pendant fragment, its suspension end worked into a subcircular ring with lateral notches.
Function
Whirled-cord aerophone candidate; site-level member of the Southwestern European Paleolithic bramadera corpus.
Map confidence
low_medium - Raymonden/Chancelade site coordinate; not object-level provenience GPS.
Source location
p. 152 and n. 12

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