Cendres ochred rib bramadera

Fifteen to seventeen thousand years ago, on the cliffs of the Alicante coast, someone cut a slender blade from the rib of a grazing animal, pierced one end and drove deep geometric lines into one face. Then they coloured it: ochre still sits in the grooves, laid on to make the pattern stand out. The cave's excavators present it as a bramadera, a bullroarer, and it is the southernmost piece of its kind yet found in Europe, a long way from the Pyrenean and Cantabrian caves where the rest were made.

la pieza de Cendres es la más meridional localizada hasta la fecha

the Cendres piece is the southernmost found to date

Cova de les Cendres site museum, 'Bramadera'

Particulars

Object

Fractured spindle-shaped plaque cut from a herbivore rib and pierced at one end; one face carries deeply engraved geometric decoration, with ochre surviving inside some of the grooves.

Function

Not recorded. Identified as a bramadera (bullroarer) by the cave's own site museum; the excavation's technological study files it as an ornament.