The Bullroarer Atlas

POLIKARPOVICH1941-001 - archaeological find

Eliseevichi engraved ivory plaques

Russia - Sudost' valley, Desna basin, Bryansk Oblast (Oryol Oblast in 1935) - Eastern Europe

Archaeological datec. 19,000–13,000 BCSite radiocarbon range; plaques not directly dated.

Function not recorded Candidate only

Ivory plaque netted with hexagons and a zigzag band, Eliseevichi 1, plate VIII no. 1.
Ivory plaque netted with hexagons and a zigzag band, Eliseevichi 1, plate VIII no. 1. Image source
Four engraved ivory plaques from Eliseevichi with their cross-sections, plate VIII.
Four engraved ivory plaques from Eliseevichi with their cross-sections, plate VIII. Image source
The same plaque drawn face, back and edges, with its lens-shaped cross-section.
The same plaque drawn face, back and edges, with its lens-shaped cross-section. Image source
A flat oval ivory plaque, 23 cm long, its rounded end incised with zigzags.
A flat oval ivory plaque, 23 cm long, its rounded end incised with zigzags. Image source

Source term: пластины из бивня («чуринги»)

Late in the last Ice Age, on a loess promontory above the Sudost', mammoth hunters piled a heap of bone a metre and a half long and ringed it with mammoth skulls, most of them set tusk sockets down. In the heap lay more than thirty tusks of young mammoths, mostly just the tips, and with them more than ten oval plaques of ivory, 15 to 25 cm long, engraved with geometric patterns: three roof-shaped figures on one, a close net like fish scales on another. At the very bottom was an ivory woman without head or arms. Konstantin Polikarpovich, who dug the heap in 1935, compared the plaques to the churinga of Aboriginal Australia, and Johannes Maringer later likened them to the bullroarer of La Roche. Two metres from the skulls lay the skull of one of the earliest known dogs.

Описанные пластины сопоставляются с «чурингами» австралийцев.

The plaques described are comparable with the "churingas" of the Australians.

K. M. Polikarpovich, Arkheologicheskie issledovaniya v RSFSR 1934-1936 (1941), p. 36
Object
More than ten oval plaques of mammoth ivory, about 15-25 cm long, mostly engraved with geometric designs; one carries three roof-shaped figures, another a close lattice like fish scales.
Function
Not recorded.
Source
K. M. Polikarpovich, 'Der. Eliseevichi i dr.', in Arkheologicheskie issledovaniya v RSFSR 1934-1936 gg. (Moscow-Leningrad: Izd. AN SSSR, 1941), pp. 32-37, pl. VIII; Johannes Maringer, The Gods of Prehistoric Man (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1960), p. 63
Source location
Page references

Polikarpovich 1941 pp. 35-37, pl. VIII; Maringer 1960 p. 63

Source confidence
low
Location note
Eliseevichi village (Zhiryatinsky district, OSM); the site lies on a loess promontory of the Sudost' right bank at the village.

Regions: Europe

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