Carter Ranch bone bow guard

Source term: bow guard

bow guard: a wrist guard worn against the snap of a bowstring.

Burial 9 at Carter Ranch Pueblo held a man laid out with jars and bowls, a pitcher, Turritella shell pendants, a lump of turquoise and a heavy bone club - and, resting on his left forearm, a blade of limb bone twenty-two centimetres long, curved in section, drilled through near its broad rounded end and cut with a single fringed line. John Rinaldo called it a bow guard, because of where it lay; in the same sentence he wrote that it resembles a bull-roarer in shape, and a few lines later he compared its sharp spatulate end to the objects excavators call end scrapers and fleshers, and allowed that it may have served several purposes at once. The arm it was lying on remains the strongest thing anyone knows about it. It has never been examined for wear, and nothing survives of a cord.

The object, which resembles a bull-roarer in shape, is 22.2 cm. long, 3.6 cm. wide, and 1.0 cm. thick and is called a bow guard because it was found on the left forearm of a male burial (No. 9).

Rinaldo in Martin et al. 1964:95

Particulars

Object

Long spatulate section of limb bone, concave-convex in cross section, 22.2 x 3.6 x 1.0 cm, tapering from a broad rounded end to a narrow spatulate end; a hole drilled through near the broad end, and an incised line fringed with short oblique lines crossing the convex face about one-third of the way down.

Function

Excavated and named as a bow guard from its position on the dead man's left forearm; the excavator adds that it resembles a bullroarer in shape and compares end scrapers and fleshers, allowing multiple uses.