TRUHELKA1912-001 - candidate identification
Mahrevići perforated whetstone
Bosnia and Herzegovina - Mahrevići tumulus, Čajniče district - Europe
Function not recorded Candidate only
Wetzstein (German excavation report) German (Truhelka); English (Galin)
Source term: Wetzstein / whetstone; later claimed as bullroarer by Galin
Wetzstein: German, "whetstone" — Truhelka's original identification; Galin supplies no local or period term of his own for the reattributed bullroarer.
The only stone object from a burial tumulus at Mahrevići, in eastern Bosnia's Čajniče district, is a slim reddish slate blade just over ten centimetres long, pointed at one end and pierced there for suspension. Ćiro Truhelka excavated and published it in 1912 as a whetstone, then moved on to the tumulus's glass and enamel beads. Seventy years later Krešimir Galin listed the same find among his Bosnian bullroarers, one of three he named from Truhelka's reports without illustrating any of them. No cord, no wear, no sound test backs either reading — the blade still answers to both names.
An Steinartefakten wurde im Tumulus von Mahrevići nur ein Wetzstein aus rötlichem Sandschiefer von länglich-viereckigem Querschnitt gefunden. Er ist 10.2 cm lang, oben etwas zugespitzt und mit einer Hängeöse versehen (Fig. 2).
As stone artefacts, only a whetstone of reddish sandstone-slate, elongated and rectangular in cross-section, was found in the Mahrevići tumulus. It is 10.2 cm long, somewhat pointed at the top, and furnished with a suspension eye (Fig. 2).
Ćiro Truhelka, "Ein Tumulus der La-Tène-Periode in Mahrevići (Bez. Čajnica)," Wissenschaftliche Mitteilungen aus Bosnien und der Herzegowina 12 (1912), p. 17
- Object
- A slim, rectangular-in-cross-section blade of reddish sandstone-slate, 10.2 cm long, pointed at the upper end and pierced there by a single suspension hole. It was the only stone object recovered from the tumulus.
- Function
- Sharpening, per the excavator's original whetstone identification.
- Map confidence
- low - Čajniče town anchor, Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina; the tumulus's own excavation coordinates are not given in Truhelka 1912 beyond the district name, and the modern hamlet of Mahrevići could not be independently located.
- Source location
Page references
Truhelka 1912, printed p. 17, Fig. 2; Galin 1988, p. 136 (no figure number assigned by Galin)