TURK2022-001 - archaeological find
Mala Triglavca rock shelter (Divača)
Slovenia - Kras (Karst) plateau - Divača - Southeast Europe
Function not recorded Candidate only
Source term: brnivka / bullroarer
brnivka = Slovene for bullroarer; the term Turk's plate (after Brodar 2009) applies to the Mala Triglavca fish.
From the Mesolithic layer of Mala Triglavca, a rock shelter on the Kras plateau near Divača, came an eleven-centimetre fish carved in bone - eye drilled through, mouth opening in a half-round notch, flanks pricked with fine lines and dots like scales. Either opening will take a cord, and when the original was swung soon after its 1984 discovery it gave out a loud, buzzing, hard-to-describe tone. France Leben, the archaeologist who found it, first thought of a small knife, an ornament or an amulet; students of Slovenia's earliest instruments have since heard something more in the singing fish - a brnivka, Slovene for bullroarer.
Zvočni preizkus predmeta kmalu po njegovi najdbi je dokazal zanimiv in glasen ter težko opisljiv brneč zven.
A sound test of the object soon after its discovery proved an intriguing, loud and hard-to-describe buzzing tone.
Mira Omerzel-Terlep, Etnolog 8 (1998), p. 172
- Object
- An 11 cm fish-shaped bone blade from the Mesolithic level: a drilled hole sits in place of the eye and a semicircular opening at the mouth, either able to take a cord; the flanks carry fine incised lines and dots (scales? symbols?). Found in 1984 by France Leben.
- Function
- Prehistoric use unrecorded; modern readings run from amulet to bullroarer, and the original buzzed loudly in a 1984 sound test.
- Map confidence
- medium - Divača locality point, Kras plateau; the Mala Triglavca shelter opens just south of the town (exact shelter coordinate not given in the packet).
- Source location
- Turk 2022 p. 47 and Pl. 2 no. 7 (p. 74); Omerzel-Terlep 1998:171-172