[Bonetools] Fw: Swiss Lake Dweller mystery object

[Moore, Katherine M]

To colleagues on the WBRG list:



I would be very interested in your insights on the function of this lovely worked piece of bone from Robenhausen, one of thousands of bone tools from "lake dweller" sites that were scattered to museums around the world during the 19th C.  It is a unique shape in the Penn Museum collection, but we have other items in the collection with this same decoration of rows of engraved dots filled with some lighter colored material. At first it looked like like one element of Turkish spindle whorl, except that the central hole is almost unworn and there is no slot for a cross piece. The two holes at the ends are smoothed and worn as though a rod or pin ran through them to hold something soft. One author in 1928 indicated that a similarly shaped but undecorated piece from another Lake Neuchatel site was a "wrist guard".


I'm hoping that a European colleague will recognize this right away.


best,

Kate Moore


Katherine M. Moore, Ph.D.

Practice Professor, Department of Anthropology

Undergraduate Chair

Mainwaring Teaching Specialist

Center for the Analysis of Archaeological Materials

University of Pennsylvania Museum

3260 South Street

Philadelphia, PA 19104 USA
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