Emma,
There are bone dice commonly found on iron age Scottish sites - see Clark 1970
PPS 35 page 214 - 232. You can find a more recent discussion in Scalloway
(Sharples 1998) page 174 by Andrea Smith, here they are made of cetacean bone
and cattle bone and I also think there are illustrations in the Orkney Sea
Change volume (. ed J. Downes and A. Ritchie Sea Change: Orkney and Northern
Europe in the later Iron Age AD 300-800 The pinkfoot press, Balgavies, Angus),
but I have lost my copy so can give you no more details.
The die seem to range in size, and are often burnt, some are solid and some are
hollow.
A cursory glance reveals no tiny ones at scalloway - smallest is about 4cm long
- but Andrea Smith - who is contactable as [log in to unmask] may be able
to offer you more help.
I just happened to have picked up a copy of the clarke paper on Tuesday.
Jacqui
>>> emma evans <[log in to unmask]> 06/10/05 9:51 am >>>
Hi, I have found a worked bone object from a Late Iron Age site near Gloucester
that, according to McGregor in his book on worked bone, antler and ivory is a
dice. It is a small oblong shaped object, with each of the four long sides
having numbers etched into them (numbers 3 - 6). Whilst according to the book it
seems to obviously be a dice, it is about half the size of the ones he mentions,
and appears to be made from the solid shaft of a large long bone, with a hole
drilled through it rather than a larger sheep sized long bone such as a
metapodial which would naturally have a hole through the middle. It is also very
nicely polished. Basically, what we are wondering is if this object was
originally made as a very small dice, or if it could have been a bead decorated
like a dice. I was wondering if anyone had found anything similar to this, and
what their thoughts were on the object.
Thanks
Emma-Jayne
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Emma-Jayne Evans, Oxford Archaeology
[log in to unmask]
|