Revaluation of the Portable Art of Northern Iberia: a Magdalenian Decorated Bone Tube from Torre (Basque Country, Spain)

Abstract

A decorated ulna of a gannet (Morus bassanus) was found in 1966 during the exploration of the archaeological site of Torre cave (Gipuzkoa, northern Iberian Peninsula). The present study offers a new appraisal of this truly outstanding art object through a technological and stylistic analysis enriched by more recent finds. What makes this object extraordinary is the fact that it is one of the most complete specimens in the Iberian Peninsula. Moreover, the Torre tube is one of the few remains with peri-cylindrical decoration displaying a complex combination of motifs. It is profusely decorated with figurative representations (deer, horse, ibex, chamois, aurochs and an anthropomorph) and signs (single lines, parallel lines, zigzags, etc.) in two rows in opposite directions. The tube resembles objects from other Magdalenian sites in Cantabrian Spain and the Pyrenees, which corroborate the exchange of technical and iconographic behaviour.