[Regia-NA] Spindle Whorls of Femur Heads - Viking Context

[rmhowe]

I said I would post this when I found it on femur headed
spindle whorls. Wrong book though I think that I suggested
it might be in the first time. Brain like a magic 8 ball.
Most of the notes are mine except for quotations taken in "".
Happened to see it in my bibliography notes whilst looking
for the dragon head for a "windsock" that Martin wants.
I have that too -somewhere-.

Magnus

Curle, A:  A Viking Settlement at Freswick, Caithness, Report on 
Excavations carried out in 1937 and 1938.
(Academic Journal Offprint from -) Proceedings of the Society
of Antiquaries - Scotland. 1, 1938-39, pages 71-108 and plates
XXXVIII to LI and 6 figures. Is missing at least one page at
the end. 39pp, 28figs b/w pls, Printed card cover, VGC,
US$ 14.50.

Figures 1-4 various ground plans of the houses and sections through.
Early plates show flagging, foundations, bathhouse, site of a bed,
a quern, some wattle daub.

Plate XLVII shows a comb case with ring and dot decoration,
and some small toothed combs, one of which has a smaller comb
on the other side of a long one.

  Irish Brooch found at Croy, Inverness-shire (appears to be
beast heads biting at something similar to a sundisc. unusual)
and a dragon head - part-brooch found at Freswick.
These are pennanulars.

Plate XLVIII shows objects of bone: 1-9 comprise 3 small bone pins
from 1 5/16 to 1 21/32“ long, two holed bodkins (eyed needles) or
piercers (one #2 looks like a normal holed dress pin w/o the
normal decoration); several are simply piercers and one object
(10) head of pin with a fat middled bobbin like appearance.
and piercers, or bodkins - the foregoing made of canon bones of
ox, deer or sheep, 11-14 (toggles) dress fasteners made of
center perforated metacarpals of pigs. 	None are animorphic.
Plate XLIX shows turn-buckles or door-snecks of cetacean
(whale) bone,
*** two spindle whorls made from femur heads. “Whorls. _
Hemispherical whorls made from the heads of ox femurs were
found throughout the area excavated, and totalled 15 in number.
As a rule they have been crudely fashioned with little effort
to give them any elegance of form. Spindle whorls from
femur-heads are or frequent occurrence in prehistoric and
later excavations, and are by no means confined to Viking sites.
They were found by Pitt Rivers in Romano-British excavations at
Woodcuts Common, also by Sir Henry Dryden at Hunsbury or
Danes Camp, near Northampton. They were among the relics from
the Keiss broch in Caithness, and the broch of Burrian in North
Ronaldshay. Though now too light to effect their original
purpose, they would be sufficiently heavy before the osseous
matter, which they contained perished.“

5 + 7 are quartz plummets.
6 is a sinker of steatite.
8 is a small ended hone.
(“Twelve sharpening stones or hones, of quartzose schist from
the Moine shcists, were found on various sites, five of them
coming, as might be expected, from the smithy. They are all,
with one exception of the haunched type, the exception being
a straight-sided hone of black phyllite or clayey schist,
a different material from that of any other. only one example
is shown. A sharpening stone, probably of Caithness flagstone,
to be used for some narrow, round pointed metal instrument,
has a deep groove the length of each of the two opposite faces, 	and is 
considerably abraded at one end.”)

9 + 10 are pot-lids of stone.

?Polishers - there are two polishers, an ovoid pebble of
porphyry, flattened by use on each side, which was found in
the smithy, and a larger water-worn ovoid pebble of quartzite.
The latter, at one end has been reduced to an angular section
by rubbing, and has the opposite end has been slightly abraded.

Plate L - Two knives, one long, the other hog-backed.
3. an unusual 	key, not terribly interesting.
4. Butt or socket, end missing.
5. Long Belt chape of twined animorphic form.
9-10 Penanullar finger rings of uninteresting design.
6 - round bracelet with grooves around it.
7 - A long hammer-headed (cuboid) pin. Bronze patch for a cauldron.
Plate LI and figure 6: Examples of Viking pottery - most crudely made.
The pottery is identical to that found at Jarlshof. Comparison
is made to Jarlshof. Conclusion: the inhabitants were poorer or
more isolated.