New hypotheses concerning two engraved bones from la grotte de Remouchamps, belgium

Abstract

Excavations in 1970 in the Ahrensburgian level at the Remouchamps Cave uncovered a second engraved piece of bone to add to an old find made in 1902. The author interprets the engravings on these two pieces, which take the form of lines, strokes, notches and cup‐marks, as graphic representations of numbers from a quinary numerical system. He suggests that the bone objects may have been used in some form of game of chance, probably a fortune‐telling game. Other objects found at Remouchamps also appeared to lie outside the range of normal domestic or utilitarian tools, including a partly polished caprid astragalus bone, which was probably a dice. Selected ethnographic examples of the use of notched rods and astragalus bones in games of chance or divination are briefly mentioned, and the author suggests that certain items of decorated Upper Palaeolithic bonework might prove susceptible to interpretation of a similar kind.

Notes

Text translated from French by the editor of this number, the English translation having been approved by the author before publication.