Flute

Mesial fragment of a pipe made from a bird bone, probably a vulture’s tibia, with a single hole on one side, believed to be a flute. The bone surface was rubbed smooth, as attested by the lengthwise polishing marks. The hole was drilled from the outside by means of friction. The piece is decorated with a series of short parallel incisions, perpendicular to its axis, on the same side as the hole. It came from the Cave of El Castillo in Cantabria and was found on a level assigned to the Lower Magdalenian during Hugo Obermaier’s excavations in the cave between 1910 and 1914, sponsored by the Institut de Paléontologie Humaine in Paris. Similar pieces with a single perforation and rudimentary decorative incisions from the same period, also interpreted as flutes, have been found at other Palaeolithic sites in northern Spain, such as Rascaño Cave (Cantabria) or the caves of La Paloma and La Güelga (Asturias).