Contour Cut-out

Personal ornament element

Isturitz type, Pyrénées-Atlantiques

Magdalenian
21 000 to 14 000 years

Commentary : 

Most contour cut-outs, or contours découpés, are made from the flat hyoid bone, found under the lower part of a horse’s tongue.

Only the wide, triangular part of this bone, which is shaped like a horse head, is used.

One or two pierced holes suggest they served as pendants, necklaces or ornaments on clothing.

During the Middle Magdalenian, contour cut-outs were remarkably standardized throughout the Pyrenees.

This uniformity reflects the existence of numerous exchanges of objects, and ideas, between distant hunter-gatherer groups.