Santander, February 19th-22nd 2008 - Aranzadi

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ALFREDO CARANNANTE
The use of triton shell as a trumpet is more wellknown.
This kind of instrument was made removing
the apex in order to blow air into the spire.
Such trumpets produced a loud, deep sound and
had been made in Mediterranean countries from
prehistory until a few years ago. One of the Hala
Sultan Tekké Charonia shells has “broken tip…
and may have been used as a trumpet” (Reese
1985: 354).
Both the apexes of the Pyrgos triton shells
were not removed, thus they were not used as
trumpets, but one of them was worked in an unusual
way: two holes and the trace of a third one on
the first whorls of the spire seem to be arranged in
a specific way. Such holes may just have been
used to hang the large shell as an ornament. The
arrangement of the holes, however, recall some
Amerindian ethnical wind instruments, which were
made of shells perforated in several places in
order to produce a modulated sound, such as in
an ocarina. Ethnographical studies and tests of
experimental archaeology are being carried out to
confirm or to refute such a hypothesis.
11. EXOTIC SHELLS
Triton was not the only large shell used in
Pyrgos-Mavroraki. A 17 centimetre tall Strombus
shell is perhaps the most peculiar archaeomalacological
find at the site (Fig. 6).
Nowadays this genus is extinct in the
Mediterranean sea. The Pyrgos shell is a specimen
of the Indo-Pacific species Strombus tricornis and
not of the fossil Mediterranean Strombus bubonius.
The Pyrgos Strombus shell is intensely bio-eroded,
riddled by sponges and covered by reddish
encrustations of foraminifera Miniacina miniacea.
Fouling foraminifera, bryozoans, worms and ostreids
are present on the internal surfaces. Such data show
that the shell was collected a long time after the
death of the mollusc on an Indo-Pacific coast (probably
on the Red Sea or Persian Gulf coasts).
The Malea pomum specimen used as a bead
in the Pyrgos necklace is a second attestation of
an exotic shell in the site.
We owe the first synthesis on exotic shells discovered
in prehistoric Mediterranean sites to D.S.
Reese (1991). The scholar demonstrated how the
“trade” of exotic shells progressively developed
beginning from regions nearest to the Red Sea
and the Persian Gulf to expand as far as Turkey
(Reese 1991). Indo-Pacific shells are widespread
in Neolithic, Chalcolithic and Bronze Age sites
Figure 6. Strombus tricornis shell from Pyrgos-Mavroraki.
from the eastern Mediterranean coasts to
Mesopotamia and to southern Anatolia.
Strombus shells have been found in some
Syrian and Turkish Bronze Age sites. They are
attested in the Dagan temple at Mari (five specimens
from votive deposits), at Tell Chuera (six
Strombus decorus) and in the Early Bronze Age
strata at Kurban Höyük (one worn Strombus shell)
(Reese 1990, 1991). Many other exotic species are
however attested in several Turkish sites far from
the Indo-pacific coasts such as Alishar Höyük e
Karkemish (Reese 1986, 1991).
The earliest attestation of Indo-Pacific shells in
Turkey dates back to the Early Neolithic. In the
Bronze Age, exotic shells were used in several sites
on Greek islands and mainland, in Turkey and even
in southern Russia (Reese 1991). In contrast, the
earliest Indo-Pacific shells in Cyprus are reported in
the Cypriot Archaic period (c.a. 850 B.C.) (Reese
1991: 167-168). Reese remarks that such a paradoxical
absence of exotic shells in the Cypriot prehistory
contrasts with the intensive contemporary
MUNIBE Suplemento - Gehigarria 31, 2010
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