Bone whistle from the shores of Lake Geneva

[Yuri]

What you have is a typical Medieval pattern. At a guess can be anything from the Dark Ages to the 18th c. (I actually miswrote the 19th c. in the previous comment.) I imagine the final demise of these whistles came about due to the increasing availability and cheapness of more professional instruments. Also the restricted range would have had difficulty keeping up with evolving musical styles.
The guy in the video simply makes the pipe in the "trumpet" shape. It is perfectly viable, it's simply not a particularly preferred shape for whistles as short as these bones are. When you are constricted by this maximum length, you want to make it as low as you can, and putting the fipple into the wider end does that. All Medieval pipes are made like that. (That is, the ones made from tibiae of sheep/goat/deer. The metatarsus (there are some examples) is more-or-less straight, so it makes no difference which way you turn it. The wing bones of the great birds (like vultures, storks, swans etc.) are also more-or-less straight, but since they are much longer, these ones are often used "trumpet-like", within the confines of the very small taper.)

[Yuri]

Now, to be of a bit more help. With woodwind instruments generally you need to have a predictable bore to be able to plan for overblowing in tune. (And a lot of experimentation until you get it right over two octaves with a known bore profile.) The fingerholes after all are used for both octaves (Or even more than two) Now, with a bone there is absolutely no predictability. Near enough is not near enough. A tiny difference in the bore profile will result in a big difference in the second octave. Which leads us to the logical conclusion that these pipes, well, they had to be bored with the fingerholes in the most likely position. Then you had to find the best suited cross-fingering pattern to play a discernible scale. In fact, I came across an identical practice with Turkish long kavals, where some 6 (from memory, I might be wrong) fingerholes are drilled in rather close proximity around the middle of the pipe, and the player figures out what pattern he prefers. So each pipe is actually different, and a uniform fingering pattern is not expected.
Having taken another look at the photos of your pipe, I also think the upper half of the mouth (the window) might have been damaged. Or alternatively, made rather sloppily. By upper I mean the side closest to the lips. The window's cut-up is quite high, so you'll need quite a bit of pressure to make it sound.

[Roger O'Keeffe]

Thanks, Yuri. You're a mine of information.

The cousin has now arrived and I'll show him what we've learnt so far and see what additional information he may be able to add.

[pancelticpiper]

This is a fascinating thing.

About the sort of musical scale one might expect, I'll give this little anecdote. I was visiting the reconstructed Miwok village in Yosemite valley a few years back and there was a little gift shop there which had a number of newly made Miwok flutes for sale. I handled them and noticed that they were not fipple flutes (like the modern Native American flutes) but were simply open at both ends. Having some experience on Kaval my reaction was to use the Kaval embouchure and I started tooting on the things. A guy ran up and said "you're the first white person that's been able to play those!" and I told him about the Kaval, which he had not heard of. Turned out he was the maker, and a Miwok flutist.

The things had four holes and the scale didn't make much sense to me. The most interesting thing was when he played the flute with one orientation, then flipped it round, saying "sometimes they sound better the other way". As far as I could see there wasn't any expectation as to any specific sort of scale.

[Roger O'Keeffe]

Thanks, Pancelticpiper.

Your comment reminds us about the need to avoid bringing too many preconceptions to the party. The fact that the whistle I described is not in a recognised pentatonic mode illustrates this, even though it is clearly a fipple flute and its notes are close to notes of the standard "western" scale. That leads me to think that it comes from an era when that scale was well-established, and that it was made by someone who had a pretty clear idea what results he wanted to achieve, rather than someone tinkering with a piece of bone and hoping to make pleasing sounds with it.

I just posted a minor update on the blog post that underlies this thread, regarding the stratigraphy of the find.

As mentioned there, my conversation with the owner mainly focused on the information that I was able to put together on the basis of posts here, notably Yuri's contributions and the leads I was able to follow up thanks to those contributions.

I hope to find out if there are any more clues from the information the owner has about the location where it was found, and will post any such information here.

[Roger O'Keeffe]

Updates and corrections.

The ring was examined by the museum in Geneva but was returned to the owner. The inscription is on the inner surface, in "Gothic" script, but is in French: it says "vous me tiens" (spelling to be checked).

The other noteworthy find of which I was unaware was a human skeleton, which was carbon-dated, but I don't know what the precise result was.

The owner will re-contact the museum experts to let them assess the whistle.

Thanks to all who contributed. I will let you know in due course the results of the museum experts' examination.

[Roger O'Keeffe]

Here's a clip I found while searching for more information on medieval bone whistles: http://www.apemutam.org/spip.php?article80.

The musician is a flute-maker specialising in "non-standard" instruments, and the clip is on a site dedicated to medieval instruments.

The flute is side-blown and has only three toneholes, and appears to be made from a bird bone. It was found at Charavines in the Isère Department in France, where sites dating from prehistory to the Middle Ages have been excavated: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lac_de_Paladru

I post it here to give an idea of the kind of music that can be obtained with even such a simple instrument.

[Yuri]

Roger, that reconstruction is VERY highly suspect. The original is preserved in very good state, and the three fingerholes differ rather noticeably from the soundhole, which is very clearly square. Which puts the whole side-blown idea under very serious strain. Apart from which, while there is just the one single more-or-less undisputable representation of a side flute from antiquity, (Etruscan), there is a gap of more than a millennium before the next one is known. In fact, it is reasonably certain that the idea of side-blown flutes has died out completely in Europe, before the (re)-introduction from Byzantium in about the 11th c. at the earliest. Which is later than the village in question. In any case, the flute is made of wood (at least the original is.)

[Roger O'Keeffe]

Thanks for the warning re authenticity, Yuri. I added the link as an afterthought just to illustrate how much music one can get with just three toneholes.

Caveat auditor!

[Roger O'Keeffe]

Did I understand correctly that you're referring to the Jeff Barbe video? The website indicates that it's a bone flute, and that he's playing the original. The colour would appear to be due to ageing.

As far as I know, "Charavines" is used loosely among non-archaeologists to refer to all the archaeological sites on Lac Paladru.

How's your French? As you are so evidently very knowledgeable, I'd like to put you in touch with the owner, who doesn't speak English. But if you don't feel up to that, I'm happy to act as intermediary.

[Yuri]

A larger photo. You can clearly see the square aperture. What Jeff is playing doesn't really seem to me the same instrument. For one thing, it's just not done. To use a unique object from so long ago to play. In better type museums they won't even let you handle it without putting thin gloves on, let alone play.
I know of another one that looks absolutely remarkably similar, could be the twin of this one, also in wood, found in Pskov, Russia. Dates form roughly the same age, slightly younger, probably.
My French is non-existent. "Merci" is about the sum total of my knowledge. Sorry about that.
By the way, the flute on the bottom IS bone. Just stained by the salts in the water. That one is more like what you have. At least made from a similar bone.

[pancelticpiper]

while there is just the one single more-or-less undisputable representation of a side flute from antiquity, (Etruscan), there is a gap of more than a millennium before the next one is known. In fact, it is reasonably certain that the idea of side-blown flutes has died out completely in Europe, before the (re)-introduction from Byzantium in about the 11th c. at the earliest.

Thanks, I didn't know that.

What with side-blown flutes in India and China, I had assumed without giving it any thought that side-blown flutes had always been around. Are the Indian and Chinese transverse flutes relatively recent, or ancient?

What about Japan and the Americas? Seems like I only have seen end-blown flutes. I had assumed that the transverse flutes played in the Andes were a post-Conquest thing.

[Yuri]

In Japan there are side-blown flutes, but I have no idea how old they are. What with a hell of a lot of Japanese culture having been imported, and then modified from the 7th c. on, you never know. I am not aware of any representation of flutes before that. In China I suspect the idea of side-blown flutes is ancient, as it is in India. Krishna, after all is not exactly a Johnny-come-lately. And they have side-blown flutes in Tibet, too, right on the borders of the two great civilisations. In the Americas, as far as I am aware, and I have took some interest in that, there were no side flutes before the Conquest. Certainly not with the so-called "high cultures". Now that I am writing this, I hazily remember the account of what I remember as Garcilaso de la Vega, but can be a different person. Anyway, a man of the local nobility (Inca, that is), who took on Catholicism, and then travelled to Spain. In his account of the Andean up-to-date affairs he mentions that the native players took to the new-fangled side-flutes like fish to water, and while new organs were being awaited from Spain, in the meanwhile groups of four flute players performed the music that normally would be played on the organ, with very impressive results. (The flutes being of different sizes, as was normal at the time.) But don't quote this on me, I am remembering something I read more than a decade ago, or possibly some 20 years...
As to Europe, the side-flute appears for the first time in 12th c. Byzantine miniatures. (That is, after the sole Etruscan example. Which sort of makes it a bit suspect, what with being so conspicuously solitary.)

[pancelticpiper]

groups of four flute players... (The flutes being of different sizes, as was normal at the time.)

This thing, so common with European Renaissance woodwind playing, is still standard in the Andes, especially the further one gets away from Spanish/European influence.

So in a festival parade there will be a group of, say, 20 people playing sikus (panpipes) of a wide variety of sizes, another group playing tarkas (primitive recorder-like things with a unique distinctive scale) of many different sizes, another group playing mosenos (another recorder-like or whistle-like thing) of many sizes etc.

The sizes make the music all come out in octaves and fifths for an amazing cool ancient sort of sound.

Despite the tarka having the most primitive-sounding scale of all, I've heard over and over the notion that these fipple-flutes (tarkas and mosenos) are post-Conquest and only the sikus and kenas pre-Conquest. Don't know if there's really any evidence.

Tarkas:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPhqXimn7YI

Mosenos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcGgkMnsLIU

Sikus:

(The sound on this video is nice because you can hear the separation of the sikus, each instrument having every other note of the scale, so to play a tune you require two players)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_2Lr89Oo6M

Sikus how you usually see them

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-0vc1jf_k8

[Yuri]

What impressed the man who wrote this down about 16th c. Peru was not the setup, but rather that they played true Spanish polyphony. Which is quite a different kettle of fish from just simple harmonising.
And I looked up the side flute in Japan. Well, it's ancient. It was already very firmly established with the early Bugaku and Gigaku orchestras, that's a minimum 1000 years ago. Probably far older. They had contacts with Korea and China from at the ve5ry latest, the 5th c. (I mean trading and cultural contacts. The others obviously go back into the stone age.)