Nancy;
What about Sturgeon bones. Were they not plentiful in the European
rivers? They habe a spiney back don't they?
Lauren in Washinton state, where it is FINALLY sort of sunny!
On 5/30/2011 1:43 PM, Nancy Neff wrote:
One last (perhaps) comment on the use of fishbones. I worked as a
paleo-ichthyologist for several years, during which I made skeletons of
various
types of fishes, and handled the skeletons of many more. From this
experience I
offer the following observations:
1) The internal bones such as
ribs would almost certainly be too soft or fragile
to be used as pins, as
well as not really pointed enough if they were sturdier
such as from a large
fish.
2) I think there may be a translation issue in the statement about pins
from the
"backbones" of fish. The backbones themselves are round disks.
What is perhaps
being refered to are the neural arches coming off the top of
the backbone
or vertebrae, but I would expect those to be too triangular and
not sharp
enough.
3) What might very well have been used, and might be the
translation for what is
being called backbones, are the bony rays in the
spiny top front fin (the
"dorsal fin") that runs along the back of
spiny-rayed fishes, of which the perch
is an excellent example. These
bones are long, sharp, and sturdy. Some are
straighter than others, and some
are finer than others, but they are all much
less fragile than the interior
bones.
As Alex has pointed out, this still doesn't address the question of
whether fish
bones were ever actually used as pins for lace, but I could
easily imagine the
spiny rays of perch being used along the edges of laces
such as the Scandinavian
laces that don't use pins in the interior of the
lace. The only bones that
could possibly have been used in any fashion,
however, would be the bony spines
from the fin along the top of a perch or
similar fish.
Nancy
Connecticut, USA
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