A hiker’s chance discovery in Mallorca’s Serra de Tramuntana has yielded a rare 3,000-year-old miniature bronze bull’s head. The finder, Josep M. Buils, turned the object over to authorities. Specialists have identified the piece as a tauriform from the post-Talayotic period, with preliminary estimates placing it between 550 and 123 BCE. It is the first such bronze miniature bull’s head discovered on Mallorca in half a century, according to Popular Science.
The bronze head measures 3.2 cm long, 1.7 cm high, and 2.9 cm wide. Archaeologists describe a high level of technical mastery, with carefully incised features, a defined snout, and clearly delineated eyes. The piece evokes the bulls from the sanctuary at Son Corró, though its horns and ears are more simplified, giving it the profile of a heifer’s head. Researchers have placed the object in the same cultural orbit as the famous Bulls of Costitx, though from a later moment in the post-Talayotic era.
Taurine figures
This is the only miniature bull’s head known to have been found in Mallorca that is preserved and slated for museum display. Three other examples are documented in historical recordS but have been lost.
Archaeologists note a posterior hole that likely indicates it was soldered to a metal support, suggesting the head once formed part of a larger ensemble.
In the prehistoric Mediterranean taurine figures were symbols of fertility, strength, and cyclical renewal. In island societies, such images were probably integrated into communal rituals tied to prosperity and collective protection.