{"id":"AUSMAIN-007","label":"Tjingilli (Jingulu)","people_or_site":"Tjingilli (Jingulu)","country_current":"Australia","historic_region":"Newcastle Waters / Elliott (Barkly)","macroregion":"Australia / Northern Territory","local_name":"Purtiili","source_term":"","source_language":"","object_description":"Whirled slat in Warramunga-northern-style initiation cycle, restricted to senior initiated men.","function_summary":"Initiation voice; cult-totem revelation.","attestation_type":"secondary_catalog","source_key":"mining2026","source_type":"secondary_literature","source_url":"https://wellcomecollection.org/works/pybpr3r4","page_or_plate":"p. 275","map_confidence":"medium","plot_status":"plot_with_caveat","coordinate_basis":"approximate territory centroid (mining 2026)","jade_complex_role":"","blurb":"The Tjingilli of the Newcastle Waters country, on the southern edge of the Barkly Tableland, appear in Spencer and Gillen as one of a cluster of tribes sharing the Warramunga-type ceremonial pattern. With the Warramunga, Worgaia, Umbaia and their allies they put boys through both circumcision and subincision, and the whirled slat sounded as the voice of initiation, a thing of senior initiated men alone. As the bull-roarers were swung in the dark around the ground, the women and children were told that the roaring was the voice of a great spirit come out of the bush to carry the boy away; only afterward was the youth shown that it was the sacred wood, never to be named to the women, that had made the sound.","pull_quote":"The wooden object shaped like a bull-roarer — that is, the true Churinga — is called murtu-murtu. No stone ones are met with in these tribes, and the markings upon the wooden ones are precisely similar to those of the Arunta.","pull_quote_translation":"","pull_quote_cite":"Baldwin Spencer & F. J. Gillen, The Northern Tribes of Central Australia (1904), pp. 275-276","term_gloss":"Purtiili: the Tjingilli (Jingulu) and Umbaia name for the churinga, the wooden bull-roarer; these tribes use no stone churinga, and Spencer and Gillen give the Warramunga name for the same board as murtu-murtu.","cls":"restricted","class_label":"Restricted","color":"#A43C2F","is_candidate":false,"flags":["spirit_voice","initiation","women_taboo"],"f_jade_complex":false,"f_women_taboo":true,"f_women_special":false,"f_snake":false,"etymology":"Purtiili is the name Spencer and Gillen (1904) record for the Churinga among the Umbaia and Tjingilli (Jingulu). In these northern tribes there are no stone churinga; the Churinga is the wooden object they describe as 'shaped like a bull-roarer,' so Purtiili is in effect the Tjingilli word for the bull-roarer. The source records no further meaning for the word.","literal_gloss":"","semantic_cluster":"name_only; sacred_object","etymology_confidence":"medium","sources":[{"citation":"Spencer & Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia (1904)","url":"https://wellcomecollection.org/works/pybpr3r4","archive":"https://web.archive.org/web/20260309033639/https://wellcomecollection.org/works/pybpr3r4"}],"source_citations":"Spencer & Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia (1904)","source_display":"Spencer & Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia (1904)","date_citation_display":"","object_display":"Whirled slat in Warramunga-northern-style initiation cycle, restricted to senior initiated men.","function_display":"Initiation voice; cult-totem revelation.","confidence_display":"medium","attestation_label":"secondary catalog","etymology_hedge":"","people_key":"tjingilli","display_name":"Tjingilli (Jingulu)","image":{"full":"assets/objects/au_umbaia_churinga.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/au_umbaia_churinga_thumb.jpg","alt":"Spencer and Gillen’s drawing of a long narrow wooden purtuli associated with Katakitji’s snake-totem waterhole in Umbaia country, decorated with interlaced lines forming repeated elongated loops.","credit":"Baldwin Spencer and F. J. Gillen, The Northern Tribes of Central Australia (1904), p. 276, Fig. 94","license":"Public domain (published 1904)","source_page":"https://archive.org/details/northerntribesc00gillgoog","rehosted":true,"representative":true,"caption":"Spencer and Gillen's Fig. 94, the wooden purtuli of a snake-totem waterhole.","pool_id":"auto-au_umbaia_churinga"},"slug":"ausmain-007-tjingilli-jingulu"}