{"id":"AUSMAIN-025","label":"Mardu (Mardudjara) Western Desert sacred-board bullroarer","people_or_site":"Mardu / Mardudjara (Western Desert; Jigalong)","country_current":"Australia","historic_region":"Western Desert of Western Australia, around Lake Disappointment (Kumpupintil) on the Little Sandy / Gibson Desert margins; people now centred on Jigalong","macroregion":"Australia / Western Desert","local_name":"","source_term":"bullroarer-class sacred board","source_language":"English","object_description":"Power-laden wooden boards carved by Mardu men to represent sacred objects carried by creative beings — boards of the Western Desert bullroarer class.","function_summary":"Sacred boards carved in representation of the power-laden objects the Dreaming beings carried; revealed to novices at the Mirdayidi and carved by them in the final initiation stage, on grounds tabooed to women and children","attestation_type":"secondary_catalog","source_key":"completeness_sweep_2026","source_type":"ethnographic_literature","source_url":"https://www.encyclopedia.com/environment/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/mardu-religion","page_or_plate":"Online sections: Life Cycle and Male Initiation; Ritual; Sites and Portable Objects","map_confidence":"low","plot_status":"plot_with_caveat","coordinate_basis":"Midpoint of Tonkinson's stated Mardu homeland range (22-25°S, 122-126°E); not an object findspot or ceremony location.","jade_complex_role":"","blurb":"For the Mardu of the Western Desert, the world is the work of Dreaming beings who hunted and camped across it; when their wanderings ended they 'died' into landforms and celestial bodies, where their essence remains 'withdrawn from, but watchful of, human affairs.' They answer neither prayer nor sacrifice — only ritual, properly performed. The most sacred things a Mardu group owns are stones that are metamorphosed pieces of the beings' own bodies, and the incised wooden boards men carve after them, of the Western Desert bullroarer class. A youth is circumcised amid ceremony 'modeled symbolically on death and rebirth,' but the heart of his initiation is the Mirdayidi, a feast at his group's secret cache where the objects are revealed to him for the first time; in the final stage he learns to cut and carve them himself, on bush grounds tabooed to women and children.","pull_quote":"The most sacred are stones said to be the metamorphosed parts of the bodies of ancestral beings and wooden boards that men carve in representation of similar power-laden objects that were carried by the creative beings.","pull_quote_translation":"","pull_quote_cite":"Tonkinson, 'Mardu Religion,' Encyclopedia of Religion (1987; 2nd ed. 2005)","term_gloss":"","cls":"restricted","class_label":"Restricted","color":"#A43C2F","is_candidate":false,"flags":["initiation","death_rebirth","women_taboo"],"f_jade_complex":false,"f_women_taboo":true,"f_women_special":false,"f_snake":false,"sources":[{"citation":"Robert Tonkinson, 'Mardu Religion,' Encyclopedia of Religion (1987; 2nd ed. 2005), sections 'Life Cycle and Male Initiation,' 'Ritual' and 'Sites and Portable Objects'","url":"https://www.encyclopedia.com/environment/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/mardu-religion","archive":"https://web.archive.org/web/20250619183701/https://www.encyclopedia.com/environment/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/mardu-religion"}],"source_citations":"Robert Tonkinson, 'Mardu Religion,' Encyclopedia of Religion (1987; 2nd ed. 2005), sections 'Life Cycle and Male Initiation,' 'Ritual' and 'Sites and Portable Objects'","source_display":"Robert Tonkinson, 'Mardu Religion,' Encyclopedia of Religion (1987; 2nd ed. 2005), sections 'Life Cycle and Male Initiation,' 'Ritual' and 'Sites and Portable Objects'","date_citation_display":"","object_display":"Power-laden wooden boards carved by Mardu men to represent sacred objects carried by creative beings — boards of the Western Desert bullroarer class.","function_display":"Sacred boards carved in representation of the power-laden objects the Dreaming beings carried; revealed to novices at the Mirdayidi and carved by them in the final initiation stage, on grounds tabooed to women and children","confidence_display":"low","attestation_label":"secondary catalog","etymology_hedge":"","people_key":"mardu","display_name":"Mardu (Mardudjara) Western Desert sacred-board bullroarer","image":{"full":"assets/objects/AUSIN-026_hambly1936_fig11.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/AUSIN-026_hambly1936_fig11_thumb.jpg","alt":"Hambly’s printed plate of the Mount Margaret wooden bullroarer, its long blade marked with pale circles and cross-like forms.","credit":"W. D. Hambly, Primitive Hunters of Australia (Field Museum of Natural History, 1936), plate I, fig. 11","license":"Published 1936 (US); no copyright renewal found (Stanford Copyright Renewal Database) — treated as public domain","source_page":"https://archive.org/details/primitivehunters32hambl","rehosted":true,"representative":true,"caption":"Hambly's plate of the Field Museum's Mount Margaret bull-roarer.","pool_id":"auto-AUSIN-026_hambly1936_fig11"},"slug":"ausmain-025-mardu-mardudjara-western-desert-jigalong"}