{"id":"CAPELL1956-006","label":"Marrku uwar","people_or_site":"Marrku (Capell's Margu; Jaako, Yaako)","country_current":"Australia","historic_region":"Croker Island and the facing shore of the Cobourg Peninsula at Raffles Bay, Northern Territory","macroregion":"Australia / Arnhem Land","local_name":"uwar","source_term":"BULLROARER: uwar","source_language":"Marrku","object_description":"A bullroarer, called uwar; its form is not recorded.","function_summary":"Named for the Ubar, the sacred ceremony of west Arnhem Land.","attestation_type":"lexical_attestation","source_key":"capell1956_vocabulary_600_words","source_type":"linguistic_manuscript","source_url":"https://indigenous.sl.nsw.gov.au/node/9216","page_or_plate":"Capell 1956 p. 18 (BULLROARER column, line 40); language key, line 40 = Margu.","map_confidence":"medium","plot_status":"plot_with_caveat","coordinate_basis":"approximate Marrku language-country centroid after the South Australian Museum Jaako entry (Croker Island and the facing Cobourg Peninsula shore at Raffles Bay); a language-level anchor, not a collection point","jade_complex_role":"","blurb":"On Croker Island and the facing shore of the Cobourg Peninsula at Raffles Bay, Marrku speakers named the bullroarer uwar, the name of the Ubar, the sacred ceremony of that coast. Marrku belongs to the same small family as Iwaidja and Mawng, and all three gave the same answer: the name of the rite, not of the slat.","pull_quote":"","pull_quote_translation":"","pull_quote_cite":"","term_gloss":"uwar: the name of the Ubar ceremony, given in answer to 'bullroarer' (Capell 1956, p. 18; Capell & Hinch 1970, wuwar 'Ubar ceremony')","cls":"sacred","class_label":"Sacred / spirit","color":"#8A5A2B","is_candidate":false,"flags":["snake"],"f_jade_complex":false,"f_women_taboo":false,"f_women_special":false,"f_snake":true,"sources":[{"citation":"Arthur Capell, A Vocabulary of 600 Words in Forty North Australian Languages (typescript, Sydney, 1956), State Library of New South Wales A 6929, p. 18","url":"https://indigenous.sl.nsw.gov.au/node/9216"},{"citation":"Arthur Capell and Heather E. Hinch, Maung Grammar, Texts and Vocabulary (The Hague: Mouton, 1970), vocabulary, wuwar 'Ubar ceremony'","url":"https://archive.org/details/maunggrammartext0000acap"},{"citation":"Murray Garde, 'The Forbidden Gaze', in Martin Thomas and Margo Neale (eds), Exploring the Legacy of the 1948 Arnhem Land Expedition (ANU Press, 2011), pp. 403–407","url":"https://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p116081/pdf/ch201.pdf"},{"citation":"Ronald M. Berndt, Kunapipi (Melbourne: Cheshire, 1951)","url":""}],"source_citations":"Arthur Capell, A Vocabulary of 600 Words in Forty North Australian Languages (typescript, Sydney, 1956), State Library of New South Wales A 6929, p. 18; Arthur Capell and Heather E. Hinch, Maung Grammar, Texts and Vocabulary (The Hague: Mouton, 1970), vocabulary, wuwar 'Ubar ceremony'; Murray Garde, 'The Forbidden Gaze', in Martin Thomas and Margo Neale (eds), Exploring the Legacy of the 1948 Arnhem Land Expedition (ANU Press, 2011), pp. 403–407; Ronald M. Berndt, Kunapipi (Melbourne: Cheshire, 1951)","source_display":"Arthur Capell, A Vocabulary of 600 Words in Forty North Australian Languages (typescript, Sydney, 1956), State Library of New South Wales A 6929, p. 18; Arthur Capell and Heather E. Hinch, Maung Grammar, Texts and Vocabulary (The Hague: Mouton, 1970), vocabulary, wuwar 'Ubar ceremony'; Murray Garde, 'The Forbidden Gaze', in Martin Thomas and Margo Neale…","date_citation_display":"","object_display":"A bullroarer, called uwar; its form is not recorded.","function_display":"Named for the Ubar, the sacred ceremony of west Arnhem Land.","confidence_display":"medium","attestation_label":"lexical attestation","etymology_hedge":"","people_key":"marrku capell","display_name":"Marrku uwar","image":{"full":"assets/objects/hunt_2026_10_19/PETRI1954-001_mathews1907_pl9_figs1-4.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/hunt_2026_10_19/PETRI1954-001_mathews1907_pl9_figs1-4_thumb.jpg","alt":"Drawing of both faces of a long narrow bullroarer covered in concentric rectangles, with small cross-sections at right.","credit":"R. H. Mathews, Notes on the Aborigines of New South Wales (1907), plate 9, figs. 1–4","license":"Public domain","source_page":"https://archive.org/details/notesonaborigine00math/page/n31/mode/1up","rehosted":true,"representative":true,"caption":"Both faces of an Oscar Ranges bullroarer, Kimberley","pool_id":"auto-hunt_2026_10_19--PETRI1954-001_mathews1907_pl9_figs1-4","auto_assigned":true,"last_modified":"2026-10-19"},"slug":"capell1956-006-marrku-capell-s-margu-jaako-yaako"}