{"id":"FORD1959-001","label":"Birnirk site baleen bull-roarers (Ford 1959)","people_or_site":"Birnirk culture (ancestral Iñupiat), Piġniq mounds, Chukchi Sea coast","country_current":"United States","historic_region":"Piġniq (Birnirk site), near Utqiaġvik, Alaska","macroregion":"North America / Arctic","local_name":"","source_term":"","source_language":"English","object_description":"Three narrow rectilinear baleen blades, each pierced at one end for a string usually also of baleen: two from Mound A, Cut 3, Section 4, one from Mound J, Cut 13, Section 4.","function_summary":"Classed by Ford under 'Toys and objects possibly used as toys'; he notes bull-roarers as a trait Birnirk shared with the Thule culture.","attestation_type":"archaeological_find","source_key":"ford_1959_birnirk","source_type":"archaeological_report","source_url":"https://digitallibrary.amnh.org/handle/2246/126","page_or_plate":"pp. 226-228, Fig. 112 a-b","map_confidence":"high","plot_status":"plot_with_caveat","coordinate_basis":"Birnirk National Historic Landmark — the mound cluster at Piġniq, ~5 km northeast of Utqiaġvik on the Chukchi coast.","jade_complex_role":"","blurb":"Under the grassy mounds at Piġniq, five kilometres up the Chukchi shore from Utqiaġvik, James Ford's crews cut into the houses of the Birnirk people — the whale-hunting culture ancestral to the Iñupiat — and brought up narrow blades of baleen, each pierced at one end for a baleen string. He filed them with the toys, and noted the bull-roarer as a trait Birnirk handed on to the Thule culture that spread across the entire American Arctic: children spinning whalebone on this beach perhaps a thousand years before the ethnographers arrived to watch their descendants do the same.","pull_quote":"Three bull-roarers were found: two from Mound A, Cut 3, Section 4, and one from Mound J, Cut 13, Section 4. All were narrow rectilinear pieces of baleen pierced at one end for a string, also usually made of baleen.","pull_quote_translation":"","pull_quote_cite":"James A. Ford, Eskimo Prehistory in the Vicinity of Point Barrow, Alaska (1959), pp. 227-228","term_gloss":"","cls":"play_practical","class_label":"Play / practical","color":"#24766D","is_candidate":false,"flags":["toy_survival"],"f_jade_complex":false,"f_women_taboo":false,"f_women_special":false,"f_snake":false,"f_archaeology":true,"archaeology_kind":"assemblage","date_display":"c. 500–900 AD","date_qualification":"Birnirk type-site cultural horizon; individual baleen blades not directly dated.","date_basis":"site_horizon","date_confidence":"medium","date_citation":"FORD1959_POINT_BARROW, Ford 1959 pp. 227–230 and fig. 112a–b; National Park Service, Birnirk National Historic Landmark","sources":[{"citation":"James A. Ford, Eskimo Prehistory in the Vicinity of Point Barrow, Alaska (AMNH Anthropological Papers 47.1, 1959), pp. 227-228 and Fig. 112 a-b (caption p. 226)","url":"https://digitallibrary.amnh.org/handle/2246/126","archive":"https://web.archive.org/web/20210801033200/https://digitallibrary.amnh.org/handle/2246/126"}],"source_citations":"James A. Ford, Eskimo Prehistory in the Vicinity of Point Barrow, Alaska (AMNH Anthropological Papers 47.1, 1959), pp. 227-228 and Fig. 112 a-b (caption p. 226)","source_display":"James A. Ford, Eskimo Prehistory in the Vicinity of Point Barrow, Alaska (AMNH Anthropological Papers 47.1, 1959), pp. 227-228 and Fig. 112 a-b (caption p. 226)","date_citation_display":"Ford 1959 pp. 227–230 and fig. 112a–b; National Park Service, Birnirk National Historic Landmark","object_display":"Three narrow rectilinear baleen blades, each pierced at one end for a string usually also of baleen: two from Mound A, Cut 3, Section 4, one from Mound J, Cut 13, Section 4.","function_display":"Classed by Ford under 'Toys and objects possibly used as toys'; he notes bull-roarers as a trait Birnirk shared with the Thule culture.","confidence_display":"high","attestation_label":"archaeological find","etymology_hedge":"","people_key":"birnirk","display_name":"Birnirk site baleen bull-roarers (Ford 1959)","image":{"full":"assets/objects/FORD1959-001_ford1959_fig112ab.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/FORD1959-001_ford1959_fig112ab_thumb.jpg","credit":"James A. Ford, Eskimo Prehistory in the Vicinity of Point Barrow (AMNH Anthropological Papers 47.1, 1959), fig. 112 a-b","license":"1959 US publication, renewal status uncertain — low-res figure crop rehosted for research","source_page":"https://digitallibrary.amnh.org/handle/2246/126","rehosted":true,"representative":false,"caption":"Ford's figure of two of the three excavated baleen blades, each pierced at one end for its baleen string."},"slug":"ford1959-001-birnirk-culture-ancestral-inupiat-pigniq-mounds-chukchi-sea-coast"}