{"id":"MUS2026-024","label":"Kuraba snake blades cached in cave","people_or_site":"Wardaman","country_current":"Australia","historic_region":"Northern Territory","macroregion":"Australia / Top End","local_name":"Kuraba","source_term":"bull-roarer","source_language":"English","object_description":"Three large wooden bull-roarers of the Wardaman, 76.6 to 79.5 centimetres long, in the Penn Museum collection. The museum has a fourth blade from the same 1931 expedition, shorter at 45.8 by 7.5 centimetres and still carrying ochre, traces of white paint, and incised concentric circles and spirals — though its Wardaman attribution is marked uncertain.","function_summary":"Not recorded.","attestation_type":"museum_specimen","source_key":"penn_museum","source_type":"museum_collection","source_url":"https://collections.penn.museum/collections/object/261493","page_or_plate":"Penn objects 261493 (acc. 31-34-117), 318436 (acc. 31-34-115), 223463 (acc. 31-34-116); Davidson Australian Expedition, 1931","map_confidence":"medium","plot_status":"plot","coordinate_basis":"approximate culture/locality centroid","jade_complex_role":"","blurb":"A cluster of large wooden bull-roarers from Wardaman country in the Northern Territory, collected by the American anthropologist Daniel Sutherland Davidson on his 1931 Australian expedition and now held by the Penn Museum. The objects are sizeable, roughly 77 to 80 centimetres long, and the field labels record a native name, Kuraba, and a snake-totem identity; one note reports that they were \"Buried in cave No. 6,\" cached rather than carried.","pull_quote":"","pull_quote_translation":"","pull_quote_cite":"","term_gloss":"Kuraba: the Wardaman native name recorded by Davidson (1931) for these bull-roarers, labelled with a \"Snake Totem\" association.","cls":"unknown","class_label":"Function not recorded","color":"#6B7884","is_candidate":false,"flags":["snake"],"f_jade_complex":false,"f_women_taboo":false,"f_women_special":false,"f_snake":true,"etymology":"Kuraba is the Wardaman name recorded for these bull-roarers by Daniel Davidson on his 1931 Australian Expedition. The Penn Museum register marks each specimen as a 'Snake Totem' object, so the bull-roarer belongs to a Snake Dreaming, but the word itself is not glossed as 'snake,' and the association is totemic rather than a shared lexeme.","literal_gloss":"","semantic_cluster":"name_only; snake; clan_or_ritual_office","etymology_confidence":"medium","sources":[{"citation":"Penn Museum, 31-34-115, 31-34-116 and 31-34-117 (objects 318436, 223463, 261493; collected by D. S. Davidson, Australian Expedition, 1931)","url":"https://collections.penn.museum/collections/object/261493","archive":"https://web.archive.org/web/20261013015700/https://collections.penn.museum/collections/object/261493"}],"source_citations":"Penn Museum, 31-34-115, 31-34-116 and 31-34-117 (objects 318436, 223463, 261493; collected by D. S. Davidson, Australian Expedition, 1931)","source_display":"Penn Museum, 31-34-115, 31-34-116 and 31-34-117 (objects 318436, 223463, 261493; collected by D. S. Davidson, Australian Expedition, 1931)","date_citation_display":"","object_display":"Three large wooden bull-roarers of the Wardaman, 76.6 to 79.5 centimetres long, in the Penn Museum collection. The museum has a fourth blade from the same 1931 expedition, shorter at 45.8 by 7.5 centimetres and still carrying ochre, traces of white paint, and incised concentric circles and spirals — though its Wardaman attribution is marked uncertain.","function_display":"Not recorded.","confidence_display":"medium","attestation_label":"museum specimen","etymology_hedge":"","people_key":"wardaman","display_name":"Kuraba snake blades cached in cave","image":{"full":"assets/objects/shared_spencer1914_plateII_full.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/shared_spencer1914_plateII_full_thumb.jpg","alt":"Spencer’s plate of six Northern Territory sacred bullroarers.","credit":"Spencer, Native Tribes of the Northern Territory (Macmillan, 1914), Plate II","license":"Public domain (Spencer, Native Tribes of the Northern Territory, 1914)","source_page":"https://archive.org/details/cu31924028623076","rehosted":true,"representative":true,"caption":"Spencer’s plate of six Northern Territory sacred roarers.","pool_id":"auto-shared_spencer1914_plateII_full"},"slug":"mus2026-024-wardaman"}