{"id":"MUS2026-036","label":"Pearl-shell churinga pierced to whirl","people_or_site":"Birdungu","country_current":"Australia","historic_region":"West Kimberley","macroregion":"Australia / Western Australia","local_name":"","source_term":"bull-roarer","source_language":"English","object_description":"A pearl-shell bullroarer of the Pidungu, its surface incised with geometric decoration and one end perforated.","function_summary":"Pearl-shell pierced to whirl, and called churinga — the sacred, men's-restricted objects of the region.","attestation_type":"museum_specimen","source_key":"pitt_rivers","source_type":"museum_collection","source_url":"https://prm.ox.ac.uk/collections-online#/item/prm-object-39716","page_or_plate":"1924.63.23","map_confidence":"medium","plot_status":"plot","coordinate_basis":"Broome townsite / West Kimberley anchor from PRM provenance and Landgate GEONOMA; PRM also names Fitzroy River; no exact collecting point is recorded.","jade_complex_role":"","blurb":"This shell and one other reached the Pitt Rivers Museum in 1924, bought from the dealer Emile Clement, who by then had residents of north-west Western Australia ship material to him in England to sell on to museums. They came in as \"churinga of pearl-shell perforated like bull-roarers,\" from the Pidungu tribe of the Fitzroy River in the Broome district — engraved pearl-shell of the kind worn and exchanged across the western Kimberley and far beyond, here pierced so it could be whirled on a cord. The word \"churinga\" marks them as sacred and restricted to initiated men. Clement himself drew this form, and a drawing he made of an incised Kimberley pearl-shell survives. The Pidungu attribution and the object's function come down to us only through his sale notes, not through any record taken in the field.","pull_quote":"","pull_quote_translation":"","pull_quote_cite":"","term_gloss":"","cls":"restricted","class_label":"Restricted","color":"#A43C2F","is_candidate":false,"flags":["women_taboo"],"f_jade_complex":false,"f_women_taboo":true,"f_women_special":false,"f_snake":false,"sources":[{"citation":"Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, acc. 1924.63.23; Pitt Rivers Museum Annual Report 1924, Accessions by Purchase (E. Clement)","url":"https://prm.ox.ac.uk/collections-online#/item/prm-object-39716","archive":"https://web.archive.org/web/20260917174840/https://prm.ox.ac.uk/collections-online#/item/prm-object-39663"}],"source_citations":"Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, acc. 1924.63.23; Pitt Rivers Museum Annual Report 1924, Accessions by Purchase (E. Clement)","source_display":"Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, acc. 1924.63.23; Pitt Rivers Museum Annual Report 1924, Accessions by Purchase (E. Clement)","date_citation_display":"","object_display":"A pearl-shell bullroarer of the Pidungu, its surface incised with geometric decoration and one end perforated.","function_display":"Pearl-shell pierced to whirl, and called churinga — the sacred, men's-restricted objects of the region.","confidence_display":"medium","attestation_label":"museum specimen","etymology_hedge":"","people_key":"birdungu","display_name":"Pearl-shell churinga pierced to whirl","image":{"full":"assets/objects/AUSIN-028_hambly1936_plVII_f.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/AUSIN-028_hambly1936_plVII_f_thumb.jpg","alt":"Kimberley whirler in Hambly’s plate drawing: a rounded blade with nested squares and elongated rounded rectangles among fine parallel lines.","credit":"W. D. Hambly, Primitive Hunters of Australia (Field Museum of Natural History, 1936), plate VII, fig. f","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 a Kimberley whirler carved with two square spirals.","pool_id":"auto-AUSIN-028_hambly1936_plVII_f"},"slug":"mus2026-036-birdungu"}