{"id":"MUS2026-352","label":"Wallaby-fur cord, whirlwind markings","people_or_site":"People unrecorded","country_current":"Australia","historic_region":"Central Australia / historic South Australia attribution","macroregion":"Oceania / Sahul","local_name":"","source_term":"Bull-Roarer","source_language":"English catalogue","object_description":"A narrow red-ochred wooden bullroarer, 32 by 3 cm, with a wallaby-fur cord and four linked spirals on each face; now in the Penn Museum as P1848.","function_summary":"Not recorded.","attestation_type":"museum_specimen","source_key":"penn_p1848_wallaby_fur_whirlwind","source_type":"museum_collection","source_url":"https://collections.penn.museum/collections/object/48530","page_or_plate":"exact object page and catalogue-card transcription","map_confidence":"low","plot_status":"plot_with_caveat","coordinate_basis":"Deliberately broad Central Australia anchor; museum's South Australia attribution is historical and no people/locality is recorded.","jade_complex_role":"","blurb":"A cord of wallaby fur still hangs from this narrow blade, thirty-two centimetres long and three wide, its wood coated in red ochre. Four evenly spaced spirals run down the front, joined by chevrons; four more run down the darker back, linked by diagonals that meet at the spirals' centres. The markings, says an old catalogue card written after the object reached the Penn Museum in 1907, represent a whirlwind — a 'whirlwing,' as the card spells it. The misspelling has outlasted almost everything else — no people, no locality finer than Central Australia, and no word about what the spirals were for.","pull_quote":"Cord of wallaby fur markings represent whirlwing.","pull_quote_translation":"","pull_quote_cite":"Penn Museum P1848, catalogue-card transcription","term_gloss":"Churinga: the Arrernte word for the sacred carved slab of wood or stone, bullroarers among them.","cls":"unknown","class_label":"Function not recorded","color":"#6B7884","is_candidate":false,"flags":[],"f_jade_complex":false,"f_women_taboo":false,"f_women_special":false,"f_snake":false,"sources":[{"citation":"Penn Museum P1848; gift of J. T. Huston, 1907","url":"https://collections.penn.museum/collections/object/48530","archive":"https://web.archive.org/web/20261013035033/https://collections.penn.museum/collections/object/48530"}],"source_citations":"Penn Museum P1848; gift of J. T. Huston, 1907","source_display":"Penn Museum P1848; gift of J. T. Huston, 1907","date_citation_display":"","object_display":"A narrow red-ochred wooden bullroarer, 32 by 3 cm, with a wallaby-fur cord and four linked spirals on each face; now in the Penn Museum as P1848.","function_display":"Not recorded.","confidence_display":"low","attestation_label":"museum specimen","etymology_hedge":"","people_key":"","display_name":"Wallaby-fur cord, whirlwind markings","image":{"full":"assets/objects/SG1899-001_eylmann1908_pl31_fig9.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/SG1899-001_eylmann1908_pl31_fig9_thumb.jpg","alt":"Spencer and Gillen’s plate of seven wooden churinga from the Urabunna, Luritja and Arunta: six incised or dotted boards and one wrapped in bark.","credit":"Erhard Eylmann, Die Eingeborenen der Kolonie Südaustralien (1908), Plate XXXI, fig. 9","license":"Public domain","source_page":"https://archive.org/details/dieeingeborenen00eylmgoog","rehosted":true,"representative":true,"caption":"A West Arunta bullroarer carved with a long wavy line, drawn by Eylmann","pool_id":"auto-SG1899-001_eylmann1908_pl31_fig9","auto_assigned":true,"last_modified":"2026-10-06"},"slug":"mus2026-352-people-unrecorded"}