{"id":"NAMER-010","label":"Inyo County denticulated toy bullroarer","people_or_site":"Inyo County, California","country_current":"United States","historic_region":"California / Inyo County","macroregion":"North America / California","local_name":"","source_term":"Denticulated bull roarer used as a toy","source_language":"English","object_description":"A serrated wooden oval, 8.6 by 5.4 cm, tied with buckskin to a carved wooden handle.","function_summary":"Used only as a boy’s toy.","attestation_type":"museum_specimen","source_key":"PEABODY_29026","source_type":"museum_collection","source_url":"https://collections.peabody.harvard.edu/objects/details/32706","page_or_plate":"Peabody object details/29026 / 35-78-10/4991","map_confidence":"medium","plot_status":"plot_with_caveat","coordinate_basis":"Representative Inyo County anchor; not an exact collection point.","jade_complex_role":"","blurb":"A toy: a bullroarer with a denticulated blade, its edge cut into teeth, made in 1935 by Wilbur Patterson, a Shoshoni of Saline Valley in the high desert of eastern California, for Harvard's Peabody Museum. Across the Inyo Mountains the Owens Valley Paiute gave their small boys the same plaything: a board on a string, whirled from a stick handle.","pull_quote":"A small, round stick, 18 inches long, serves as handle; a 2-foot string fastened to a notch in one end of it passes through a hole in a board 12 by 1 by 1/4 inch, which is swung. A small boy's toy. T.S. and G.C. remember playing with them.","pull_quote_translation":"","pull_quote_cite":"Julian H. Steward, Ethnography of the Owens Valley Paiute, UCPAAE 33(3) (1933), p. 278.","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,"sources":[{"citation":"Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, object 35-78-10/4991, details/29026","url":"https://collections.peabody.harvard.edu/objects/details/32706"},{"citation":"Julian H. Steward, Ethnography of the Owens Valley Paiute, University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology 33(3) (1933), p. 278"}],"source_citations":"Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, object 35-78-10/4991, details/29026; Julian H. Steward, Ethnography of the Owens Valley Paiute, University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology 33(3) (1933), p. 278","source_display":"Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, object 35-78-10/4991, details/29026; Julian H. Steward, Ethnography of the Owens Valley Paiute, University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology 33(3) (1933), p. 278","date_citation_display":"","object_display":"A serrated wooden oval, 8.6 by 5.4 cm, tied with buckskin to a carved wooden handle.","function_display":"Used only as a boy’s toy.","confidence_display":"medium","attestation_label":"museum specimen","etymology_hedge":"","people_key":"inyo county","display_name":"Inyo County denticulated toy bullroarer","image":{"full":"assets/objects/MINE2026-074_mine2026-074-steward1941-fig4f.png","thumb":"assets/objects/MINE2026-074_mine2026-074-steward1941-fig4f_thumb.jpg","alt":"Drawing of a broad, oval Saline Valley serrated toy bullroarer, with a looped cord tied through its narrow end.","credit":"Julian H. Steward, Culture Element Distributions XIII: Nevada Shoshoni (1941), p.225, fig.4f; specimen made by WP for Peabody Museum, Harvard","license":"Rights reserved / copyright status unverified (University of California, 1941); rehosted for non-commercial research","source_page":"https://digicoll.lib.berkeley.edu/record/84152/files/ucar004-003.pdf","rehosted":true,"representative":false,"caption":"Saline Valley serrated toy bullroarer."},"slug":"namer-010-inyo-county-california"}