The Bullroarer Atlas

No. ADAM1958-003Australia

Two-headed Mayala mondegi

Djigallie (Mr Secombe’s station), about 80 miles south-south-east of Broome, Western Australia · Kimberley

Function not recorded

Drawings of the two faces of a long engraved blade: one with two human figures head to head among angular bands, the other with fine parallel grooves.
Plate I. Both faces of the Mayala mondegi: two heads set crown to crown amid angular panels, and the grooved back. Image source

mondegi

Source term: Schwirrholz; churinga (mondegi)

mondegi: Adam’s name for this engraved West Kimberley bullroarer.

Two human heads share this engraved mondegi, set crown to crown so that neither stands above the other; it is meant to be viewed lying on its side. Four winding forms meet at its centre among angular panels. Leonhard Adam compared the pair with Gagàmaran and Gonbaren, culture heroes of the Karajarri as Karajarri men described them to Father Ernest Worms. A Mayala man made it; its back is finely grooved.

Particulars

Object
A perforated mondegi, 54.5 cm long. The flat front is engraved with two opposed human heads and busts set among angular geometric panels, with four winding forms meeting at the centre; the slightly convex back is cut with fine parallel grooves.
Function
Not recorded.

Sources

  1. Leonhard Adam, “Anthropomorphe Darstellungen auf australischen Ritualgeräten,” Anthropos 53 (1958), pp. 1–50, pp. 26–29, fig. 9a–b. View
  2. Adam 1958, p. 29: fig. 9a–b, front and back. View
  3. Adam 1958, p. 49: illustration index, maker’s people, locality, length and collection. View

Part of The Bullroarer Atlas, companion to The Eve Theory of Consciousness.