The Bullroarer Atlas

No. ARCTIC-001

Sanikiluaq Belcher Islands ROM bullroarer sculpture

Canada · Nunavut · Belcher Islands · North America · Arctic

Play / practical

The Belcher Islands sculpture itself — pale ivory, forked tail, its cord through the one hole.
Plate I. The Belcher Islands sculpture itself — pale ivory, forked tail, its cord through the one hole. Image source
Sanikiluaq carving of a bullroarer, shown as a long pale blade with serrated edges and a short cord.
Plate II. A Sanikiluaq sculpture of a bullroarer at play, carved at Belcher Islands (ROM 2010.86.32). Image source

Source term: bullroarer sculpture

A sculpture of a bullroarer, worked in ivory with skin and sinew, made by a Qikiqtani (Belcher Islands Inuit) artist at Sanikiluaq in Hudson Bay and dated to 1936-1939, now in the Royal Ontario Museum and catalogued simply as "Sculpture, bullroarer." Among the Inuit the bullroarer was a lozenge-shaped plate of bone or wood, roughly 15 to 20 centimetres long, pierced at one end and hung from a sinew cord that could be tied to a wooden handle; spun rapidly, it gave off a loud whirring. The anthropological literature counts it a toy or noisemaker rather than a musical instrument, the skin drum being regarded as the only true Inuit instrument.

The Inuit bullroarer was a lozenge-shaped plate of bone or wood about 15-20 cm long, pierced at one end and suspended on a sinew cord which might in turn be attached to a wooden handle. When spun rapidly it made a loud whirring sound.

Whitridge 2015:19 (The sound of contact: Historic Inuit music-making in northern Labrador; citing Jenness 1946:143, Mathiassen 1927b:120, Murdoch 1988[1892]:378-379)

Particulars

Object
Ivory skin and sinew bullroarer sculpture dated 1936-1939
Function
Inuit bullroarer (ROM sculpture from Sanikiluaq); ethnographically reckoned a toy/noisemaker, not a ritual or musical object

Sources

  1. Royal Ontario Museum, “Sculpture, bullroarer,” object 2010.86.32 View
  2. Peter Whitridge, “The Sound of Contact: Historic Inuit Music-Making in Northern Labrador,” North Atlantic Archaeology 4 (2015):17–42, pp. 19–20 View · archived
  3. Diamond Jenness, Material Culture of the Copper Eskimo, Report of the Canadian Arctic Expedition 1913–18, XVI (Ottawa, 1946), p. 143, via Whitridge (2015), p. 20
  4. Therkel Mathiassen, Archaeology of the Central Eskimo, Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition 1921–24, vol. 4, part 2 (Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel, 1927b), p. 120, via Whitridge (2015), p. 20
  5. John Murdoch, Ethnological Results of the Point Barrow Expedition (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1988 [1892]), pp. 378–379, via Whitridge (2015), p. 20

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