Mount Margaret Hambly cat 173154

Source term: bull-roarer

In Plate I of his 1936 Field Museum leaflet Primitive Hunters of Australia, Wilfrid Hambly figured a bull-roarer marked with painted white circles, collected at Mount Margaret in the Eastern Goldfields of Western Australia, in Wongatha country, and catalogued as No. 173154. Hambly grouped such objects with the churinga, the flat sacred boards, and gave their use: the noise made when the board was whirled rapidly round the head warned women and uninitiated boys to keep away from the site where sacred ceremonies were being held, and before their initiation boys were taught that the same sound was the voice of a being more than human.

No woman, child, or uninitiated boy is allowed to visit the hiding place of these sacred things, which are concealed by elders of the tribes.

Hambly 1936, Primitive Hunters of Australia (Field Museum Anthropology Leaflet 32):25

Particulars

Object

Bull-roarer painted with white circles, from Mount Margaret.