The Bullroarer Atlas

AUSIN-034 - museum specimen

Ungarinyin and Wurara/Worora

Australia - North Kimberley - Prince Regent and related Kimberley archive region - Oceania - Sahul

Restricted

A wooden board carved in the same diamond chevron style — shown for the general type; the Ungarinyin and Worora bull-roarers named in the Elkin...
Representative image. A wooden board carved in the same diamond chevron style — shown for the general type; the Ungarinyin and Worora bull-roarers named in the Elkin and Radcliffe-Brown archive papers remain otherwise undescribed and unphotographed. Wereldmuseum / NMVW (acc. RV-1207-14) Image source

Source term: Bullroarers - Ungarinyin and Wurara [Worora]

Among the Kimberley field papers of A.P. Elkin in the University of Sydney's archives is a bundle of bullroarers, gathered from the Ungarinyin and Worora of the north Kimberley, that has been closed to public inspection in keeping with the secret-sacred status the objects hold in male initiation. Elkin collected the material on his Kimberley fieldwork of 1927-28, carried out under Radcliffe-Brown's direction. The physical bullroarers did not stay in Sydney: according to the university's repatriation curator, eleven that Elkin acquired in 1928 were returned in 2001 to the Kimberley Aboriginal Law and Culture Centre.

Object
University of Sydney Archives public metadata for a closed/sensitive AP Elkin/Radcliffe-Brown archive item names a bundle 'Bullroarers - Ungarinyin and Wurara [Worora]'; a related closed Elkin file on Initiation in the Northern Kimberley separately lists 'Bullroarers - Ungarinyin'.
Function
Public finding-aid attestation for north Kimberley bullroarer material in an initiation/secret-sacred archive context; contents not inspected.
Map confidence
medium - North Kimberley / Prince Regent regional anchor from public archive place list; no exact site is plotted.
Source location
REF-00092397 public metadata: title, language groups, bundle 2

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