The Bullroarer Atlas

No. AUSIN-034

Ungarinyin and Wurara/Worora closed-archive bullroarers

Australia · North Kimberley · Prince Regent and related Kimberley archive region

Restricted

A reddish wooden blade with repeated zigzag bands forming diamond shapes across its face.
Plate I. Representative — not this record’s object. A wooden board carved with diamond chevrons. 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 notes on the bullroarers of the Ungarinyin and Worora of the north Kimberley, closed to public inspection in keeping with the secret-sacred status the instruments hold in male initiation. Elkin collected the material on his Kimberley fieldwork of 1927-28, carried out under Radcliffe-Brown's direction. The bullroarers themselves 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.

Particulars

Object
A closed, sensitive bundle in the A. P. Elkin / Radcliffe-Brown Kimberley papers at the University of Sydney Archives, titled 'Bullroarers - Ungarinyin and Wurara [Worora]'; a related closed Elkin file on Initiation in the Northern Kimberley separately lists 'Bullroarers - Ungarinyin'.
Function
Not recorded.

Sources

  1. University of Sydney Archives, REF-00092397, 'SENSITIVE CONTENT C.7 Bullroarers,' bundle 2 View · archived
  2. University of Sydney Archives, REF-00096408, 'SENSITIVE CONTENT Initiation in the Northern Kimberley' View · archived

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