AUSMAIN-022 - museum specimen
Mount Barnett bullroarer (SMVK)
Western Australia - Kimberley - Mount Barnett
Restricted
Source term: vinare, bullroarer
A bullroarer from Mount Barnett, in the Kimberley of Western Australia, held by Sweden's Etnografiska museet (SMVK) as object 1039361 — one of a set of five, this one of red-painted wood with faint black bands. The museum catalogues it under "vinare, bullroarer" — vinare being the ordinary Swedish word for the instrument, from vina, to whine or whizz, and not a Kimberley term. The set came to Stockholm in 1912 with the collection of Yngve Laurell, ethnographer of Eric Mjöberg's Swedish expedition of 1910–11. The record does not name the people who made it, and no use was written down; but in 2004 the Kimberley material-culture specialist Kim Akerman, reviewing the Stockholm collections, identified these Mount Barnett bullroarers as secret/sacred, and the museum keeps photographs of such ritual objects out of its public database.
- Object
- Five Mount Barnett bullroarers, SMVK 1912.01.1025-.1029; .1025 is red-painted wood with faint black bands and human-hair cord, and the set is marked secret/sacred.
- Function
- Held by the museum as secret/sacred: the Mount Barnett set was identified as secret/sacred material in Kim Akerman's 2004 review of the Stockholm collections, and the museum keeps images of such ritual objects out of its public database. What ceremony the set served was never recorded.
- Map confidence
- medium - Representative Mount Barnett / Kimberley anchor.
- Source location
Page references
SMVK 1912.01.1025-.1029; general catalog pp. 246-247