The Bullroarer Atlas

AUSMAIN-022 - museum specimen

Mount Barnett, Kimberley

Western Australia - Kimberley - Mount Barnett

Function not recorded

Spencer's plate of six Northern Territory sacred bull-roarers: two dark, smoothly finished kunapippi blades of the Nullakun, two barred and...
Representative image. Spencer's plate of six Northern Territory sacred bull-roarers: two dark, smoothly finished kunapippi blades of the Nullakun, two barred and cord-wrapped bidu-bidu of the Larakia, and two densely dot-painted kunapippi of the Mungarai. Shown to illustrate the type rather than the Mount Barnett vinare documented here, which remains unphotographed. Spencer, Native Tribes of the Northern Territory (Macmillan, 1914), Plate II Public domain Image source

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. 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 record fixes the object to Mount Barnett but does not name the people who made it, the collector who carried it to Stockholm, or the use it was put to.

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
Function not recorded.
Map confidence
medium - Representative Mount Barnett / Kimberley anchor.
Source location
SMVK 1912.01.1025-.1029; general catalog pp. 246-247

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