The Bullroarer Atlas

BARRETT1933-001 - museum specimen

Yosemite Valley pine bullroarers

United States - California - central Sierra Nevada - Yosemite Valley - North America

Function not recorded

Penn Museum 22127, an Oglala bullroarer; not the Yosemite Miwok specimens (unphotographed).
Representative — not this record’s object. · Penn Museum 22127, an Oglala bullroarer; not the Yosemite Miwok specimens (unphotographed). Image source

Source term: bull-roarer

Southern Sierra Miwok boys swung bullroarers as noisy, profane toys. The two pine blades from Yosemite Valley, Field Museum 70201 and 70202, may belong to that world of play: Hudson collected them there, but their Southern Miwok attribution was recorded only as 'reputed.' If the attribution is right, these were children's instruments, not voices hidden inside a ceremony.

As a toy, usually used by boys, its use was profane.

Robert F. Heizer, 'Some Prehistoric Bullroarers from California Caves' (1960), p. 7
Object
A pair of pine bullroarers from Yosemite Valley.
Function
Southern Sierra Miwok bullroarers were profane boys' toys; this Yosemite pair cannot securely inherit that use because its museum attribution is only 'reputed to be Southern Miwok.'
Map confidence
low_medium - Yosemite Valley floor anchor, matching the only locality Barrett and Gifford give. Not a village, camp or collection-event coordinate; no findspot within the valley is recorded.
Source location
Barrett and Gifford 1933, printed p. 251

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