BOURKE1892-003 - archaeological find
Verde Valley cliff dwellings
United States - Verde Valley, central Arizona - North America
Sacred / spirit
Source term: rhombus / bull roarer
Examining cliff-dweller ruins in the Verde Valley of central Arizona, the soldier-ethnographer John G. Bourke concluded that the prehistoric inhabitants had used the rhombus, or bull-roarer, in their dealings with their gods — the same rain-summoning whirled instrument he had documented among the living Apache. The Apache rhombus he describes was an oblong of pine or fir, seven or eight inches long, cut from a tree struck by lightning on a mountaintop, one end rounded to suggest a human head; medicine-men twirled it about the head to imitate the sound of a gust of rain-laden wind, and read the lines on its faces as the entrails and the many-colored, lightning-hued hair of the wind god. For the Verde Valley itself Bourke records no recovered object, no measurements, no site name — only his judgment that the Cliff Dwellers had "employed the same weapon of persuasion." He adds in the next breath that he found the rhombus also among the Rio Grande Pueblo tribes and the Zuñi.
Again, while examining certain ruins in the Verde Valley, in central Arizona, I found that the "Cliff Dwellers", as it has become customary to call the prehistoric inhabitants, had employed the same weapon of persuasion in their intercourse with their gods.
Bourke, The Medicine-Men of the Apache (1892), p. 477
- Object
- Bourke's section title defines the rhombus as a bull roarer, and he says he found the same rhombus while examining ruins in the Verde Valley.
- Function
- Source-explicit old archaeological field observation of a rhombus/bullroarer form in Verde Valley cliff-dweller ruins.
- Map confidence
- low_medium - representative coordinate for named people, place, or broad region in Bourke
- Source location
- printed p. 477