The Bullroarer Atlas

BPHED2026-001 - rock art depiction

Burgess Point / Stingray Creek Area, Port Hedland Complex

Western Australia - Pilbara - Port Hedland - Burgess Point

Function not recorded

A red-ochre rock-art panel from Kings Tableland with two white hand stencils layered over an earlier painted form; no image of Burgess Point's...
Representative image. A red-ochre rock-art panel from Kings Tableland with two white hand stencils layered over an earlier painted form; no image of Burgess Point's own engraved bullroarer motif in the Port Hedland limestone complex has surfaced, so this other Western Australian rock-art site with a documented bullroarer motif is shown instead. Hiking the World, 1X3A7668_yre Image source

Source term: bullroarer

Almost every bullroarer is a thing swung to make a voice; this one was carved into stone and stays silent. At Burgess Point, a low limestone shelf ringed by mangrove mudflats at Marapikurrinya (Port Hedland), Kariyarra people pecked more than five hundred motifs across some seven thousand years: animal tracks, marine creatures, boomerangs and shields, and the upside-down-U Minjiburu ancestor-spirits from whom the Kariyarra descend. Among them sits a single engraved bullroarer. What rite that outline belonged to, the stone does not record.

produced semi-continuously over the last 7000 years, from the point of sea-level stabilisation

Sam Harper 2025, "Tracking Change in Rock Art Vocabularies and Styles at Marapikurrinya," Arts 14(5):123, abstract/introduction.
Object
Engraved rock-art motif class listed as a bullroarer within the Burgess Point limestone engraving complex; exact motif image not yet identified in public sources. The atlas uses an alternate Kings Tableland bullroarer-stencil image as a representative image because Kings Tableland is the other Australian rock-art bullroarer attestation currently rendered here.
Function
Source-attested rock-art depiction of a bullroarer. The thematic study lists bullroarer among the Burgess Point engraved motifs but does not describe ceremony, use, or the exact motif image.
Map confidence
medium_high - Public Burgess Point / Port Hedland coastal anchor, not exact engraving coordinates. The source gives Port Hedland Complex/Burgess Point locations, but this atlas point is intentionally generalized for cultural-site sensitivity and because the exact bullroarer motif panel has not been image-pinned.
Source location
Rock Art Thematic Study pp. 36-37 and 124-126; Harper 2025 Table 1 for regional Marapikurrinya chronology; no exact motif image resolved

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