Burgess Point / Port Hedland Complex bullroarer motif

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.

Particulars

Object

An engraved bullroarer among the motifs of the Burgess Point limestone engraving complex.

Function

Not recorded.