The Bullroarer Atlas

BREEN2004-001 - primary ethnography

Yandruwandha (Jandruwanta)

Innamincka - Cooper Creek - northeastern South Australia - Oceania - Sahul

Play / practical

Representative—not this record’s object: Australian herringbone-carved bullroarer, shown as a regional stand-in; no image of this record’s own...
Representative—not this record’s object: Australian herringbone-carved bullroarer, shown as a regional stand-in; no image of this record’s own object is available yet. Emile Clement, Ethnographische Beobachtungen in Nordwest-Central-Australien (1903), Plate IV; Bayerische Staatsbibliothek scan Public domain Image source
A board carved edge to edge with a herringbone zigzag pattern — an Aboriginal Australian bull-roarer held by the Wereldmuseum, shown for the...
Representative image. A board carved edge to edge with a herringbone zigzag pattern — an Aboriginal Australian bull-roarer held by the Wereldmuseum, shown for the general form; not the Martuthunira boonangharry from the Pilbara coast documented here. Wereldmuseum / NMVW (acc. RV-2306-7) CC BY-SA Image source

thuburu Yandruwandha / English

Source term: bullroarer

thuburu: Yandruwandha bullroarer; no literal lexical gloss recovered; ngarlakurra names its sound

Yandruwandha men used the thuburu as a survival signal inside a system of punishment. A man exiled to the bush for fighting or beating his wife received a shaped plum-bush stick and string. He whirled it to call for food; his parents gathered supplies but his mother's brothers were the relatives permitted to carry them down. He might live this way for two or three months. The language preserves not only the instrument's name but special words for its sound: ngarlakurra and ngarlangarlakurra.

He whirls it around so that someone will come and leave food for him.

Breen 2004:200
Object
Shaped plum-bush stick with string; whirled through the air. No dimensions or object figure.
Function
Signal used by an exiled man to call specified relatives to leave food; exile could last two or three months.
Map confidence
high - OpenStreetMap Innamincka administrative-relation centroid matching Breen's Innamincka-area account; not the exile camp.
Source location
printed pp. 104, 137, 200-201; PDF pp. 114, 147, 210-211

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