The Bullroarer Atlas

No. BROWN1913-001

Kariyarra (Kariera) banangari bullroarers

Australia · Pilbara coast around Port Hedland

Sacred / spirit

Luschan’s plate drawing of an Upper Murchison bullroarer with a long crosshatched diamond-patterned blade and braided human-hair cord attached at one end.
Plate I. Representative — not this record’s object. A human-hair-corded bullroarer from the Upper Murchison. Public domain · Image source

banangari

Source term: bullroarer

banangari: the Kariyarra name for the bullroarer.

At the close of a Kariyarra initiation on Western Australia's Pilbara coast, the boy received not one banangari but two: a large bullroarer worn at the front of his belt and a smaller one fastened behind his head. Brown's field account adds a striking local exception to the usual Australian secrecy rule: Kariyarra women were permitted to see the bullroarer.

Two bullroarers (banangari) were given to him, a large one and a small.

Brown 1913:168

Particulars

Object
Two bullroarers, one large and one small.
Function
Given during initiation; the larger was worn at the front of the belt and the smaller in the rear headband. Kariera women were explicitly permitted to see the bullroarer.

Source

A. R. Brown, Three Tribes of Western Australia, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 43 (1913), p. 168

View the source · archived

Part of The Bullroarer Atlas, companion to The Eve Theory of Consciousness.