The Bullroarer Atlas

No. BROWN1913-002

Ngarluma (Ngaluma) banangari bullroarer

Australia · Pilbara coast between Maitland and Sherlock rivers

Sacred / spirit

Gascoyne bullroarer, a dark, blunt-ended blade with dense crosshatched surface marks (fig. 10).
Plate I. Representative — not this record’s object. Gascoyne bullroarer Public domain · Image source

banangari

Source term: bullroarer

banangari: Ngarluma name recorded by Brown for the bullroarer; no literal lexical gloss recovered

When a Ngarluma boy came back from the journey to fetch friends from neighbouring camps for his initiation, his arms were bound with fur string, his body painted red, and eagle-hawk feathers fixed in his hair. Then he received the banangari, fastened behind his head in the headband. Women witnessed part of the ceremony; other parts were closed to them.

A bullroarer (banangari) is given to him and he wears this fastened in his head-band at the back of his head.

Brown 1913:174

Particulars

Object
Bullroarer worn fastened in the rear headband; no object dimensions, cord, or figure supplied.
Function
Given during initiation and worn behind the head. Women attended some parts of the ceremony but were excluded from other unspecified parts.

Sources

  1. A. R. Brown, 'Three Tribes of Western Australia,' Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 43 (1913), p. 174 View · archived
  2. Bern museum, Gualla/Turner River object record (1903)

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