BROWN1913-002 - primary ethnography
Ngarluma (Ngaluma) banangari bullroarer
Australia - Pilbara coast between Maitland and Sherlock rivers - Oceania - Sahul
Sacred / spirit
banangari English
Source term: bullroarer
banangari: Ngarluma name recorded by Brown for the bullroarer; no literal lexical gloss recovered
When a Ngarluma boy returned from gathering neighboring 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, but Brown says only that other parts were closed to them; he does not make the bullroarer itself the forbidden sight.
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
- 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.
- Map confidence
- medium - Roebourne district regional anchor within Brown's Ngaluma coastal territory; not a performance site.
- Source location
Page references
printed p. 174; PDF p. 33 | Bern 1903 Gualla/Turner River object record
- Initiation rite