The Bullroarer Atlas

EUROPE-009 - archaeological find

Oxfordshire, England

United Kingdom - England - Oxfordshire - Europe - British Isles

Function not recorded

English folk bull-roarer: plain oblong pine lath with end hole, St Ives, Huntingdonshire, collected by Miss F. E. Ogden, 1902 — English folk...
Representative image. English folk bull-roarer: plain oblong pine lath with end hole, St Ives, Huntingdonshire, collected by Miss F. E. Ogden, 1902 — English folk survival of the same class; not the Oxfordshire object. Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (1902.51.3) Image source

Source term: bull roarer

A pierced bone from medieval Chalgrove — Harding's Field, the moated manor site dug in the late 1970s — held by the Oxfordshire Museums Service as small find OXCMS 1986.188.sf254. It is a pig's metapodial, polished along the shaft, with a single hole through the middle: an object of the class archaeologists read two ways, as a humble toggle or, threaded on a cord, as a buzzing bone toy. The museum's record keeps both names, filing it as a toggle while indexing it as a bull roarer; which life it led, only the wear on the bone could say.

Object
Medieval bone bull roarer, Oxfordshire Museums object OXCMS 1986.188.sf254, recovered by excavation.
Function
Function not recorded.
Map confidence
medium - Village anchor at Chalgrove: the Heritage Search findspot field reads 'Chalgrove — CH HF', Harding's Field, the moated-manor excavation published as Page, Atherton & Hardy, Barentin's Manor (2005).
Source location
Heritage Search object f2564223-c4e5-4bc6-a171-48fb322dfe8e / OXCMS 1986.188.sf254

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