The Bullroarer Atlas

EXH2026-037 - archaeological find

Bahía de los Ángeles burial cave, Baja California

Mexico - Bahia de Los Angeles, Baja California - North America

Function not recorded

A small, worn plate photograph of an elongated wooden slat with a hole at one end and faint inlay marks down its center: the polished ironwood...
A small, worn plate photograph of an elongated wooden slat with a hole at one end and faint inlay marks down its center: the polished ironwood bullroarer, set with Olivella shell, recovered from the Bahía de los Ángeles burial cave and documented here. Massey & Osborne, 'A Burial Cave in Baja California' (UC Anthropological Records 16:8, 1961), pl. 15i, via Project Gutenberg #30385 Public domain Image source

Source term: Bull-roarer (?)

From a burial cave at Bahía de los Ángeles came a remarkable slat of polished dark wood: 23.5 centimetres long, concave on both faces, pierced at one end, and inlaid with black-filled grooves and fragments of Olivella shell. Its excavators tentatively called it a bullroarer. The disturbed cave has no secure date; its contents broadly resemble the local Borjeño tradition around European contact, but the slat itself cannot be dated more closely.

This artifact has been tentatively called a "bull-roarer" because no other purpose can be conjectured.

Massey & Osborne, A Burial Cave in Baja California (Anthropological Records 16:8, 1961)
Object
Wooden object 23.5 cm catalogued 'Bull-roarer (?)', USNM 139565, from a burial cave.
Function
Not established; the excavators' own identification carries a question mark.
Map confidence
low - Bahia de Los Angeles
Source location
Massey & Osborne 1961, p. 344

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