The Bullroarer Atlas

No. KABO1961-001Australia

Groote Eylandt face blade

Australia · Groote Eylandt, Gulf of Carpentaria, Northern Territory · Arnhem Land

Function not recorded

Two views of a small oval bullroarer with its cord: one side carved and painted with a face of ringed eyes, a long nose and a triangular mouth, the other with bands of fine chevron strokes.
Plate I. Both sides of MAE 6254-3: the carved and painted face, and the cross-banded back. Image source
Two views of a long blade painted in ochre, red and yellow with white dots, a coil of string bound round the left end.
Plate II. Representative — not this record’s object. Both faces of a painted Groote Eylandt bullroarer, its cord still wound about the head. Image source

Source term: гуделка (bullroarer)

A face looks out from this small blade: round eyes ringed in white, a long nose running down between them, and a triangular mouth beneath, carved into the wood before it was painted, all set in fine white, yellow and red strokes. Faces are very rare on Australian bullroarers. Leonhard Adam, shown the piece, wrote that it was almost certainly made under New Guinea influence, and V. R. Kabo set it beside the faced blades of the Gulf of Papua, where the same eyes and nose stare from masks, shields and the boards of the men's houses. On the island itself, the posts of the arawaltja ceremony also carried carved faces, though cruder ones. The blade reached Leningrad in 1957, a gift from an Adelaide youth league handed over at the World Festival of Youth in Moscow.

Ваш образец почти несомненно обязан влиянию с Новой Гвинеи

Your specimen almost certainly owes its form to New Guinea influence

Leonhard Adam, letter quoted in V. R. Kabo, Sbornik MAE XX (1961), p. 167

Particulars

Object
Flat oval wooden blade, 22 by 6 cm, pierced at one end for its cord. One face carries the carved outline of a human face, picked out in red and white over a field of fine white, yellow and red strokes; the back bears cross-bands and crossing lines on black.
Function
Not recorded.

Source

V. R. Kabo, 'Kollektsiia s o. Grote Eilandt (Severnaia Avstraliia)', Sbornik Muzeia antropologii i etnografii XX (1961), pp. 166–171, plate 2

View the source

  • Warnindhilyagwa blade of totemic motifsAustralia · Groote Eylandt, Arnhem Land, N · Function not recorded
  • Alawa dudugulindjiAustralia · Southern tributaries of the Roper River, upstream of the Hodgson River mouth, Northern Territory · Function not recorded
  • Burarra maralbindiAustralia · Coast on both sides of the Blyth River mouth, east to Cape Stewart, north-central Arnhem Land, Northern Territory · Function not recorded
  • Djinang maralbindiAustralia · Crocodile Islands and Milingimbi south to the middle Blyth River and east to the Glyde River, north-central Arnhem Land, Northern Territory · Function not recorded
  • Djinba malaidjaraAustralia · Inland from the northern Arafura Swamp to the upper Goyder River, central Arnhem Land, Northern Territory · Function not recorded
  • Gunwinggu gubarAustralia · Western Arnhem Land stone country, Liverpool River to Oenpelli (Gunbalanya), Northern Territory · Function not recorded

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