Departure Bay whalebone bullroarer

Source term: whalebone bullroarer

When machines cut into an ancient shellmidden at Departure Bay, on Nanaimo's waterfront, John Sendey walked the spoil heaps and carried what he could save to the Royal B.C. Museum. Among the salvage was a slim, hand-long blade of whalebone, tapered like a willow leaf, a single cord hole drilled at one tip. Grant Keddie, the museum's longtime curator of archaeology, reads it as a bullroarer — smaller than the famous whalebone war clubs of this coast, too big for a toy. Torn from its layers by the bulldozer, it keeps its own counsel about who made it, and when.

In the archaeology collection is what I suggest is a whalebone bullroarer. It is artifact DhRx-16:1166, from a large shellmidden at Departure Bay in Nanaimo... John Sendey rescued it from piles of bulldozed shellmidden.

Grant Keddie, 'Bullroarers in the Indigenous Collections of the Royal B.C. Museum' (2023)

Particulars

Object

Whalebone blade, 206 mm long by 42 mm at its widest, tapering up from the edge to a maximum thickness of 12 mm, with a single cord hole drilled near one end, mostly from one side. Royal BC Museum archaeology collection, DhRx-16:1166; rescued from bulldozed shellmidden.

Function

Not recorded; the object came from bulldozed midden spoil with no stratum, date, cord, wear analysis, or associated use evidence.