MAT1898-004 - ethnographic attestation
Oscar Ranges / Kimberley
Oscar Ranges, Kimberley, Western Australia
Restricted
Source term: bull-roarer
Nearly two feet of carved wood, lent to R. H. Mathews by W. W. Froggatt, who had it from the Aborigines of the Oscar Ranges in the Kimberley district of Western Australia. Mathews measured it: 22 15/16 inches long, 2½ inches at the widest, 7/16 thick, with a hole bored in one end for the string it was swung by. One side was convex and the other flat — a peculiarity, he noted, that he had seen before in bull-roarers from West Australia — and each face carried its own drawings, reproduced on his plate. He could not learn the name of the wood. Several Kimberley bull-roarers he had handled were like it: flat on one side, carved with rectangles, ovals, and straight or zig-zag lines, and slightly rounded and bare on the other.
One side is convex, and the other flat, a peculiarity I have before observed in bull-roarers from West Australia.
R. H. Mathews, plate description of the Oscar Ranges (Kimberley) specimen lent by W. W. Froggatt, "Bullroarers used by the Australian Aborigines" (Journal of the Anthropological Institute 27, 1898); text as reprinted in "Notes on the Aborigines of New South Wales"
- Function
- Kimberley bullroarers are reported by Froggatt as used at the ceremony of circumcision; Plate figs. 1-4 show the Oscar Ranges specimen, with carved convex and flat faces.
- Map confidence
- medium - representative coordinate for named people, ceremony, river, or region in Mathews
- Source location
- JAI 27:52-60; Plate figs. 1-4
- Initiation rite