The Bullroarer Atlas

MONTAGUE1921-002 - museum specimen

Kookynie district; people unrecorded

Kookynie district - Goldfields-Esperance, Western Australia - Oceania - Sahul

Sacred / spirit

The Kookynie-district bull-roarer itself: 22 inches, longitudinally concave, its face grooved with nested squares like the spear-throwers of...
The Kookynie-district bull-roarer itself: 22 inches, longitudinally concave, its face grooved with nested squares like the spear-throwers of the same goldfields country. Leopold A. D. Montague, Weapons and Implements of Savage Races (1921), fig. 19 no. 2 Public domain Image source

Source term: bull-roarer

The second blade on Montague's 1921 plate came from the Kookynie district, in the goldfields country of Western Australia. At 22 inches it ran an inch longer than its Wiluna companion but narrower, its pale wood cut with a longitudinally concave face and roughly grooved into diminishing squares divided by transverse cuts. Montague paired it as the second of two bullroarers he identified as used in initiation ceremonies, naming neither its maker nor its people.

No. 2 from the Kookynie district, Western Australia.

Montague 1921:36
Object
Light-colored wooden blade, 22 inches long and narrower than the Wiluna example, with a longitudinally concave face and rough grooved diminishing-square decoration divided by transverse grooves; one terminal perforation is visible in the exact Figure 19 drawing.
Function
Montague's Figure 19 caption identifies it as used in initiation ceremonies; no people-specific rite or restriction is described.
Map confidence
medium - Kookynie town anchor for Montague's broader Kookynie district provenance; no collection spot, maker, or performance site is recorded.
Source location
printed pp. 36-37; Figure 19 no. 2

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