MUS2026-036 - museum specimen
Birdungu bull-roarer (Pitt Rivers)
West Kimberley - Western Australia
Restricted
Source term: bull-roarer
Two of these reached the Pitt Rivers Museum in 1924, bought from the dealer Emile Clement, who by then was having residents of north-west Western Australia ship him material in England to sell on to museums. The accessions register lists them as "churinga of pearl-shell perforated like bull-roarers," from the Pidungu tribe of the Fitzroy River in the Broome district — engraved pearl-shell of the kind worn and exchanged across the western Kimberley and far beyond, here pierced so it could be whirled on a cord. The word "churinga" marks them as sacred and restricted to initiated men. Clement himself drew this form, and a drawing he made of an incised Kimberley pearl-shell survives. The Pidungu attribution and the object's function come down to us only through his sale notes, not through any record taken in the field.
2 "churinga" of pearl-shell perforated like bull-roarers, Pidungu tribe, Fitzroy R., Broome district
Pitt Rivers Museum Annual Report 1924, Accessions by Purchase (E. Clement)
- Object
- Bull-roarer of the Birdungu, Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford (acc. 1924.63.23).
- Function
- The PRM 1924 accessions register records the group as 'churinga of pearl-shell perforated like bull-roarers' — 'churinga' denoting the sacred, men's-restricted objects of the region.
- Map confidence
- medium - approximate culture/locality centroid
- Source location
- 1924.63.23
- Forbidden to women