The Bullroarer Atlas

MUS2026-036 - museum specimen

Birdungu

West Kimberley - Western Australia

Restricted

A board carved with tightly clustered concentric circles along its length — an Aboriginal Australian bull-roarer held by the Wereldmuseum,...
Representative image. A board carved with tightly clustered concentric circles along its length — an Aboriginal Australian bull-roarer held by the Wereldmuseum, shown for the general form; not the Birdungu instrument from West Kimberley documented here. Wereldmuseum / NMVW (acc. RV-2306-6) CC BY-SA Image source

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

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