The Bullroarer Atlas

MUS2026-038 - museum specimen

Nyamal

Pilbara - Western Australia

Restricted

Clement 1903 Plate IV; fig. 1 is the long dark terminal-hole blade added to this row. The complete plate and caption are shown.
Clement 1903 Plate IV; fig. 1 is the long dark terminal-hole blade added to this row. The complete plate and caption are shown. Emile Clement, Ethnographische Beobachtungen in Nordwest-Central-Australien (1903), Plate IV; Bayerische Staatsbibliothek scan Public domain Image source
A broad board, photographed on green felt, its face incised with a continuous interlocking wave pattern — an Aboriginal Australian bull-roarer...
Representative image. A broad board, photographed on green felt, its face incised with a continuous interlocking wave pattern — an Aboriginal Australian bull-roarer held by the Wereldmuseum, shown for the general form; not the Nyamal instrument from the Pilbara documented here. Wereldmuseum / NMVW (acc. TM-2670-1050) CC BY-SA Image source

bonangharry / cora English

Source term: bull-roarer

bonangharry (also cora; banangari in Radcliffe-Brown 1913): the bullroarer, glossed 'devil-scarer' because it is swung to drive off the djuno (the evil spirit blamed for sickness and death) and is also sounded at initiation. A shared Ngayarta/Pilbara term — Clement 1903 records it for a Nyamal-country ('Gnamo') specimen, Radcliffe-Brown 1913 for the neighbouring Kariera.

Etymology. Clement (1903) records the north-west Australian bullroarer as 'cora' or 'bonangharry' and glosses it 'devil-scarer' — it was swung to drive away the djuno, the evil spirit blamed for sickness and death, and was also sounded at initiation. Radcliffe-Brown (1913) independently gives the same word ('banangari') for the neighbouring Kariera, showing it to be a shared Pilbara term rather than a uniquely Nyamal one. (medium confidence)

A bull-roarer of the Nyamal people of the Pilbara, held in the Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford under an accession dated 1901. The museum's own record classes it as a ceremonial and religious object and attaches a cultural-advice notice. Across Aboriginal Australia the bull-roarer is secret men's business: women, children, and the uninitiated are not permitted to use, touch, or in some places even to see it. In 2019 the Manchester Museum unconditionally returned forty-three secret sacred and ceremonial objects to four Aboriginal communities, the Nyamal of the Pilbara among them.

43 secret sacred and ceremonial objects to the Aranda people of Central Australia, Gangalidda Garawa peoples' of northwest Queensland, Nyamal people of the Pilbara and Yawuru people of Broome.

University of Manchester, "Manchester Museum returns secret sacred and ceremonial material to Australia" (2019)
Object
Bull-roarer of the Nyamal, Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford (acc. 1901.58.23). Clement no. 151, a 57 x 4 cm dark wooden blade with a terminal hole, is shown on Plate IV fig. 1.
Function
The museum's own per-object index classes it 'Ritual and Ceremonial / Ceremonial Object / Religious Object' and triggers its cultural-advice notice; Pilbara bull-roarers are men's-restricted ceremonial objects.
Map confidence
medium - approximate culture/locality centroid
Source location
1901.58.23 | Clement 1903 Plate IV fig. 1

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