The Bullroarer Atlas

MUS2026-038 - museum specimen

Nyamal bull-roarer (Pitt Rivers)

Pilbara - Western Australia

Restricted

Clement 1903 Plate IV; fig. 1, the long dark terminal-hole blade, is the Nyamal example.
Clement 1903 Plate IV; fig. 1, the long dark terminal-hole blade, is the Nyamal example. · Public domain Image source
Australian bullroarer incised with an interlocking wave pattern.
Representative — not this record’s object. · Australian bullroarer incised with an interlocking wave pattern. · 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)

Well carved, with a human figure worked into the wood, this whizzing-stick was collected on the Oakover River in Nyamal country, in the Pilbara, and bought by the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford in 1901. The name the museum records for it is boonangharry. Its own catalogue classes the piece a ceremonial and religious object and attaches a cultural-advice warning, though it says nothing of how the blade was used. In 2019 the Manchester Museum unconditionally returned forty-three such secret sacred and ceremonial objects to their communities — the Aranda, Gangalidda Garawa, Yawuru, and 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
A carved whizzing-stick from Nyamal country on the Oakover River. The museum's per-object record classes it 'Ritual and Ceremonial / Ceremonial Object / Religious Object' and triggers its cultural-advice notice but documents no use; the restricted reading rests on the 2019 Manchester Museum repatriation, which returned secret-sacred objects to the Nyamal among others.
Map confidence
medium - approximate culture/locality centroid
Source location
Page references

1901.58.23 | Clement 1903 Plate IV fig. 1

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