The Bullroarer Atlas

MUS2026-039 - museum specimen

Wajarri / Wadjarri

Murchison - Western Australia

Restricted

Berlin VI 10488, a human-hair-corded bullroarer from the Upper Murchison River, reproduced by rubbing the original on Japanese paper. It is a...
Representative image. Berlin VI 10488, a human-hair-corded bullroarer from the Upper Murchison River, reproduced by rubbing the original on Japanese paper. It is a regional comparator, not the Wajarri Pitt Rivers specimen. Felix von Luschan, Festschrift für Adolf Bastian (1896), p. 135; Berlin VI 10488 Public domain Image source

Churinga English

Source term: bull-roarer

Churinga (Arrernte tjurunga): an Arrernte word for a sacred object; applied by the museum as a general classifier for this Wajarri specimen.

Etymology. Churinga is the Arrernte (Arunta) word meaning "sacred" or "secret," the name for a class of sacred wood and stone objects, the smaller wooden ones serving as bull-roarers. A Central Australian term, applied here by the museum to a Western Australian Wajarri specimen. (high confidence)

In Wajarri country in Western Australia’s Murchison, the bullroarer belonged to men’s ceremonial life. A second blade from the Upper Murchison, collected in 1887, preserves the region’s visual language: angular figures and dense parallel hatching cover its long narrow face, while a braided human-hair cord survives at the tip. Its old rubbing was made directly from the wood, preserving even the pressure of its carved lines.

Churinga is the name given by the Arunta natives to certain sacred objects which, on penalty of death or very severe punishment, such as blinding by means of a fire-stick, are never allowed to be seen by women or uninitiated men.

Spencer & Gillen, The Native Tribes of Central Australia (1899), ch. V "The Churinga or Bull Roarers of the Arunta and Other Tribes"
Object
Bull-roarer of the Wajarri / Wadjarri, Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford (acc. 1924.63.24).
Function
The museum's per-object record classes it 'Ritual and Ceremonial / Religion / Ceremonial Object / Religious Object', names it 'Bullroarer / Churinga', and carries a cultural-advice warning; a PRM curatorial note records Yolngu confirmation that the collection's bullroarers/churinga are secret/sacred male ceremonial objects seen only by initiated men.
Map confidence
high - approximate culture/locality centroid
Source location
1924.63.24

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