The Bullroarer Atlas

MUS2026-046 - museum specimen

Mi'kmaq bull-roarer (Pitt Rivers)

Maritime Canada - North America - Eastern Woodlands

Function not recorded Candidate only

Penobscot wood-and-twine bullroarer collected by Frank Speck in 1911.
Representative — not this record’s object. · Penobscot wood-and-twine bullroarer collected by Frank Speck in 1911. Image source

Source term: bull-roarer

A small worked-wood object catalogued as Mi'kmaq, it reached the Pitt Rivers Museum in 1886 in the transfer of ethnographic material from the Ashmolean Museum. The museum's own record leaves both its function and its form open, carrying it as "?Noise-maker (bullroarer) or ?box lid" — the identification undecided.

?Noise-maker (bullroarer) or ?box lid

Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, object record 1886.1.870
Object
Bull-roarer of the Mi'kmaq, Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford (acc. 1886.1.870).
Function
Not recorded.
Map confidence
medium - approximate culture/locality centroid
Source location
1886.1.870

View source Open this point on the interactive map