The Bullroarer Atlas

MUS2026-081 - museum specimen

Bristol Bay provenance (historic catalogue: Eskimo)

United States - Bristol Bay, Alaska - North America

Play / practical

The Bristol Bay object itself: a leaf-shaped wooden blade joined to a wooden handle by commercial thread, now broken.
The Bristol Bay object itself: a leaf-shaped wooden blade joined to a wooden handle by commercial thread, now broken. Penn Museum, object 18400 Image source

Source term: bull-roarer

A wooden handle and leaf-shaped blade from Bristol Bay remain linked by a strand of commercial thread, now broken. Penn catalogued the assembly as a toy/model after it reached Philadelphia in an 1895 exchange with the United States National Museum.

Wooden handle with wooden bull roarer. Commercial thread joining the two is broken.

Penn Museum, object record 18400 ("Toy, Model, Bull-Roarer")
Object
Wooden handle with a wooden bull-roarer joined by commercial thread, now broken (Penn Museum 18400).
Function
Catalogued as a toy/model; no further use recorded.
Map confidence
medium - Bristol Bay regional anchor; the museum gives no community or exact collection point.
Source location
18400

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