The Bullroarer Atlas

MUS2026-138 - museum specimen

Ancestral Pueblo / Ruin 14

United States - Wetherill Mesa, Mesa Verde, Colorado - North America - Southwest

Function not recorded Candidate only

The smoothed front of the Ruin 14 bone blade itself: a deer metapodial tapering from a squared-off wide end to a rounded tip, with a single...
The smoothed front of the Ruin 14 bone blade itself: a deer metapodial tapering from a squared-off wide end to a rounded tip, with a single cord hole drilled through the wide end — the edge around it chipped — an inked collection number 360, and four incised lines running across the face near mid-length. A later National Museum of Finland annotation reidentified Nordenskiöld's scraper candidate as a bullroarer. Finnish Heritage Agency / National Museum of Finland (VK4834:411), via Finna CC BY 4.0 Image source

Source term: Suhistuspuu? / A bullroarer?

suhistuspuu: Finnish for bullroarer; the question mark is the museum's.

Nordenskiold catalogued this tapered deer-bone blade from a Wetherill Mesa cliff dwelling as a scraper; a later hand overruled him: bullroarer, probably not a scraper. One cord-hole is drilled through its smoothed, worn wide end. Among the Hopi who descend from these cliff builders, warriors of the Snake society still whirl the bullroarer, the tovokinpi, around the kivas before dawn to voice the thunder of the July monsoon and pull rain onto the corn. Whether this seven-hundred-year-old bone ever sang that note, no cord survives to say.

A string is attached to the hole and when the object is swung from the string, it makes a specific sound.

National Museum of Finland / Finna, VK4834:411.
Object
Elongated deer metapodial bone blade, 21.8 x 3.4 cm: narrow and tapered, with a broad smoothed face, a single suspension hole drilled near the wide end, four transverse engraved lines, and a reverse that follows the bone's natural channel; National Museum of Finland VK4834:411.
Function
The object is an uncertain bullroarer candidate. Its long tapered blade, single terminal suspension hole, worked face, and possible cord wear fit bullroarer morphology, but no cord or use context survives and the museum provenance includes an earlier scraper identification.
Map confidence
medium - Representative Wetherill Mesa / Ruin 14 anchor from the source-chase packet; not a published object-level excavation coordinate.
Source location
Finna VK4834:411; Nordenskiöld 1893 p. 99 and Plate XLI:7

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