The Bullroarer Atlas

No. MUS2026-193

Clavering Island Site D blade

Northeast Greenland · Clavering Island · North America · Arctic

Function not recorded

Archaeological datec. 1600–1800 ADMuseum creation-date estimate; object not directly dated.
The Site D fragment from Clavering Island, 1930: a weathered wooden piece with a waisted end and accession 17/9591 inked on it, beside a centimeter scale.
Plate I. The Site D fragment, accession 17/9591 inked across the waisted blade end; two more fragments share the tray (Clavering Island, 1930). Image source

The Ford-Bartlett expedition put Junius Bird ashore on Clavering Island in 1930, and from the frozen ground of the place he labelled Site D came a wooden bullroarer, carved and drilled for its cord — left, probably, by the Tunumiit who lived on this coast some time between 1600 and 1800. It was not alone: another blade came out of a stone-house ruin at Site C nearby. East Greenland's dry cold keeps wood for centuries, and with it the evidence that on the remotest inhabited coast of the Arctic, someone was swinging a roarer.

Particulars

Object
Carved, drilled wooden bullroarer, probably AD 1600-1800; excavated at Site D on Clavering Island.
Function
Not recorded — an archaeological find.

Source

National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian, catalogue no. 17/9591: Bullroarer, wood, carved and drilled; Site D, Clavering Island, Northeast Greenland; excavated by Junius Bird, 1930, Ford-Bartlett East Greenland Expedition

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Part of The Bullroarer Atlas, companion to The Eve Theory of Consciousness.