The Bullroarer Atlas

MUS2026-224 - museum specimen

Fortescue River ancestor-design bullroarer pair

Fortescue River, Pilbara, Western Australia - Oceania - Sahul

Restricted

British Museum card for Oc,89+.142.
Representative — not this record’s object. · British Museum card for Oc,89+.142 · CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Image source

Source term: bullroarer or tjuringa (churinga)

Each blade turns a totemic ancestor into sound. Sacred designs cover one face; when the wood is whirled, its voice becomes “spirit talk.” Seeing it was itself restricted: women and boys not yet initiated were forbidden to look.

Large, wooden bullroarer, or tjuringa (churinga), with one face inscribed with sacred designs, which represent a totemic ancestor.

Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge, catalogue description for accession E 1915.20.5
Object
Two large wooden blades, each carved on one face with sacred designs representing a totemic ancestor.
Function
Whirled as sacred instruments whose sound was understood as “spirit talk”; women and uninitiated boys were forbidden to see them.
Map confidence
low_medium - Anchor on the middle course of the Fortescue River, Pilbara, the only locality either record gives. The Fortescue runs some 700 km and no collecting camp, reach or crossing is named, so the point marks the river, not a site.
Source location
Page references

MAA E 1915.20.4 and E 1915.20.5 (objects 492313, 492314)

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