MUS2026-371 - museum specimen

Aritunga, one large and one small

Hermannsburg region, Northern Territory - Central Australia

Restricted

The larger blade was bored at one end with an opossum's tooth and written down under its own name, aritunga; its companion, less than half as long, was rubbed with ochre and grease. Both came from the Hermannsburg country on the Finke River, where the Lutheran pastor F. W. Albrecht had arrived the year before the larger one was collected, in 1927. In the Western Arrarnta speech of Hermannsburg the large bullroarer shares its name with an ancestral being, Tuanjiraka. The Arrernte told Spencer and Gillen what that being did at a boy's initiation: he entered the boy after the operation, took him away into the bush, and let him come back only as a man.

He enters the body of the boy after the operation and takes him away into the bush until he is better, when the spirit goes away and the boy returns, but now as an initiated man.

Baldwin Spencer & F. J. Gillen, The Native Tribes of Central Australia (1899), p. 246 n. 1

Object

Two carved and engraved wooden blades: the aritunga, 38.7 x 6.2 cm, pierced at one end with an opossum tooth, and a smaller companion, 17.5 x 2.7 cm, finished with ochre and grease.

Function

Not recorded by the museum. In the Western Arrarnta of Hermannsburg the large bullroarer bears the name of an ancestral being, Tuanjiraka, who at initiation carried the boy into the bush and returned him a man.

Source

Musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac, inv. 72.1965.7.18 (object 303782; "Rhombe", vernacular name aritunga; wood engraved and pierced with an opossum tooth; 38.7 x 6.19 x 0.82 cm; collected 1927; Hermannsburg region) and 72.1965.7.19 (object 303783; carved and engraved wood, ochre and grease; 17.5 x 2.7 x 0.4 cm); Arrernte, Northern Territory; former…

Source location

Page references

inv. 72.1965.7.18-19 (objects 303782-303783)

Source confidence

medium

Location note

Hermannsburg (Ntaria) mission; the museum records the Hermannsburg region only.

Regions: Australia · Sahul

• Spirit voice
• Initiation rite
• Forbidden to women

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