NAGPRA2024-001 - archaeological find
Granite Hill funerary bullroarer
United States - California - San Diego County - Granite Hill - North America
Sacred / spirit
Source term: bull roarer
A bull roarer was buried with a person at archaeological site C-158/A, on Granite Hill in the backcountry of east-central San Diego County, one of 167 objects placed with the dead there. Malcolm J. Rogers surveyed and excavated Granite Hill for the San Diego Museum of Man, now the Museum of Us, between the 1920s and 1950s. In 2024 the museum's National Park Service inventory named the object plainly, alongside Olivella beads, a shell pendant, projectile points, and mescal chisels from the same burial. After consultation, the remains and objects were found connected with eleven named Kumeyaay and Diegueño tribes and bands, who are working with the museum toward their return.
Human remains representing, at least, one individual and 167 associated funerary objects removed from C-158/A in Granite Hill, East Central San Diego County, CA include one ball stone, one unmodified shell, 16 Olivella beads, one modified shell, one shell pendant, one bull roarer, three mescal chisels, one mano, eight unworked flakes, nine projectile points, three chipped stones, 30 undecorated mixed sherds, 26 undecorated body sherds, three decorated rim sherds, one decorated body sherd, one ceramic disk, and 61 mixed sherds.
National Park Service, "Notice of Inventory Completion: Museum of Us, San Diego, CA," Federal Register document 2024-25186 (30 October 2024), p. 2
- Object
- One bull roarer among 167 associated funerary objects removed, together with the remains of at least one person, from archaeological site C-158/A at Granite Hill in east-central San Diego County. The Museum of Us NAGPRA inventory publishes no material, dimensions, cord, or photograph for the object. Malcolm J. Rogers surveyed and excavated the named sites for the museum, then the San Diego Museum of Man, between the 1920s and 1950s.
- Function
- Placed with the dead as one of 167 associated funerary objects from the Granite Hill site; the public inventory gives no more specific rite, performer or occasion.
- Map confidence
- low - Representative east-central San Diego County backcountry anchor; the notice gives no coordinates for Granite Hill, so this is a locality-level, not a site-level, point.
- Source location
- notice p. 2