The Bullroarer Atlas

NAMER-016 - archaeological find

Classic Lillooet (St'át'imc) — Keatley Creek pithouse village (EeRl 7)

Canada - Middle Fraser Canyon (Interior Plateau), British Columbia; St'át'imc (Lillooet) territory between Xaxlip - Fountain and Ts'kwaylacw - Pavilion, ~20-25 km upstream of Lillooet - North America

Function not recorded

Item F from Hayden's illustrated inventory of Keatley Creek prestige artifacts: a smoothed, elongated bone object, rounded at both ends, with a...
Item F from Hayden's illustrated inventory of Keatley Creek prestige artifacts: a smoothed, elongated bone object, rounded at both ends, with a small drilled hole set back from one tip and faint centerline marks from the original drawing. Brian Hayden, 'Prestige Artifacts at Keatley Creek,' The Ancient Past of Keatley Creek vol. II (Archaeology Press, SFU), fig. 3 Image source

From the Keatley Creek pithouse village on the terraces above the Mid-Fraser Canyon — one of the largest prehistoric villages of the British Columbia Interior, in St'át'imc (Lillooet) territory — excavators recovered a worked bone object that Brian Hayden identified as a probable bullroarer. Hayden lists it among the village's "unique or extremely rare items," a bone artifact for which, he argues, the strongest case can be made that it was a prestige good. It remains the only such candidate known archaeologically from the BC Interior Plateau, dating to the Classic Lillooet occupation. No ceremony or sound is recorded for the piece itself; Hayden's wider reading of the site as a secret-society setting is an inference, and the bullroarer's identification a careful one rather than a certainty.

The strongest arguments for bone artifacts as prestige items can clearly be made for beads, bracelets, pendants, blanket pins, antler headdresses, bullroarers, net needles, buttons, and incised, polished, carved, or decorated pieces.

Brian Hayden, "Prestige Artifacts at Keatley Creek," in The Ancient Past of Keatley Creek, Vol. II (2000), p.193.
Object
A worked bone artifact excavated from the Keatley Creek housepit village (Classic Lillooet occupation, roughly 2,300-1,100 BP) and identified by archaeologist Brian Hayden as a probable bullroarer. It is the principal Interior-Plateau (British Columbia) archaeological bullroarer candidate, distinct from the historic-period wooden bullroarers documented for the Northwest Coast.
Function
Probable bullroarer recovered archaeologically and read by the excavator as a prestige/ritual object; no specific use is recorded for this specimen.
Map confidence
medium - Approximate site anchor: Keatley Creek terraces above the Fraser River, between the outlets of Pavilion and Fountain Creeks ~20-25 km upstream of Lillooet, ~360 m above the river. No published decimal coordinate for the site; position interpolated from published location descriptions and the Keatley Creek stream coordinate (50.797 N, 121.858 W).
Source location
Hayden 2000, The Ancient Past of Keatley Creek Vol. II, Ch.13 "Prestige Artifacts at Keatley Creek," pp.193-194, Fig.3 (F)

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