No. PEABODY2026-001
Lake Naddern Peabody bullroarer
Namendarra Lake, Shire of Laverton, Western Australia (Peabody: 'Lake Naddern')
Restricted
Source term: bullroarer
Swung hard on its cord, a blade this long — close to sixty centimetres — throws a deep, carrying roar that across the Western Desert was heard as the voice of an ancestral being. When it wailed from beyond the camp, an initiate understood the spirit had come to swallow him and, after weeks in seclusion, to spit him out a grown man; women and the uninitiated who saw it could be killed. Grooved on one face and pierced for its cord, this specimen from the goldfields desert near Laverton kept no record of its own ceremony — only the tradition it was made for.
Particulars
- Object
- Carved wooden elliptical bullroarer, perforated, with grooved designs on one side; 59.1 x 8.7 x 0.7 cm.
- Function
- Sounded at men's initiation; forbidden to the sight of women and the uninitiated.
Source
Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, 25-46-70/D2449 ('Lake Naddern'; formerly Mrs. Walter Badenach, 1924)