The Bullroarer Atlas

RENO1986-001 - archaeological find

Groom Range nailed-board roarer

United States - Groom Range, Lincoln County, Nevada (southern Great Basin), on the Southern Paiute - Western Shoshone boundary - North America

Archaeological datec. AD 1865–1930Historic Numic use; board re-used from Euro-American building, object not directly dated.

Function not recorded

The carved board from site 26Ln3088, Groom Range, with its end hole and knob; 41 cm long.
The carved board from site 26Ln3088, Groom Range, with its end hole and knob; 41 cm long. · Public domain Image source

Source term: bull roar / bullroarer

Somebody carved this blade from a newcomer's nailed board, the nail holes still in it, thinning one end, boring a hole through it and leaving a small knob beyond for the tie. Then it was tucked into a crack in a rockshelter wall at a small camp with a hearth, and left. Miners had come into the Groom Range, the mountains beside Groom Lake, in the 1860s; this was where Southern Paiute and Western Shoshone country met, Numa, as both peoples called themselves, moving between springs, pinyon groves and the autumn rabbit drives. Some seven thousand years before, in Hogup Cave far to the north-east, somebody had hung a smaller cottonwood blade of the same kind on a cord.

It is possible that this artifact, although quite large, represents an aboriginal bull roar used during religious ceremonies.

Reno and Pippin, An Archaeological Reconnaissance of the Groom Range (1986), p. 183.
Object
Blade carved from a re-used board of milled lumber into a rough ellipsoid 41 cm long, 10 cm wide and 2.2 cm thick. A biconically bored hole passes through one end, where the wood is thinned to 17 mm, and a small carved knob stands beyond it. Five clenched square-nail holes from the board's earlier life in a nailed structure remain in the blade.
Function
Not recorded.
Source
Ronald L. Reno and Lonnie C. Pippin, with a contribution by Stephen R. Durand, An Archaeological Reconnaissance of the Groom Range, Lincoln County, Nevada (Desert Research Institute, Social Sciences Center, for U.S. Air Force HQ Tactical Air Command/DEEV, August 1986). "Ethnohistoric Artifacts" pp. 97-98 (object description, Hogup comparison); site…
Source location
Page references

pp. 97-98, 101 (Fig. 4-10a), 183

Source confidence
medium
Location note
Groom Range anchor at Bald Mountain, the range high point, Lincoln County; the location of site 26Ln3088 is protected and is not published here.

Regions: The Americas · North America

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