Salmon Pueblo turquoise-and-hematite mosaic bullroarer

Source term: bullroarer

Turquoise and hematite made this roaring blade flash blue and black. It emerged from the eastern floor-vault fill of Salmon Pueblo's Great Kiva, a plaza chamber nearly fifteen metres across. Ceremony concentrated around two great floor vaults or foot drums. Beside the eastern vault, excavators mapped more than seventy burned, impressed corn cobs that may have served as corn mothers. Chacoan builders raised the kiva at Salmon's founding around 1090; later San Juan occupants remade it again and again, laying four new floors and, in 1263, a whole new roof of hundreds of beams.

Bullroarer decorated with turquoise and hematite from Salmon Ruins, just outside Farmington, New Mexico.

Gregory L. Little, X post, 9 April 2026

Particulars

Object

Wooden bullroarer with a terminal perforation and surviving turquoise and hematite mosaic, excavated from Great Kiva Room 130W at Salmon Pueblo.

Function

Not recorded.