SAYLES1941-001 - archaeological find
Rustler Hills infant-burial bull-roarer
United States - Trans-Pecos Texas (Rustler Hills, Culberson County) - North America - Southwest
Function not recorded Candidate only
Around 1100–1300 AD, in a gypsum sink-hole shelter in the Rustler Hills, an infant was buried in a carrying basket: laid on down over a squirrel skin, wrapped in rabbit fur, and sent off with Pacific olivella shells, two prayer sticks, cotton yarn, a hank of human hair — and a thin curved wooden blade, 42 cm long, snapped in two, the halves laid side by side. E. B. Sayles, excavating for Gila Pueblo, read the blade as a bull-roarer and counted it, with the shells and the cotton, among the grave's ties to the Southwest.
4. Bull-roarer (?) : Thin piece of wood slightly curved, pointed at one end, squared at the other, with five perforations; all edges bevelled; rich brown color. Length, 42 cm.
Sayles 1941, p. 82 (Plate 14 caption)
- Object
- Thin curved wooden blade, 42 cm, pointed at one end and squared at the other, all edges bevelled, rich brown, with five perforations; recovered snapped in two, the halves laid side by side in the burial; no cord survives.
- Function
- Grave good in an infant's basket burial of c. 1100–1300 AD; Sayles labeled the blade 'Bull-roarer (?)' and grouped it with the burial's Southwestern traits. No use evidence survives.
- Source
- E. B. Sayles, 'Infant Burial in Carrying Basket', Bulletin of the Texas Archeological and Paleontological Society 13 (1941), pp. 77-87; object at p. 82 (Plate 14 caption, no. 4), burial inventory p. 80, western-connections discussion p. 85
- Source location
Page references
pp. 77-87; Plate 14 no. 4 (PDF p. 73); caption p. 82
- Source confidence
- low Rustler Hills range anchor, 'about 40 miles northwest of Toyah' per Sayles; the exact gypsum sink-hole shelter was never published.