The Bullroarer Atlas

SIBER-004 - ethnographic attestation

Evenki (Amur Evenki)

Russia - Amur basin (Priamurye), Russian Far East - East Asia

Weather / fertility magic

Representative—not this record’s object: a Canadian Inuit bone bullroarer.
Representative—not this record’s object: a Canadian Inuit bone bullroarer. Hokkaido Museum of Northern Peoples (北海道立北方民族博物館), acc. H1.89.9, via Hokkaido Digital Museum CC0 Image source

Source term: ветровой аэрофон / жужжалка

ветровой аэрофон (vetrovoy aerofon) = 'wind aerophone'; жужжалка (zhuzhzhalka) = generic buzzer/noisemaker in Vasilevich's wording.

Among the Amur Evenki, wind could be called rather than merely awaited. Podmaskin records a rotating “wind aerophone” used to summon it; an older account calls the instrument a zhuzhzhalka, a whirring noisemaker, but gives neither its construction nor a village.

Эвенки считали, что ветер можно вызвать магическим способом, вращая ветровой аэрофон.

The Evenki believed that wind could be summoned by magical means by rotating a wind aerophone.

Podmaskin, «Народные знания амурских эвенков», Россия и АТР, 2008, p. 88
Object
A rotating sound-maker described by Podmaskin as a 'wind aerophone'; Vasilevich's underlying account calls it a zhuzhzhalka (buzzer/noisemaker). No surviving object or construction is identified.
Function
Wind magic: the Amur Evenki believed wind could be summoned by rotating or turning the sound-maker.
Map confidence
low - Representative Amur-basin / Priamurye Evenki anchor; neither source names a settlement.
Source location
Podmaskin 2008, journal p. 88; Vasilevich 1969, p. 212

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