The Bullroarer Atlas

No. SWA-PECOS-001

Pecos Pueblo Kidder bull-roarer

United States · Pecos Pueblo, New Mexico · North America · Southwest

Function not recorded

Archaeological datec. 1100–1540 ADPrecontact Pecos Pueblo horizon; object not directly dated.
Pale elk-bone blade from Pueblo del Arroyo, with incised bands and a hole near one end.
Plate I. Representative — not this record’s object. Elk-bone bullroarer from Pueblo del Arroyo. Public domain · Image source

Source term: bull-roarer

Wood rarely survives in Southwestern deposits and such pieces were never numerous, so the single wooden bull-roarer from Room 75 at Pecos Pueblo, unearthed in A. V. Kidder's long excavation of the site, stands nearly alone for the region: by Donald Brown's count only three excavated bull-roarers are known from the prehistoric Southwest, every one of them wood.

One bull roarer was found at Pecos (Kidder 1932:293), another in cliff dwellings in the Verde Valley (Bourke 1892:477), and a third in a cache at Chetro Ketl (R. Gwinn Vivian, personal communication). All were made of wood.

Donald N. Brown, "The Distribution of Sound Instruments in the Prehistoric Southwestern United States," Ethnomusicology 11, no. 1 (1967): 71-90

Particulars

Object
A single wooden bull-roarer from Room 75 at Pecos Pueblo.
Function
Not recorded.

Sources

  1. Alfred V. Kidder, The Artifacts of Pecos (1932), p. 293 View · archived
  2. Donald N. Brown, “The Distribution of Sound Instruments in the Prehistoric Southwestern United States,” Ethnomusicology 11(1) (1967):71–90, citing Kidder (1932), p. 293 View · archived

Part of The Bullroarer Atlas, companion to The Eve Theory of Consciousness.