TACON2019-001 - archaeological find
Clews Ridge small burnt bullroarer
Australia - New South Wales - Greater Blue Mountains - Wollemi National Park - Oceania - Sahul
Function not recorded
Source term: bullroarer
No local Aboriginal-language term recorded; "bullroarer" is the excavating team's own unhedged English identification.
Among the rock shelters of Clews Ridge, a major ridgeline south of Gallery Rock in the Wollemi wilderness of the Greater Blue Mountains, an archaeological team led by Paul Taçon recorded a small burnt bullroarer alongside blocks of resin, the remains of fire drills, and a fire board — the ordinary kit of people camped and working in these shelters. The charred wood likely survives from after about AD 1800, since older wood rarely lasts in this fire-prone country; no photograph, drawing, or exact find-site beyond "Clews Ridge" has been published.
The find complements a wooden fire-stick located by our team in another shelter in 2003 (Taçon et al. 2005), as well as 3 blocks of resin, partial remains of two fire drills, a fire board and a small burnt bullroarer at sites on Clews Ridge, a major ridgeline to the south of Gallery Rock.
Taçon, Brennan, King, Pross and Kelleher, "The contemporary cultural significance of Gallery Rock" (2019), p. 79
- Object
- One small bullroarer, burnt, found among a cluster of wooden objects — 3 blocks of resin, partial remains of two fire drills, and a fire board — at rock-shelter sites on Clews Ridge. No dimensions, shape, cord, or perforation detail is published, and no specimen photograph exists; the object is known only through the published find statement.
- Function
- Not recorded.
- Map confidence
- low - Southern Wollemi National Park locality anchor; the publication deliberately withholds an exact shelter or ridge coordinate for a sensitive Aboriginal cultural landscape, consistent with the atlas's handling of other undisclosed Australian sites.
- Source location
- p. 79