Sonopoietic spaces,⁵⁰ or the spaces constructed through listening, are relentlessly bound to locations with enhanced timbre. The Gila Cliff Dwellings Caves have a lack of echo, but timbre is enhanced and volume is sustained; making Cave Three an amazing, natural sonopoietic space.

 

Infrasonics are a wave phenomenon sharing the physical nature of sound but with a range of frequencies below that of human hearing. Infrasonics affect the psychomotor or circadian systems of Life forms. Extremely low frequency waves created by meteors, earthquakes, volcanoes, deep drums, and chanting all generate infrasonics. “The most common and ethnologically interesting form [of infrasonic waves], however consists of the inaudible sounds reaching us from distant thunder. [B]ull roarers and amplifying pipes are powerful generators of infrasonic waves.”⁵¹  

 

“The bull roarer is a cultural constant and must be systematically included in the spatial analysis of a cave/rock shelter, and it’s omnipresence in Hunter-gatherer paleoperformances expected in these loci.”⁵² From the practical viewpoint of a primitive hunter, a headband could also be used as a sling.⁵³ Whirling a sling may have been the inspiration for the invention of the bull roarer.

 

Drum sticks, flutes, and bull roarers dating from 15,000 BC were found near the paintings in Lascaux Cave, France. Most musical instruments are considered as toys, communication devices, works of art, or ritual objects. A bull roarer is not really a musical instrument but creates an impressive sound; it consists of a flat, elongated oval or rectangular slab of rock, bone, shell or wood with a hole in one end through which a cord is attached with which to whirl the bull roarer.   Bullroarers, with cords only a few inches in length or several feet long, emanate the multiscaled sounds ranging from the bellow or moan of a bull to the gallop of hoofed feet. In North America bull roarers were used in weather magic, as amulets (sometimes worn as gorgets), to represent a spirit during initiations, and were probably viewed by some as vision tokens and shamanic tools to drive away evil spirits.⁵⁴

 

Additionally, bull roarers have been universally linked to celestial spirit beings and were carved or painted to acknowledge Orion, thunder, and lightning, linking the bull roarer to fertility and lineage rites. “The name bullroarer is English and probably relates to Orion, who stands in the Milky Way just south of Taurus the Bull and is visible from every part of the globe.”⁵⁵

 

Few bull roarers have been recovered in the Southwest. An elaborately incised wand or bull roarer made from the femur of a grizzly bear and painted with red hematite was recovered from a status burial at Grasshopper Pueblo.⁵⁶ A wooden bull roarer with a perforated hole and wavy incised lines was recovered from the Western Apache; the Eastern Apache did not use the bull roarer.⁵⁷ Bull roarers are featured on Mimbres bowls.⁵⁸  A splinter of soft wood from a flat surface with irregularly spaced incised lines at right angles to the length⁵⁹ was recovered from the Gila Cliff Dwellings which closely resembles the split-stick wands recovered from the Hueco and Upper Gila regions.⁶⁰  These artifacts could be fragments of bull roarers.