{"id":"HAYS1986-009","label":"Menya roarer and the pierced septum","people_or_site":"Menya","country_current":"Papua New Guinea","historic_region":"Menyamya district / Angan language region","macroregion":"Oceania / Sahul","local_name":"","source_term":"bull-roarer","source_language":"English","object_description":"A bullroarer revealed to Menya boys at initiation.","function_summary":"The secret instrument revealed to young boys at initiation, in association with the piercing of the nasal septum.","attestation_type":"ethnographic_attestation","source_key":"hays1986_sacred_flutes","source_type":"scholarly_article","source_url":"https://digitalcollections.ric.edu/record/1736/files/Sacred_Flutes2.pdf","page_or_plate":"pp. 436, 443","map_confidence":"medium","plot_status":"plot_with_caveat","coordinate_basis":"Published Menya language-area anchor near Menyamya; not a performance or object site.","jade_complex_role":"","blurb":"The Menya kept no sacred flutes: in the Highlands survey where nearly every men's cult to their north and west turned on paired bamboo, theirs ran on the bullroarer alone. Like their Angan neighbours in the mountains between the Eastern Highlands and the Morobe and Gulf watersheds, they timed its disclosure to a permanent change in the body — boys learned what the roaring was in association with the piercing of the nasal septum, so that the knowledge and the hole through the nose arrived together.","pull_quote":"bullroarers were the secret instrument revealed to young boys, in association with septum-piercing, in Kapau, Menya, and Wojokeso","pull_quote_translation":"","pull_quote_cite":"Hays 1986:443 (Anthropos 81), citing Simpson 1953:102–105 for Menya","term_gloss":"","cls":"restricted","class_label":"Restricted","color":"#A43C2F","is_candidate":false,"flags":["initiation"],"f_jade_complex":false,"f_women_taboo":false,"f_women_special":false,"f_snake":false,"sources":[{"citation":"Terence E. Hays, 'Sacred Flutes, Fertility, and Growth in the Papua New Guinea Highlands', Anthropos 81 (1986), pp. 436, 443, citing Simpson 1953, pp. 102–105","url":"https://digitalcollections.ric.edu/record/1736/files/Sacred_Flutes2.pdf","archive":"https://web.archive.org/web/20250526055207/https://digitalcollections.ric.edu/record/1736/files/Sacred_Flutes2.pdf"}],"source_citations":"Terence E. Hays, 'Sacred Flutes, Fertility, and Growth in the Papua New Guinea Highlands', Anthropos 81 (1986), pp. 436, 443, citing Simpson 1953, pp. 102–105","source_display":"Terence E. Hays, 'Sacred Flutes, Fertility, and Growth in the Papua New Guinea Highlands', Anthropos 81 (1986), pp. 436, 443, citing Simpson 1953, pp. 102–105","date_citation_display":"","object_display":"A bullroarer revealed to Menya boys at initiation.","function_display":"The secret instrument revealed to young boys at initiation, in association with the piercing of the nasal septum.","confidence_display":"medium","attestation_label":"ethnographic attestation","etymology_hedge":"","people_key":"menya","display_name":"Menya roarer and the pierced septum","image":{"full":"assets/objects/prm/prm_217166.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/prm/thumbs/prm_217166_thumb.jpg","alt":"The Upper Watut Anga bullroarer, a dark wooden blade with bark-fibre cord wound around it and Blackwood’s 1937 tag attached.","credit":"© Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (acc. 2006.87.1)","license":"© Pitt Rivers Museum — non-commercial/educational reuse with attribution","source_page":"https://www.prm.ox.ac.uk/collections-online#/item/prm-object-217166","rehosted":true,"representative":true,"caption":"Anga bullroarer with bark-fibre cord, collected on the Upper Watut in 1937.","pool_id":"auto-prm--prm_217166","last_modified":"2026-09-06"},"slug":"hays1986-009-menya"}