{"id":"MUS2026-028","label":"Half-metre Bensbach blade, two fingers wide","people_or_site":"Bensbach","country_current":"Papua New Guinea","historic_region":"Western Province (Morehead)","macroregion":"Oceania / Sahul","local_name":"","source_term":"bull-roarer","source_language":"English","object_description":"Long, thin, undecorated bull-roarer of dark wood, 515 x 33 mm, a single hole at the wider end retaining a short cord remnant; collected by the Cooke Daniels expedition 1904-05 (Cooke Daniels number 49) and donated to the Pitt Rivers Museum in 1905 (PRM 1905.63.49). A second blade from the same expedition, in the British Museum (Oc1906,1013.1452; given by C. G. Seligman in 1906), is an ovoid palmwood blade 40.3 cm long and stained red, with an incised line and a small perforation near one end, scratched marks on the reverse including one shaped like the letter K, and its twisted coconut-fibre cord still threaded through the hole.","function_summary":"Not recorded.","attestation_type":"museum_specimen","source_key":"pitt_rivers","source_type":"museum_collection","source_url":"https://prm.ox.ac.uk/collections-online#/item/prm-object-39730","page_or_plate":"PRM 1905.63.49; Balfour, PRM Curator's Report 1905, Cooke Daniels accessions list ('bull-roarer, Bensbach River'); comparison: BM Oc1906,1013.1448; BM Oc1906,1013.1452","map_confidence":"medium","plot_status":"plot","coordinate_basis":"approximate culture/locality centroid","jade_complex_role":"","blurb":"A dark wooden blade half a metre long and scarcely two fingers wide, a scrap of cord still threaded through the hole at its wider end. The Cooke Daniels expedition carried it out of the Bensbach River country of the far southwest in 1904-05 — one of three bull-roarers it brought home from separate corners of British New Guinea — and Henry Balfour entered it at the Pitt Rivers Museum as simply 'bull-roarer, Bensbach River.' A sister blade at the British Museum, 'Bensbach' handwritten across the wood, was later second-guessed as work from Waima, a Roro-speaking town on the distant coast; this one kept its river. Another Daniels blade at the British Museum kept both its river and its cord: red-stained palmwood, a K-shaped scratch on its back, the twisted coconut fibre still run through the hole. What the roarer meant to the people of the trans-Fly went unwritten.","pull_quote":"bull-roarer, Bensbach River","pull_quote_translation":"","pull_quote_cite":"Henry Balfour, \"Report of the Curator of the Pitt-Rivers Museum, 1905,\" Cooke Daniels Expedition accessions list","term_gloss":"","cls":"unknown","class_label":"Function not recorded","color":"#6B7884","is_candidate":false,"flags":[],"f_jade_complex":false,"f_women_taboo":false,"f_women_special":false,"f_snake":false,"sources":[{"citation":"Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, 1905.63.49 (Cooke Daniels expedition no. 49); Henry Balfour, 'Report of the Curator of the Pitt-Rivers Museum, 1905'; British Museum Oc1906,1013.1448 (comparison); British Museum Oc1906,1013.1452 (Daniels Ethnographical Expedition, Bensbach River, 1903-04; Seligman donation 1906)","url":"https://prm.ox.ac.uk/collections-online#/item/prm-object-39730","archive":"https://web.archive.org/web/20260917174840/https://prm.ox.ac.uk/collections-online#/item/prm-object-39663"}],"source_citations":"Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, 1905.63.49 (Cooke Daniels expedition no. 49); Henry Balfour, 'Report of the Curator of the Pitt-Rivers Museum, 1905'; British Museum Oc1906,1013.1448 (comparison); British Museum Oc1906,1013.1452 (Daniels Ethnographical Expedition, Bensbach River, 1903-04; Seligman donation 1906)","source_display":"Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, 1905.63.49 (Cooke Daniels expedition no. 49); Henry Balfour, 'Report of the Curator of the Pitt-Rivers Museum, 1905'; British Museum Oc1906,1013.1448 (comparison); British Museum Oc1906,1013.1452 (Daniels Ethnographical Expedition, Bensbach River, 1903-04; Seligman donation 1906)","date_citation_display":"","object_display":"Long, thin, undecorated bull-roarer of dark wood, 515 x 33 mm, a single hole at the wider end retaining a short cord remnant; collected by the Cooke Daniels expedition 1904-05 (Cooke Daniels number 49) and donated to the Pitt Rivers Museum in 1905 (PRM 1905.63.49). A second blade from the same expedition, in the British Museum (Oc1906,1013.1452; given by C. G. Seligman in 1906), is an ovoid palmwood blade 40.3 cm long and stained red, with an incised line and a small perforation near one end, scratched marks on the reverse including one shaped like the letter K, and its twisted coconut-fibre cord still threaded through the hole.","function_display":"Not recorded.","confidence_display":"medium","attestation_label":"museum specimen","etymology_hedge":"","people_key":"bensbach","display_name":"Half-metre Bensbach blade, two fingers wide","image":{"full":"assets/objects/prm/prm_39730.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/prm/thumbs/prm_39730_thumb.jpg","alt":"The Bensbach River bullroarer from the Cooke Daniels expedition: a long dark wooden blade tapering toward both ends.","credit":"© Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (acc. 1905.63.49)","license":"© Pitt Rivers Museum — non-commercial/educational reuse with attribution","source_page":"https://prm.ox.ac.uk/collections-online#/item/prm-object-39730","rehosted":true,"representative":false,"caption":"The Bensbach River bull-roarer brought back by the Cooke Daniels expedition.","additional":[{"full":"assets/objects/museum_harvest/bm_E_Oc1906-1013-1452.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/museum_harvest/thumbs/bm_E_Oc1906-1013-1452_thumb.jpg","credit":"© The Trustees of the British Museum (Oc1906,1013.1452)","license":"CC BY-NC-SA 4.0","source_page":"https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/E_Oc1906-1013-1452","rehosted":true,"representative":false,"caption":"Second Daniels blade from the Bensbach, red-stained palmwood with its coconut-fibre cord."},{"full":"assets/objects/museum_harvest/bm_E_Oc1906-1013-1448.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/museum_harvest/thumbs/bm_E_Oc1906-1013-1448_thumb.jpg","alt":"Daniels-expedition palmwood blade marked ‘Bensbach’.","credit":"© The Trustees of the British Museum (E/Oc1906,1013.1448)","license":"CC BY-NC-SA 4.0","source_page":"https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/E_Oc1906-1013-1448","rehosted":true,"representative":true,"caption":"Daniels-expedition palmwood blade marked ‘Bensbach’."}]},"slug":"mus2026-028-bensbach"}