{"id":"MUS2026-325","label":"Upper Watut bark-fibre bullroarer","people_or_site":"Anga","country_current":"Papua New Guinea","historic_region":"Oceania -> Melanesia -> Papua New Guinea, East New Guinea  Upper Watut River","macroregion":"Oceania / Sahul","local_name":"","source_term":"Bullroarer","source_language":"English","object_description":"An Anga wooden bullroarer, 230 × 45 mm, still strung with its bark-fibre cord.","function_summary":"Among the Anga of the Upper Watut the bullroarer was hidden in the bush and sounded there, and it was said that a woman who saw one would die.","attestation_type":"museum_specimen","source_key":"prm_2006_87_1","source_type":"museum_collection","source_url":"https://prm.ox.ac.uk/collections-online#/item/prm-object-217166","page_or_plate":"2006.87.1","map_confidence":"medium","plot_status":"plot_with_caveat","coordinate_basis":"Upper Watut River at Otibanda, Morobe (GeoNames 2088895), in the Anga country where Blackwood worked in 1936–37; the museum records the river, not a village.","jade_complex_role":"","blurb":"Blade and cord usually part company long before a bullroarer reaches a museum shelf. This one never did: twenty-three centimetres of Anga wood from the Upper Watut, still rigged with the bark-fibre line that made it speak. The string is the cheap, perishable, replaceable half of the instrument and the half that almost never survives — and without it a bullroarer is only a shaped board. Beatrice Blackwood, who lived on the Upper Watut in 1936-37, wrote down what the string was for. In the Anga myth of the first men a man hears the bullroarer cry, goes and gets one and swings it; a woman comes close and he sends her away. The women do not know about the bullroarer; they must not see it, and if they do they will die; the men hide it in the bush, and it sounds in the bush. When that part of the story was told, the women sitting within earshot were sent away.","pull_quote":"","pull_quote_translation":"","pull_quote_cite":"","term_gloss":"","cls":"restricted","class_label":"Restricted","color":"#A43C2F","is_candidate":false,"flags":["initiation","women_taboo"],"f_jade_complex":false,"f_women_taboo":true,"f_women_special":false,"f_snake":false,"sources":[{"citation":"Pitt Rivers Museum 2006.87.1; An Anga wooden bullroarer, 230 × 45 mm, with its bark-fibre string; Beatrice Blackwood, The Kukukuku of the Upper Watut, ed. C. R. Hallpike (Pitt Rivers Museum, 1978), pp. 124 and 159","url":"https://prm.ox.ac.uk/collections-online#/item/prm-object-217166","archive":"https://web.archive.org/web/20260917174840/https://prm.ox.ac.uk/collections-online#/item/prm-object-39663"}],"source_citations":"Pitt Rivers Museum 2006.87.1; An Anga wooden bullroarer, 230 × 45 mm, with its bark-fibre string; Beatrice Blackwood, The Kukukuku of the Upper Watut, ed. C. R. Hallpike (Pitt Rivers Museum, 1978), pp. 124 and 159","source_display":"Pitt Rivers Museum 2006.87.1; An Anga wooden bullroarer, 230 × 45 mm, with its bark-fibre string; Beatrice Blackwood, The Kukukuku of the Upper Watut, ed. C. R. Hallpike (Pitt Rivers Museum, 1978), pp. 124 and 159","date_citation_display":"","object_display":"An Anga wooden bullroarer, 230 × 45 mm, still strung with its bark-fibre cord.","function_display":"Among the Anga of the Upper Watut the bullroarer was hidden in the bush and sounded there, and it was said that a woman who saw one would die.","confidence_display":"medium","attestation_label":"museum specimen","etymology_hedge":"","people_key":"anga","display_name":"Upper Watut bark-fibre bullroarer","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":false,"caption":"The Upper Watut bullroarer with its bark-fibre cord and Blackwood's 1937 tag.","last_modified":"2026-09-01"},"slug":"mus2026-325-anga"}