{"id":"SARVASY2014-001","label":"Nungon first-harvest bullroarer, Uruwa valley","people_or_site":"Nungon (Towet, Worin, Kotet)","country_current":"Papua New Guinea","historic_region":"Uruwa River valley / Kabwum District, Morobe Province","macroregion":"Oceania / New Guinea","local_name":"","source_term":"bullroarer","source_language":"English","object_description":"No form or local name recorded; the grammar states only that a bullroarer was sounded.","function_summary":"Sounded at the eating of the first harvest — a meal taken by men and boys in the men's house. Yam and taro plots were planted in strict silence; no further ceremonial meaning is recorded.","attestation_type":"ethnographic_attestation","source_key":"sarvasy2014_nungon_grammar","source_type":"fieldwork_grammar","source_url":"https://researchonline.jcu.edu.au/40832/1/JCU_40832-sarvasy-2014-thesis.pdf","page_or_plate":"p. 25","map_confidence":"medium_high","plot_status":"plot_with_caveat","coordinate_basis":"Centroid of the Towet, Worin, and Kotet village cluster named for the men's houses (OSM village nodes); not an asserted performance findspot.","jade_complex_role":"","blurb":"In the upper Uruwa valley, on the southern wall of the Saruwaged Range, Nungon men's houses stood in Towet, Worin, and Kotet into the 1950s. Yam and taro plots were planted in strict silence; young men came out of the men's house to bless the first plantings by treading on the earth; initiation meant diving deep into a pool of water. And when the first harvest was eaten — a meal for men and boys, taken in the men's house — a bullroarer sounded over it. The linguist Hannah Sarvasy preserved the memory in a single sentence of her Nungon grammar; no one recorded the instrument's name or its shape.","pull_quote":"As elsewhere in Papua New Guinea, a bullroarer would be sounded on the occasion of the eating of the first harvest; this was eaten by men and boys in the men's house.","pull_quote_translation":"","pull_quote_cite":"Hannah Sarvasy, A Grammar of Nungon (2014), p. 25.","term_gloss":"No Nungon-language term for the instrument is recorded.","cls":"sacred","class_label":"Sacred / spirit","color":"#8A5A2B","is_candidate":false,"flags":["agriculture"],"f_jade_complex":false,"f_women_taboo":false,"f_women_special":false,"f_snake":false,"sources":[{"citation":"Hannah Sacha Sarvasy, A Grammar of Nungon, a Papuan Language of Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea (PhD thesis, James Cook University, 2014), p. 25","url":"https://researchonline.jcu.edu.au/40832/1/JCU_40832-sarvasy-2014-thesis.pdf","archive":"https://web.archive.org/web/20250920234225/https://researchonline.jcu.edu.au/40832/1/JCU_40832-sarvasy-2014-thesis.pdf"}],"source_citations":"Hannah Sacha Sarvasy, A Grammar of Nungon, a Papuan Language of Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea (PhD thesis, James Cook University, 2014), p. 25","source_display":"Hannah Sacha Sarvasy, A Grammar of Nungon, a Papuan Language of Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea (PhD thesis, James Cook University, 2014), p. 25","date_citation_display":"","object_display":"No form or local name recorded; the grammar states only that a bullroarer was sounded.","function_display":"Sounded at the eating of the first harvest — a meal taken by men and boys in the men's house. Yam and taro plots were planted in strict silence; no further ceremonial meaning is recorded.","confidence_display":"medium to high","attestation_label":"ethnographic attestation","etymology_hedge":"","people_key":"nungon towet","display_name":"Nungon first-harvest bullroarer, Uruwa valley","image":{"full":"assets/objects/MUS2026-023.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/MUS2026-023_thumb.jpg","alt":"A dark-brown spatulate Masingara bullroarer with a broad rounded blade, narrow neck and long cord looped from its end.","credit":"© The Trustees of the British Museum, Oc1906,1013.152.a","license":"CC BY-NC-SA 4.0","source_page":"https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/E_Oc1906-1013-152-a","rehosted":true,"representative":true,"caption":"Masingara bullroarer from western New Guinea.","pool_id":"new-guinea-bm"},"slug":"sarvasy2014-001-nungon-towet-worin-kotet"}