The Bullroarer Atlas

EXH2026-034 - ethnographic attestation

Yimar (Yimas-Karawari area)

Papua New Guinea - Upper Korowori (Karawari) River, East Sepik - Oceania

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A painted flat wooden board from Aurimbit, on the eastern Sepik's southern tributaries: rows of arched, scalloped painted bands run its length...
A painted flat wooden board from Aurimbit, on the eastern Sepik's southern tributaries: rows of arched, scalloped painted bands run its length toward a small knob-shaped handle — the Yimar area documented here, though not the specific object cited in this entry's source. Collectie Wereldmuseum (Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen), WM-51637 CC BY-SA 4.0 Image source

irimundur German

Source term: Schwirrholz

irimundur — the Yimar (upper Korowori River) name for the bullroarer, recorded by Haberland and Seyfarth among the instruments of the men's sphere.

Among the Yimar of the upper Korowori River in the East Sepik, the bullroarer belonged to the men alone. Eike Haberland and Siegfried Seyfarth, in their 1974 monograph on the group, set it among the gear of a sphere closed to women and children — the same male world that produced the carved one-legged hunting-spirit figures kept in the men's house and, when their owners died, carried up to the limestone caves of the hills. They recorded its Yimar name as irimundur.

Object
Bullroarer figured as Abb. 62 (p. 197) in the Yimar monograph.
Function
Part of Yimar men's-cult equipment, restricted to a sphere closed to women and children (Haberland & Seyfarth 1974, Schwirrholz Abb. 62, p. 197).
Map confidence
high - upper Korowori/Karawari river country
Source location
Abb. 62, p. 197; instruments pp. 190-222

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