The Bullroarer Atlas

EXH2026-038 - museum specimen

Biliau village area, Rai Coast

Papua New Guinea - Biliau, Rai Coast (Madang, near Saidor) - Oceania

Function not recorded

A zoemhout — "buzzing wood" — from Astrolabe Bay, its blade carved with a band of diamond and chevron ornament near the cord hole; a specimen...
A zoemhout — "buzzing wood" — from Astrolabe Bay, its blade carved with a band of diamond and chevron ornament near the cord hole; a specimen from the coast nearest Biliau, though not the 47 cm, twice-notched example from the Höltker collection described here. Collectie Wereldmuseum (Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen), WM-31841 CC BY-SA 4.0 Image source

Source term: Schwirrholz

Schwirrholz = German for bullroarer (literally "whirring wood").

A 47-centimetre bullroarer cut with two notches at its upper end, collected near Biliau on the Rai Coast and now held at the University of Fribourg among the objects assembled by Georg Höltker, the Society of the Divine Word missionary who worked the northeast coast of New Guinea between 1936 and 1939. Höltker reproduced it as figure 8 in his survey of Rai-Coast material culture for the 1965 festschrift honouring the Basel ethnologist Alfred Bühler, where he set the spun slat alongside the tapa cloaks, pubic bands, and house ornament of the same stretch of the Madang coast and reviewed the earliest written notices of the instrument.

Schwirrholz aus der Gegend von Biliau (Rai-Küste)

Bullroarer from the Biliau region (Rai Coast)

Höltker, "Tapa-Mäntel und Schambinde, Schwirrholz und Häuserschmuck von der Rai-Küste," Festschrift Alfred Bühler (Basel 1965), fig. 8
Object
Bullroarer 47 cm with two notches at the upper end; Universite de Fribourg, Collection Hoeltker Nr. 578; figured Festschrift Buhler fig. 8 p. 216.
Function
Biliau specimen/locality attestation; function not recovered from the checked snippet.
Map confidence
medium_high - Biliau near Saidor, Rai Coast
Source location
Festschrift Alfred Bühler (Basel 1965), p. 216, fig. 8 (Sammlung Höltker, Universität Fribourg, Nr. 578)

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