The Bullroarer Atlas

EXH2026-049 - secondary catalog

Moando language area

Papua New Guinea - Moando-Sprachgebiet, NE New Guinea (Madang hinterland) - Oceania

Function not recorded

A dark carved wooden blade from the Huon Gulf, its surface divided into bands of chevrons, faces and circular motifs: a bullroarer collected by...
Representative image. A dark carved wooden blade from the Huon Gulf, its surface divided into bands of chevrons, faces and circular motifs: a bullroarer collected by Neuhauss in 1910, shown for the general northeastern New Guinea form, not the Moando-language object documented here. Ethnologisches Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (VI 29955); photo Anika Niemeck CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Image source

Source term: bullroarers (McLean annotation)

Three voices carried through the inland hinterland behind Madang: the slit-gong's booming signal-code, relayed village to village; the paired bamboo flutes that cry as spirits; and the bullroarer whirling on its cord. A Divine Word missionary, Wilhelm Tranel, set all three side by side on a few pages of his 1952 field notes among the Moando-speaking people. But what the spinning blade summoned here — which rite it opened, who was forbidden to hear it — those brief lines never say, and no ethnographer went back to fill the silence.

slit-gong signals, spirit flutes, bullroarers

McLean, Annotated Bibliography of Oceanic Music and Dance, annotation to Tranel 1952, Anthropos 47:459-462
Object
Bullroarers among slit-gong signals and spirit flutes.
Function
McLean's bibliography annotates Tranel's Anthropos Moando article with slit-gong signals, spirit flutes, and bullroarers; local material supports occurrence only, not a checked ritual or gender claim.
Map confidence
medium - Madang hinterland (Hoeltker's Bogia-area fieldwork region), approximate
Source location
Anthropos 47:459-462 via McLean annotation

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