The Bullroarer Atlas

EXH2026-055 - secondary catalog

Mawai

Papua New Guinea - Mawai (Waria watershed) - Oceania

Restricted

A palmwood bull-roarer from the Bensbach River, a slender blackened blade pierced near one tip, collected on the 1903–04 Cooke Daniels...
Representative image. A palmwood bull-roarer from the Bensbach River, a slender blackened blade pierced near one tip, collected on the 1903–04 Cooke Daniels expedition; a representative New Guinea piece, not the Mawai object documented here. © The Trustees of the British Museum (E/Oc1906-1013-759) CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Image source

Source term: bullroarer

Break a taboo during the initiation season and the valley heard about it. Among the Mawai of the Waria, in the forested ranges of southeast New Guinea, the bullroarer was swung not to summon a spirit but as the answer to an offence: when any prohibition of the initiation period was violated, the slat was set roaring over the boys' seclusion. The government anthropologist E.W.P. Chinnery recorded the custom in the 1920s; what the sound forbade, and to whom, he left unwritten.

the Mawai bullroarer is sounded for any offence against taboos committed during the initiation period

Gourlay 1975, citing Chinnery ndC:61
Object
Bullroarer sounded for offences against initiation-period taboos.
Function
Mawai bullroarer sounded for offences against taboos during the initiation period; no women-specific prohibition or positive female link is stated in the recovered local passage.
Map confidence
medium - Mawai (Waria watershed), approximate
Source location
Gourlay; Chinnery ndC:61 via Gourlay

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