GERRITS1973-001 - ethnographic attestation
Serangwandu initiation bullroarer, Wosera
Papua New Guinea - East Sepik - Wosera - Oceania - Sahul
Restricted
During an initiation at Serangwandu in the Wosera, the southern country of the Abelam, an initiator showed how the bullroarer makes its voice: he readied the blade inside the palm-frond enclosure, then swung it at high speed in circles around his own body. Fred Gerrits caught the whole sequence on five slides in January 1973 — the preparation, then the blur of the orbiting blade. Photographs of the swing itself, rather than the finished object in a case, are among the rarest documents the instrument has.
- Object
- Painted wooden blade on a cord; photographed in use, swung at high speed in circles around the initiator inside a palm-frond initiation enclosure. A Wosera blade of wood and vegetable fibre, 32 by 9 by 3 centimetres, field-collected in 1986–87, is in the British Museum, Oc1987,05.121: plain, unpainted, and photographed with its cord.
- Function
- Sounded in male initiation: Gerrits's January 1973 slide sequence at Serangwandu shows an initiator preparing the bullroarer and then swinging it at high speed around himself.
- Source
- Musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac, fonds Fred Gerrits (1933-2022), colour slides PF0153088-PF0153092 (cliches 6614-6618), January 1973: 'Initiation in Serangwandu village (Wosera): demonstrating the use of bullroarer'; frame captions 'Initiator preparing to demonstrate how the bullroarer is producing its sound' and 'The bullroarer being swung at high…
- Source location
- PF0153088-PF0153092
- Source confidence
- high Wosera (southern Abelam) area anchor; Serangwandu village is not in reachable gazetteers - caption-level locality.
- Initiation rite