GERRITS1973-001 - ethnographic attestation
Wosera Abelam (Serangwandu village)
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.
- 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.
- Map confidence
- high - Wosera (southern Abelam) area anchor; Serangwandu village is not in reachable gazetteers - caption-level locality.
- Source location
- PF0153088-PF0153092
- Initiation rite