HAYS1986-012 - ethnographic attestation
Binumarien roarer without flutes
Papua New Guinea - Eastern Family language region - Oceania - Sahul
Restricted
Source term: bullroarer
No Binumarien term recorded by Hays.
The Binumarien break the regional pattern twice. Their Eastern Family neighbours — Gadsup, Agarabi, Auyana, Tairora — put novices of ten to sixteen through nose-bleeding, tongue-bleeding, penis-cutting and cane-swallowing, and formally revealed both flutes and bullroarers at the end of it. The Binumarien are recorded with a bullroarer in initiation and no sacred flute at all, and Hays allows that theirs may not have been formally revealed even so.
Here both sacred flutes and bullroarers (except possibly in Binumarien) were revealed formally at the initiation of 10-16 year-old pumara, kumara, or ummara
Hays 1986:444 (Anthropos 81)
- Object
- A bullroarer recorded in Binumarien initiation, with no sacred flutes alongside it; no size, form or local name is recorded.
- Function
- Recorded in initiation, though whether it was formally revealed to novices is left open.
- Source
- Hays 1986 distribution table p. 436: Binumarien; p. 444 notes Binumarien as a possible exception to formal bullroarer revelation
- Source location
- pp. 436, 444
- Source confidence
- medium Binumarien village/language anchor; not an object or performance site.
- Initiation rite