HH1913-001 - museum specimen
Mekeo tabu-proclamation bull-roarer (Q.M. N.G. 18639)
Papua New Guinea - Central Province - Mekeo District - Oceania - Sahul
Sacred / spirit
Source term: bull-roarer
A masked Mekeo man swung this bullroarer when a tabu was laid on the coconut palms. Its roar carried the prohibition farther than a human voice: the sound itself announced that the crop was closed. The slim hardwood blade survives with the plaited bark sheath that concealed it.
Used by masked men... when proclaiming a 'tabu' on cocoanuts.
Hamlyn-Harris, Memoirs of the Queensland Museum II (1913), p. 38
- Object
- Slim spatulate hardwood blade, 38 cm long, pierced at the squared end and kept in a plaited bark sheath; Queensland Museum N.G. 18639.
- Function
- Swung by masked men to proclaim and enforce a tabu on coconuts.
- Map confidence
- medium - Mekeo District centroid (Beipa'a-Veifa'a village cluster); Hamlyn-Harris localises the specimen only to the district.
- Source location
Page references
pp. 25-38, pl. XVII fig. 2 (Q.M. N.G. 18639)
- Agriculture / crop magic