The Bullroarer Atlas

HH1913-001 - museum specimen

Mekeo, Central Province (PNG)

Papua New Guinea - Central Province - Mekeo District - Oceania - Sahul

Sacred / spirit

The Mekeo bull-roarer collected by Sir William MacGregor, Queensland Museum N.G. 18639, as figured by Hamlyn-Harris in 1913: a spatulate...
The Mekeo bull-roarer collected by Sir William MacGregor, Queensland Museum N.G. 18639, as figured by Hamlyn-Harris in 1913: a spatulate hardwood blade with a single suspension hole, shown beside its plaited bark sheath wound tightly around a separate carrying stick. R. Hamlyn-Harris, Memoirs of the Queensland Museum II (1913), pl. XVII fig. 2 Public domain Image source

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
pp. 25-38, pl. XVII fig. 2 (Q.M. N.G. 18639)

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