The Bullroarer Atlas

LOEB1929-007 - ethnographic attestation

Gulf of Papua peoples (Loeb's regional synthesis)

Papua New Guinea - Gulf of Papua - British New Guinea - Oceania

Restricted

Carved Papuan Gulf bull-roarer with white-pigmented scroll and face designs, Gulf Province, PNG — representative of the regional material...
Representative image. Carved Papuan Gulf bull-roarer with white-pigmented scroll and face designs, Gulf Province, PNG — representative of the regional material discussed by Loeb, not an object tied to his initiation account. Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (1918.14.1) Image source

Source term: bullroarer

Masked secret societies around the Gulf of Papua turned the bullroarer's voice into the voice of a malignant god, even while saying the wooden instrument itself had no supernatural power. The boys' initiation centered on revealing what made that sound. Before the secret was disclosed, novices endured harsh treatment, including being made to drink chiefs' urine. In Loeb's 1929 synthesis there was no reported bodily mutilation or death-and-resurrection rite.

It is said not to possess any supernatural power in itself, but is used as the voice of a malignant god or deity. The disclosure of the identity of the bullroarer forms the kernel of the boys' initiation rites.

Loeb 1929:253, Tribal Initiations and Secret Societies (Univ. of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology 25[3])
Function
Bullroarer used as the voice of a malignant god or deity; disclosure forms the kernel of boys' initiation.
Map confidence
low_medium - Representative Gulf of Papua regional anchor for Loeb's synthesis; not a village- or people-specific point.
Source location
p. 253

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