No. MUS2026-041
Luana murup of the Lower Ramu
Melanesia, Papua New Guinea · Oceania · Sahul
Function not recorded
luana murup
Source term: bull-roarer
luana murup: the local name. Blackwood's Bosmun labels give murup also to two carved masks and a carved figure hung in houses, and murup pungum to a painted mask (PRM 1938.36.1396, .1397, .1517, .1518). Across Madang and much of New Guinea murup is glossed as spirit, or the soul of the dead.
Luana murup, the Bosmun of the Lower Ramu called this carved and incised blade, more than half a metre long. Murup was a word with reach in their villages. When Beatrice Blackwood collected among them before 1937, the same name went on two red-painted carved masks and on a carved figure hung up in the houses, and a white-painted mask was murup pungum. Among the Bosmun the voice of the spirits belongs to the paired sacred bamboo flutes of male initiation.
She worked in New Guinea and New Britain for nearly 18 months. As a result of this trip well over 2,000 objects were accessioned into the collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum.
Pitt Rivers Museum, Beatrice Blackwood biography (prm.ox.ac.uk/b-blackwood.html)
Particulars
- Object
- Bull-roarer of the Bosmun, Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford (acc. 1938.36.1562).
- Function
- Not recorded.
Source
Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, acc. 1938.36.1562, collected by Beatrice Blackwood on the Lower Ramu River by 1937; companion Blackwood/Bosngun accessions sharing the name murup: PRM 1938.36.1396 and 1938.36.1397 (red masks), 1938.36.1517 (figure hung in houses), 1938.36.1518 (murup pungum mask); B. Blackwood, "Some arts and industries of the Bosmun, Ramu River, New Guinea," Südseestudien (Gedenkschrift Felix Speiser), Basel, 1951