MUS2026-041 - museum specimen
Bosman
Melanesia, Papua New Guinea - Oceania - Sahul
Function not recorded
luana murup Bosman (Papua New Guinea; language unspecified in source)
Source term: bull-roarer
Local name recorded by the museum as "luana murup." The element murup is widely glossed across the Madang/New Guinea region as spirit or the soul of the dead, but no source consulted states that the roar of this bullroarer is itself a spirit's voice, so the connection is suggestive rather than documented.
A carved and incised wooden bullroarer, more than half a metre long, collected among the Bosngun (Bosman) of the Lower Ramu River in Madang by Beatrice Blackwood before 1937 and given to the Pitt Rivers Museum in 1938. The museum records its local name as "luana murup" and files it among ritual and religious objects, but how it was sounded was not set down. Among the Bosmun the documented voice of the spirits belongs to the paired sacred bamboo flutes of male initiation; whether this bullroarer shared in that cult is not recorded.
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)
- Object
- Bull-roarer of the Bosman, Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford (acc. 1938.36.1562).
- Function
- Not recorded.
- Map confidence
- low - approximate culture/locality centroid
- Source location
- 1938.36.1562