MUS2026-062 - museum specimen
Sawos
Papua New Guinea - Torembi, East Sepik - Oceania - Sahul
Function not recorded
Source term: bull-roarer
Whirled on a cord, its roar was made the voice of a spirit: along the Middle Sepik the bull-roarer's rising drone stood in for the cry of a mythical being. Its makers were the Sawos, farmers of Torembi, who live by clans that each guard their own ancestors and totemic beings as carved figures kept in the men's ceremonial house. No rite survives attached to this particular blade, but that spirit-haunted house of the men is the world it once sounded in.
Zoemhout
Wereldmuseum / NMVW WM-54658
- Object
- Zoemhout / bull-roarer, Wereldmuseum WM-54658; culture field Sepik-culturen; place Torembi.
- Function
- Not recorded.
- Map confidence
- medium - approximate culture/locality centroid
- Source location
- WM-54658