The Bullroarer Atlas

MUS2026-069 - museum specimen

Kaluli

Papua New Guinea - Mount Bosavi, Great Papuan Pla - Oceania - Sahul

Function not recorded

Kaluli bull-roarer — Wereldmuseum / NMVW (WM-74192).
Kaluli bull-roarer — Wereldmuseum / NMVW (WM-74192). Wereldmuseum / NMVW (acc. WM-74192) Image source

Source term: bull-roarer

"Zoemhout" is Dutch museum cataloguing for "bull-roarer" (literally "humming wood").

A zoemhout, or bull-roarer, catalogued as Kaluli from Mount Bosavi and held as Wereldmuseum WM-74192. The Kaluli are among the most thoroughly recorded sound-cultures in New Guinea — Steven Feld's Sound and Sentiment maps their instruments down to the sob mussel-shell rattle, the uluna jew's harp, and the hand drum heard as a bird's weeping voice — yet no bullroarer carries a ceremony, a spirit-voice, or a prohibition in that literature. The museum line fixes object, culture, and place; what the roar meant on the slopes of Bosavi, if anything beyond play, was never written down.

Zoemhout

Wereldmuseum / NMVW WM-74192
Object
Zoemhout / bull-roarer of the Kaluli, Wereldmuseum / NMVW WM-74192; place Mount Bosavi.
Function
Not recorded.
Map confidence
high - approximate culture/locality centroid
Source location
WM-74192

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