The Bullroarer Atlas

No. MUS2026-109

Pagai's paired bullroarers

Indonesia · Pagai Islands, Mentawai Islands · Southeast Asia

Function not recorded

Two wooden bullroarers from the Pagai Islands: the upper broad blade has crossed V-shaped incisions, while the narrower lower blade has toothed edges; cords trail from both.
Plate I. Two wooden bullroarers from the Pagai Islands, Smithsonian E221881-0. Image source

Source term: bull-roarer

On Pagai, wandering souls had to be called home for the punen. After the invocation, drummers decked the gong with flowers, parents and children crowned themselves too, and when the priest struck the gong everyone filed into the uma. These two bullroarers came from the same islands in 1903; what they were swung for went unrecorded.

Particulars

Object
Two bullroarer specimens from the Pagai Islands, Smithsonian NMNH E221881-0.
Function
Not recorded.

Sources

  1. Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Department of Anthropology, E221881-0 (two specimens), Pagai Islands, Mentawai; gift of William L. Abbott, accessioned 1903. View
  2. E. M. Loeb, “Mentawei Religious Cult,” University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology 25(2) (1929), pp. 203–204, 207–208. View · archived

Part of The Bullroarer Atlas, companion to The Eve Theory of Consciousness.