MUS2026-126 - museum specimen
Sissano
Papua New Guinea - Sissano villages, Aitape coast, West Sepik (former German New Guinea) - Melanesia
Function not recorded
Source term: Schwirrholz
It’s not about the size, but how you use it. Still, this is a remarkable specimen: a 108.5-centimetre wooden bullroarer, probably from Sissano, and among the longest surviving museum examples. Broad as a paddle at one end, it narrows toward a carved tip; the cord is lost, and Bremen recorded no account of how this giant was put into motion. Psychoanalytic writers have called the bullroarer a phallus—and, in Alan Dundes’s notorious formulation, a “flatulent phallus.” This metre-long example hardly needed their help.
- Object
- A monumental wooden bullroarer, 108.5 cm long, broad and rounded at one end and tapering to a carved terminal form; cord not preserved. Übersee-Museum Bremen D11950.
- Function
- No use or performance account was recorded.
- Map confidence
- medium - Sissano villages, Aitape coast
- Source location
- Übersee-Museum Bremen D11950