No. MUS2026-126
Sissano's metre-long giant
Papua New Guinea · Sissano villages, Aitape coast, West Sepik (former German New Guinea) · Oceania
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.
Particulars
- 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.
- Function
- No use or performance account was recorded.
Source
Übersee-Museum Bremen, D11950 (coll; Ludwig Cohn before 1913; probable Sissano provenance)