The Bullroarer Atlas

MUS2026-153 - museum specimen

Kubu (Western Province)

Papua New Guinea - Kubu, Western Province - Oceania

Sacred / spirit

Representative—not this record’s object: Elema Vailala River bull-roarer (British Museum), shown as a regional stand-in; no image of this...
Representative—not this record’s object: Elema Vailala River bull-roarer (British Museum), shown as a regional stand-in; no image of this record’s own object is available yet. © The Trustees of the British Museum, Oc1951,07.9 CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Image source

Source term: bullroarer

bullroarer: English British Museum object type; no Kubu name is recorded.

This was no modest sliver of wood: over ninety centimetres of board painted red, black, white and yellow and dressed with berries, seeds, feathers, gum and rattan — a roarer built to be seen as well as heard, entered in the museum register at once as 'ceremonial.' The Finnish ethnographer Gunnar Landtman brought it back in 1912 from Kubu, a place he locates between Gaima and the Aramia River, in the low country where Kiwai territory on the Fly meets that of the Gogodala.

Ceremonial bullroarer, Kubu.

British Museum, Oc1912,1217.6, 1912 register.
Object
90.5 x 28.5 x 4 cm wooden bullroarer, painted red, black, white, and yellow and ornamented with berries and feathers; materials also include seed, gum, and rattan.
Function
The 1912 register calls it ceremonial; no performance is described.
Map confidence
medium_high - Kubu populated-place anchor in Western Province, matching the British Museum findspot. This is a locality, not a claimed culture centroid.
Source location
Oc1912,1217.6; 1912 register

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