No. MUS2026-210Oceania
West Papuan clay-filled bullroarer trio
Papua New Guinea (catalogue gives both) · West Papua (catalogue provenance "Indonesia · Papua New Guinea, West Papua", all elements flagged uncertain) · Oceania
Function not recorded Candidate only
Source term: Bullroarer
Three wooden bullroarers survive from West Papua as a single dealer's lot, and the largest is remarkable: a carved board nearly seventy-five centimetres long, its incised patterns packed with pale clay, though no perforation or tie was ever recorded for it. Its two smaller companions keep their fibre ties — one blade ringed with a concentric diamond around its hole, the other notched above a shoulder, both ending in a forked top. No maker, people, or village travelled with the group; only the objects and the carving survive.
Particulars
- Object
- Three wooden bullroarers. The largest is 745 x 130 mm, carved and incised with clay in the worked surfaces; no perforation, notch, tie or cord is recorded for it, and no suspension survives. A second, 317 x 47 mm, has a terminal perforation ringed by a concentric diamond pattern, a forked top and a fibre tie. A third, 445 x 54 mm, has notches above a slight shoulder at the terminal end, a forked top and a fibre tie. On .2 and .3 the surviving ties show single-end free-air rigging.
- Function
- Not recorded.
Source
Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, 1902.68.1-3 (purchased from W. D. Webster, 1902)