MUS2026-211 - museum specimen

Gulf Province eleven-bullroarer series

Papua New Guinea - Gulf Province (no district or village recorded) - Oceania

Function not recorded

Eleven bullroarers entered the Pitt Rivers Museum in May 1902 from somewhere on the Gulf coast of Papua, running the full range of Gulf forms: a plain notched blade, then shouldered and forked shapes, then blades serrated like teeth, and finally four carved boards — one stained black with a folded-line face in white clay, one carrying a head and zigzags, and the longest, seventy-five centimetres and fish-shaped, ridged its whole length, its fibre string still tied on. Henry Balfour is named as collector, though even that is marked uncertain, and no people is recorded for any of them.

Fish-shaped bull roarer with stylised pattern and face. Inlaid with white clay. Ridge running along the length. Fibre string.

Pitt Rivers Museum catalogue record 1902.16.24 (retrieved 2026-08-01)

Object

Eleven wooden bullroarers accessioned as one series, from 310 to 750 mm long and 44 to 105 mm wide. The series runs the full range of Gulf forms: plain and lightly notched perforated blades at the small end (.16, 310 x 47 mm, notches by the perforation; .18, 418 x 58 mm, plain with a slight fork; .19, 447 x 51 mm, slim with shouldered end), then shouldered and forked blades (.17, 385 mm, pronounced shoulders and a slight ridge at the top; .20, 437 x 71 mm, forked end, shaped shoulders and a small raised oblong at the centre of one face), then serrated forms (.21, 410 x 47 mm, one forked end and one with carved serrated edges, with a length of fibre string; .22, 454 x 44 mm, serrated decoration over about two thirds of its length), and finally large carved and inlaid boards (.23, 742 x 105 mm, stained black, face and folded-line pattern inlaid with white clay, central ridge; .24, 750 x 71 mm, fish-shaped with a stylised pattern and face, white-clay inlay, a ridge running the full length and surviving fibre string; .25, 609 x 83 mm, carved head and zigzags in white-clay inlay with fibre string; .26, 535 x 70 mm, face, lines and dog-tooth shapes in white-clay inlay along a decorated ridge).

Function

Not recorded.

Map confidence

low - Gulf Province regional anchor on the Papuan Gulf coast between the Purari and Kikori deltas. The museum records the province and nothing finer - no district, river or village - so this is a province-level point and must not be read as a collecting locality.

Source location

Page references

PRM catalogue records 1902.16.16-.26 (object irns 39746-39756) with eleven photographs (retrieved 2026-08-01)

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