MUS2026-242 - museum specimen
Wabag blade with a carved head
Papua New Guinea - Enga Province - Wabag - Oceania
Function not recorded
Source term: zoemhout / zoemschijf
zoemhout / zoemschijf: Dutch museum terms for a bullroarer or whirring blade.
At Wabag, the provincial seat of the Enga highlands, a dark carved blade narrows toward a forked, animal-like terminal, a band of chevrons cut in below it. One clean hole pierces the neck where its cord once held: the practical mark of a slat made to turn through the air. The Wereldmuseum records the blade from Wabag and calls it a bullroarer; who carved it, and what the creature at its tip meant, the catalogue does not say.
- Object
- A long, dark, flat wooden blade, 49 by 6.5 by 2 cm, tapering to a forked, animal-like terminal with a band of incised chevrons below it, and one clear suspension hole; the cord is missing. Wereldmuseum object WM-54159, collected 28 July 1961.
- Function
- The Wereldmuseum files the blade under spirit-and-ancestor veneration in its subject thesaurus and records it from a 1961 collecting trip; no local name, maker, or performance account is recorded, and the museum flags the entry as possibly unverified.
- Map confidence
- high - Wabag town anchor from GeoNames; the museum names Wabag but does not publish an exact collecting spot.
- Source location
- Wereldmuseum WM-54159