MUS2026-276 - museum specimen
Face carved into a Gulf blade
Papua New Guinea - Papuan Gulf - Gulf Region - Oceania - Sahul
Function not recorded
Source term: Bullroarer
Across the Gulf of Papua the bull-roarer tends to be a figure rather than a plain slat: a body of wood with a head worked at the end where the hole is cut. This nineteenth-century blade belongs to that habit of seeing. The face is not applied to it and not borrowed from a mask — it emerges from the sounding surface itself, hemmed in by dense carved lines, with pigment still lodged in the grooves.
- Object
- Long wooden blade carved with a human face and dense designs, with pigment surviving in the grooves.
- Function
- Not recorded.
- Source
- MIMO/National Museums Scotland A.1951.369; Papua New Guinea, Gulf Region; nineteenth century; wood with pigment; carved designs include a human face
- Source location
Page references
A.1951.369; MINIM_UK_40762
- Source confidence
- low Broad Papuan Gulf regional anchor; no village is recorded.