The Bullroarer Atlas

MUS2026-301 - museum specimen

Sosom, the giant's voice

Papua New Guinea - Fly River - Western Province - Oceania - Sahul

Restricted

Sosom board 71.1931.49.22: ancestor faces stacked down the blade to a fish-tail butt.
Sosom board 71.1931.49.22: ancestor faces stacked down the blade to a fish-tail butt. Image source
The companion board 71.1931.49.21: a single ancestor figure over a notched fish-tail.
The companion board 71.1931.49.21: a single ancestor figure over a notched fish-tail.

Sosom

Source term: Rhombe

sosom: the name in the museum record; along this coast it is also the name of a giant déma whose voice is the bullroarer.

Two fish-tailed blades came into the Paris collections together in 1931, catalogued to the Fly River with no people named, and with two statements attached: that the roarer sounds as an ancestor's voice, and that women were warned away when it sounded. The name written into the record is heavy on this coast. To the Marind-anim, westward along the shore, sosom is a giant déma whose voice is the bullroarer — and their own telling has the giant arrive ‘from the Fly river.’ Whether the people who cut these blades told that story of him, no one recorded; the name, the fish-tail form, and the river are what connect them.

Object
Two fish-shaped wooden Sosom blades from one 1931 acquisition: a 52 cm blade engraved with a mask, circles and sawtooth designs filled with white lime (71.1931.49.22), and a 46.3 cm palette engraved with a two-headed animal, also lime-filled (71.1931.49.21).
Source
MQB 71.1931.49.22 / object 266722 (52 x 4.5 x 1 cm) and 71.1931.49.21 / object 8828 (46.3 x 8.6 x 0.8 cm, 198 g); former Breton/Eluard sale context
Source location
Page references

71.1931.49.21; 71.1931.49.22

Source confidence
high Fly River regional anchor from the exact record.

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