The Bullroarer Atlas

MUS2026-325 - museum specimen

Upper Watut bark-fibre bullroarer

Oceania -> Melanesia -> Papua New Guinea, East New Guinea Upper Watut River - Sahul

Function not recorded

The Upper Watut bullroarer 2006.87.1 with its bark-fibre cord and Blackwood's 1937 tag.
The Upper Watut bullroarer 2006.87.1 with its bark-fibre cord and Blackwood's 1937 tag. Image source

Source term: Bullroarer

Blade and cord usually part company long before a bullroarer reaches a museum shelf. This one never did: twenty-three centimetres of Anga wood from the Upper Watut, still rigged with the bark-fibre line that made it speak. The string is the cheap, perishable, replaceable half of the instrument and the half that almost never survives — and without it a bullroarer is only a shaped board.

Object
An Anga wooden bullroarer, 230 × 45 mm, still strung with its bark-fibre cord.
Function
Not recorded.
Source
Pitt Rivers Museum 2006.87.1; An Anga wooden bullroarer, 230 × 45 mm, with its bark-fibre string
Source location
2006.87.1
Source confidence
medium Upper Watut River regional anchor from the exact record.

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