The Bullroarer Atlas

No. MUS2026-356

Arrow-headed blade with mirrored figure

Papua New Guinea, locality unrecorded · Oceania · Sahul

Function not recorded

A flat New Guinea blade with an angular arrowhead around its cord hole and a tapered opposite end; red paired hooks and a red arrow are outlined in white on the dark face.
Plate I. A 35.5 cm New Guinea blade, arrow-headed above and pointed below, painted with a mirrored red-and-white hook figure. Image source
Close view of the pointed wooden end, with a cord through its hole and two red, white-outlined hook-shaped figures painted on the dark surface.
Plate II. Detail of the arrow head, perforation, cord knot and painted hook figures. Image source
Reverse face, plain dark wood.
Plate III. Reverse face, plain dark wood. Image source

Source term: bullroarer

No local term or cultural attribution recorded.

Red and white pigment runs across the upper half of this blade in a hooked, mirror-image figure that the museum reads, cautiously, as two heads — eyes, bodies and all — turned away from each other; a red outline carries on down the lower half, and the back is left bare. The wood is 35.5 centimetres long and 8.5 wide at the middle, drawn to a point at the bottom and flaring into an arrowhead at the top, with one small hole bored through the arrow for a very long string. Where in Papua New Guinea it was made, and what it was made for, went unrecorded. It is now in the National Music Museum in South Dakota.

Particulars

Object
A painted wooden blade 35.5 cm long and 8.5 cm across the middle, pointed at the lower end and cut into an arrowhead at the upper, with a red-and-white hook-like figure on its upper half and a single hole through the arrow for a long cord.
Function
Not recorded.

Source

National Music Museum, Vermillion, 02374 (purchased from H. M. Lissauer, 1978)

View the source

Part of The Bullroarer Atlas, companion to The Eve Theory of Consciousness.