The Bullroarer Atlas

MUS2026-356 - museum specimen

Arrow-headed blade with mirrored figure

Papua New Guinea, locality unrecorded - Oceania - Sahul

Function not recorded

NMM 02374: a 35.5 cm New Guinea blade, arrow-headed above and pointed below, painted with a mirrored red-and-white hook figure.
NMM 02374: a 35.5 cm New Guinea blade, arrow-headed above and pointed below, painted with a mirrored red-and-white hook figure. Image source
Detail of the arrow head, perforation, cord knot and painted hook figures.
Detail of the arrow head, perforation, cord knot and painted hook figures. Image source
Reverse face, plain dark wood.
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.

a hook-like, symmetrical, red figure, possibly two heads, eyes and bodies that face away from each other

National Music Museum, object 02374, catalogue description
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 eMuseum object 02374; dimensions, form, painted figure, mechanics, and 1978 H. M. Lissauer purchase provenance on the object page
Source location
Page references

Object 02374; image dispatcher 14137/full

Source confidence
low New Guinea centroid because the catalogue gives no locality.

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