The Bullroarer Atlas

NGUINEA-008 - museum specimen

Mali Baining, Iwon (Gazelle Peninsula)

Papua New Guinea - East New Britain - Gazelle Peninsula - Iwon - Oceania

Sacred / spirit

A carved paddle of pale wood, dark diamond ornament painted near the end where a heavy hank of rope is wound — shown for the general New Guinea...
Representative image. A carved paddle of pale wood, dark diamond ornament painted near the end where a heavy hank of rope is wound — shown for the general New Guinea form, not the three palm-wood splint alendanga/anlqiek/galupka bull-roarers used at Iwon in the Mali Baining ceremony. © The Trustees of the British Museum (E/Oc1925-0213-4) CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Image source

alendanga / anlqiek / galupka English

Source term: Bullroarer

Three names recorded by Bateson, one per splint; the accession notes tie the names to the palm wood itself ("The name 'galupka' refers to the wood").

Etymology. Galupka, the name Bateson recorded for the third bull-roarer splint from Iwon, is stated in the accession notes to refer to the wood itself — the palm from which the splint is cut. The instrument thus carries the name of its raw material rather than of a spirit or ceremony. (high confidence)

Gregory Bateson collected these three palm-wood splint bullroarers at Iwon among the Mali Baining in 1927-28, fieldwork that left him frustrated by a people who would not share their religious life with him. Each is a narrow blackish splint with a squared-off pierced end and a pointed tip; one still shows faint touches of white lime. He wrote down a name per splint — alendanga, anlqiek, galupka, names of the palm wood itself — and on 1928.622 the single note that it served in the MENDAS ceremony. Carl Laufer's Mali ethnography supplies the setting Bateson was denied: the cult name of the instrument is auaricha, the voice of the supreme being Rigenmucha, made 'in two forms, a longer and a shorter kind'; Mendas is the mundas initiation; and of a boy who died in seclusion the men would say only that 'the bullroarer killed him.'

Bull-roarer used in MENDAS ceremony. SENO-SKA = wood of ANALGISK - also MANGGRI:GA.

Cambridge MAA 1928.622, accession note
Object
Three palm-wood splint bullroarers from Iwon, MAA 1928.622-624, with pierced ends and cord loops; one accession says the bull-roarer was used in the MENDAS ceremony.
Function
One bullroarer (1928.622) is noted as used in the Mendas ceremony; the other two carry no recorded use.
Map confidence
medium - Representative Iwon / Gazelle Peninsula anchor; not a precise findspot.
Source location
MAA 1928.622-624

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