The Bullroarer Atlas

NGUINEA-016 - museum specimen

Bukaua (Bukawa), Huon Gulf

Papua New Guinea - Morobe (former German New Guinea - Nordost-Neuguinea) - Oceania - Sahul

Restricted

A long, dark, finely tapered wooden blade incised along its length with pale linear and geometric patterning, the surface polished to a soft...
A long, dark, finely tapered wooden blade incised along its length with pale linear and geometric patterning, the surface polished to a soft sheen. This is the Bukaua banko lanqua collected on the Huon Gulf, purchased from the physician-ethnographer Richard Neuhauss in 1910. Ethnologisches Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (VI 29955); photo Anika Niemeck CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Image source

banko lanqua

Source term: Schwirrholz

banko lanqua: individually named bullroarer bearing the attribute lanqua 'old' - among the neighbouring Tami this honorific is also a mark of esteem for eminent men, while the Bukawa apply it to bullroarers deserving special respect (Bukawa, Huon Gulf); Bamler 1911: 497 (Tami) and Lehner 1911: 410ff (Bukawa), via Gourlay 1975: 23.

Etymology. The second element is the attribute lanqua, 'old', an honorific which on this coast is applied both to eminent men and to bullroarers deserving special respect; Huon Gulf bullroarers also carry individual names, and the balum songs Neuhauss recorded among the Bukaua speak of individual bullroarer-spirits such as Tangayabo lanqua and Gumba lanqua. Banko itself is not glossed in the sources and is probably this instrument's personal name, giving 'Banko the old'. (medium confidence)

Banko lanqua — "Banko the Old." Among the Bukaua of the Huon Gulf each clan's ruling bull-roarer bore a dead man's name joined to lanqua, "the Old One," and the name doubled as the clan's war-cry; one such roarer, Gumba the Old, was carved with Gumba's own protruding hip-bones. At circumcision hidden roarers gave voice to the monster balum, said to swallow the boys and hand them back as men. This 44-centimetre blade reached Berlin in 1910 from the physician-ethnographer Richard Neuhauss, its own old man's name still on the catalogue.

Schwirrholz, einheimische Bezeichnung "banko lanqua"

Bullroarer, indigenous designation "banko lanqua"

Ethnologisches Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, inv. VI 29955
Object
A long, thin wooden blade, 44 cm long, 6.5 cm wide and 1.5 cm thick, classed by the Berlin museum as a Schwirrholz (bullroarer) and recorded under the indigenous name "banko lanqua". Collected in the Bukaua district on the Huon Gulf and acquired by purchase from the physician-ethnographer Richard Neuhauss in 1910.
Function
Voice of the balum: on the Huon Gulf hidden roarers spoke for the monster said to swallow boys at circumcision, and each clan's ruling roarer bore a dead man's name with the honorific lanqua, "the Old One" — this one is Banko the Old (Lehner 1911).
Map confidence
medium - Representative anchor on the north shore of the Huon Gulf in the Bukaua (Bukawa) speech area, Morobe Province; the museum record localises the object only to "Huon Golf, Bukaua" with no village, so the point marks the Bukawa coastal district rather than a precise find-spot and sits close to the existing Bukawa/Yabim cluster.
Source location
inv. VI 29955

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