The Bullroarer Atlas

PNG1 - ethnographic attestation

Vanimo (incl. Warimo, Wutung and Yako)

Papua New Guinea - West Sepik - Oceania - Sahul

Function not recorded

A dark wooden blade with a forked fish-tail tip, densely incised over two-thirds of its length with cross-hatched panels, spirals, and a...
Representative image. A dark wooden blade with a forked fish-tail tip, densely incised over two-thirds of its length with cross-hatched panels, spirals, and a central star motif, the rest left plain toward the point - a generic New Guinea bullroarer, not the object specific to the sacred-flute and slit-gong practices of Vanimo, Warimo, Wutung, and Yako documented here. © The Trustees of the British Museum (E/Oc1951-07-9) CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Image source

Source term: bullroarer / sacred flute / slit-gong flags

diwana = Vanimo sacred flute, named in the origin myth from diwa, "early morning," the time the first flute was cut; mumona = Vanimo slit-gong.

At the far northwestern corner of New Guinea, where the Sko-speaking villages of Warimo, Wutung and Yako run up to the Indonesian border, K. A. Gourlay's survey of the country's secret instruments records the Vanimo bullroarer, sacred flute and slit-gong all in use. The instrument that carries the cult here, though, is the flute: paired clan voices Gourlay calls "dual spirits," revealed to Vanimo youths shut in the men's house at puberty, and carried into the bush to be blown before fights, at harvest and on the hunt. The bullroarer is logged only as present, on the bare instrument list E. W. P. Chinnery compiled as the administration's government anthropologist; what the Vanimo did with their bullroarer, as opposed to their flutes, no one wrote down.

Vanimo (A) flutes may be blown before fights or food harvest and on extensive hunts are taken into the bush and blown to help the hunt (Thomas 1941: 185). (Compare the use of the bullroarer among the Ngaing.)

K. A. Gourlay, Sound-producing instruments in traditional society (New Guinea Research Bulletin no. 60, ANU, 1975), p. 60, citing K. H. Thomas, Oceania 12 (1941): 185
Object
bullroarer occurrence; sacred flute occurrence; sacred flute use; slit-gong occurrence; slit-gong use
Function
Gourlay source-catalog row with bullroarer occurrence; function not stated.
Map confidence
high - geocoded
Source location
Table 1, row 1 (West Sepik no.1); initiation revelation pp.50-52; dual-spirit flutes p.54; Vanimo flute myth pp.89-90; flute hunt/harvest use p.60; bibliography (Chinnery n.d. A:48-9; Thomas 1941:183-85)

View source Open this point on the interactive map

  • WapeiPapua New Guinea - West Sepik - Function not recorded
  • AwalamaPapua New Guinea - Milne Bay - Function not recorded
  • Baluan IslandPapua New Guinea - Manus - Function not recorded
  • BarriaiPapua New Guinea - West New Britain - Function not recorded
  • BensbachPapua New Guinea - Western Province (Morehead) - Function not recorded
  • Bola (Bakovi)Papua New Guinea - Willaumez / Talasea Peninsula / West New Britain / New Pommern - Function not recorded