No. PNG112
Kutubu amaga, invited initiators
Papua New Guinea · Southern Highlands · Oceania · Sahul
Restricted
amaga
Yaru was still a boy when initiators were invited from Kaibu to Lake Kutubu; he was said to be the first Kutubuan they initiated. Their instrument was the amaga, a small, unornamented palmwood slat. At Wasemi, its local headquarters, F. E. Williams found an initiated interpreter, Waipi, and consulted older initiates too. They could tell him little about the rites beyond their arrival. Williams judged this borrowed cult only half assimilated into lake life: he could record its arrival more fully than its meaning.
even the bullroarer is a recent importation
Gourlay 1975, p. 16, citing Williams 1940a: 14
Particulars
- Object
- A small slat of palmwood, unornamented and ill-shaped in Williams’s description; the specimen he saw was at Wasemi, the cult’s local headquarters.
- Function
- An imported initiation cult: Kaibu initiators were invited to Lake Kutubu, where Yaru was said to have been the first local initiate. Williams found its accounts and significance only sparsely explained.
Source
F. E. Williams, Natives of Lake Kutubu, Papua (Oceania Monograph 6, 1940-41), pp. 3, 14 and 107-108; K. A. Gourlay, Sound-Producing Instruments in Traditional Society: A Study of Esoteric Instruments and Their Role in Male-Female Relations (New Guinea Research Bulletin 60; Canberra and Port Moresby, 1975), p. 16 and Table 1, entry 112