The Bullroarer Atlas

No. PNG123

Maipka

Papua New Guinea · Western Highlands · Oceania · Sahul

Restricted

A long, tapering wooden blade with fine incised triangles near the pierced end.
Plate I. Representative — not this record’s object. A long, tapering wooden blade with fine incised triangles near the pierced end. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · Image source

At Maipka — the place now called Kol Station, in the Jimi Valley, then administered as part of the Western Highlands — both the bullroarer and the men's sacred flute were in use: paired voices of a men's ceremonial world, bound up with initiation and the rules that kept the sexes apart.

Particulars

Function
Used in initiation or subject to restrictions between the sexes.

Source

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, 1975), p. 3 and Table 1, p. 8, entry 123

View the source

Part of The Bullroarer Atlas, companion to The Eve Theory of Consciousness.