The Bullroarer Atlas

No. PNG129

Dom / Sinasina

Papua New Guinea · Chimbu · Oceania · Sahul

Restricted

Cord-wound oval New Guinea bullroarer with an old accession tag.
Plate I. Representative — not this record’s object. Cord-wound oval New Guinea bullroarer with an old accession tag. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · Image source

High in the Simbu valleys of the New Guinea Highlands, among the Dom-speaking farmers of Sinasina, the bullroarer belonged to the men's cult sphere. Highland esoteric sound was above all the realm of the paired sacred flutes, blown at initiation as spirit voices; where the bullroarer occurs in these valleys it took a subsidiary part in that same hidden world — an instrument of the cults rather than of the open air.

Particulars

Function
Used in initiation or subject to restrictions between the sexes. A subsidiary instrument in the men's cults beside the sacred flutes.

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 and Port Moresby, 1975), p. 3 and Table 1, p. 8, entry 129

View the source

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