The Bullroarer Atlas

PNG144 - ethnographic attestation

Baluan Island

Papua New Guinea - Manus - Oceania - Sahul

Function not recorded

A Torres Strait register-card sketch, presented by A. C. Haddon in 1889, of a pointed oval bull-roarer with cord fixed at one end and a...
Representative image. A Torres Strait register-card sketch, presented by A. C. Haddon in 1889, of a pointed oval bull-roarer with cord fixed at one end and a scratched pattern worked into the other; not the Baluan Island object documented here. © The Trustees of the British Museum (E/Oc-89-140) CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Image source

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

Baluan, the southernmost island of the Admiralty group in Manus Province, is known above all for the garamut, the slit-gong hollowed from a single log and beaten to carry messages and drive dances; the rapid, complex garamut playing of Baluan is comparatively highly developed. The bullroarer enters the record more faintly: K. A. Gourlay's 1975 survey of New Guinea sound-producing instruments lists Baluan among its localities, but as a line in a comparative table rather than a described rite, with no surviving account of how the instrument was used here.

Object
bullroarer occurrence; 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 144; regional discussion p. 17; Fig. 2 culture-area map

View source Open this point on the interactive map

  • KurtiPapua New Guinea - Manus - Function not recorded
  • Titans (incl. M'bunai, Rambutyo Island & Mouk)Papua New Guinea - Manus - Function not recorded
  • AwalamaPapua New Guinea - Milne Bay - 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