PNG147 - ethnographic attestation
Eklep
Papua New Guinea - West New Britain - Oceania - Sahul
Sacred / spirit
Source term: bullroarer / sacred flute / slit-gong flags
On the south coast of New Britain the bullroarer spoke as a spirit. Swung in the dark at the circumcision of boys, its roar was the voice of a being no woman was permitted to see — so Richard Parkinson set it down in 1907. The Eklep, a coastal people of the Arawe stretch, kept such an instrument, and it is recorded in use among them; but their own ceremony was never written out, leaving only the roar and the silence demanded of women around it.
- Object
- bullroarer occurrence; bullroarer use
- Function
- Gourlay Table 1 row 147 records Eklep bullroarer occurrence/use; no row-local bullroarer women or mask-rite passage is recovered.
- Map confidence
- medium - alias_area
- Source location
- Table 1, row 147
- Forbidden to women