PNG148 - ethnographic attestation
Mowehafen
Papua New Guinea - West New Britain - Oceania - Sahul
Sacred / spirit
Source term: bullroarer / sacred flute / slit-gong flags
Each year on the south coast of West New Britain, boys bought their way into a circumcision cult with shell money, del, as a masked spirit named Mewo — cone-hatted, sheathed in banana leaves — emerged from a house set apart from the village. Above the rite swung the bullroarer, a wooden lancet on a three-metre cord whirled from a long pole: its drone was the voice of a spirit forbidden to women. The women cooked the feast but were barred from it, leaving the food at the ground's edge. Richard Parkinson recorded it at Möwehafen in 1907.
- Object
- Exact Arawe Pagiwar objects PRM 1938.36.1316 and 1938.36.1317 from Kandrian (Moewehafen): plain elongated wooden slats with terminal attachment points, the smaller retaining its cord.
- Function
- Gourlay source-catalog row with bullroarer use in PNG/Melanesia.
- Map confidence
- medium - representative on-land anchor at Mowehafen (regional coordinate fell just offshore of the rendered coastline); not an exact findspot
- Source location
Page references
Table 1, row 148; PRM 1938.36.1316-.1317
- Women-linked