The Bullroarer Atlas

PNG155 - ethnographic attestation

Mengen

Papua New Guinea - East New Britain - Oceania - Sahul

Sacred / spirit

A long dark bull-roarer blade, carved only near one tip — a small notched tang, zigzag-and-triangle bands, and a slim central column between...
Representative image. A long dark bull-roarer blade, carved only near one tip — a small notched tang, zigzag-and-triangle bands, and a slim central column between them — the remaining two-thirds left plain striated wood; a general Sahul type, not the Mengen object documented here. Kulturhistorisk museum, Universitetet i Oslo (Etnografisk) (UEM32393) CC BY-SA Image source

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

Among the Mengen of New Britain's Pomio coast, both the whirled bullroarer and the paired sacred flutes were kept and sounded — the very instruments that, across Melanesia, men reserve for ceremonies screened from women and children. What the Mengen called them, and the rite they built around them, the record does not preserve; a single 1975 survey of secret sound-makers catches only this much — both instruments here, present and in living use.

Object
bullroarer occurrence; bullroarer use; sacred flute occurrence; sacred flute use
Function
Gourlay Table 1 row 155 records Mengen bullroarer occurrence/use and sacred-flute occurrence/use; no row-local women or initiation passage is recovered.
Map confidence
medium - alias_area
Source location
Table 1, row 155

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  • BainingPapua New Guinea - East New Britain - Restricted
  • Gazelle: GeneralPapua New Guinea - East New Britain - Play / practical
  • Ramuaina / Duke of York IslandPapua New Guinea - East New Britain - Function not recorded
  • SulkaPapua New Guinea - East New Britain - Restricted
  • TolaiPapua New Guinea - East New Britain - Play / practical
  • Astrolabe BayPapua New Guinea - Madang - Sacred / spirit