PNG171 - ethnographic attestation
Buka
Papua New Guinea - Bougainville - Oceania - Sahul
Restricted
Source term: bullroarer / sacred flute / slit-gong flags
At Kurtachi on Buka Passage, gueir bullroarers gave voice to named urar, figures of the dead made for the wapi initiation rite. Beatrice Blackwood, who spent eighteen months there in 1929-31, persuaded young men to draw the urar and part with their bullroarers — spatula-like blades that rumbled low on a cord; some came to her unbidden with bunches of love-magic leaves to trade, taking away her cigarette butts and bandages for their leg ulcers. The same world held the upe, the tall straw initiation hat modelled on the urar's own headwear — today the central emblem of Bougainville's flag.
She persuaded young men to draw pictures of the urar, the spirits of the dead, and acquired from them bull roarers – wooden, spatula-like contraptions that, when swung fast on a rope, made an ominous rumble.
Gordon Peake, "Beatrice's Bougainville," in Unsung Land, Aspiring Nation (ANU Press, 2022), ch. 10, p. 97
- Object
- Buka/Bougainville bullroarers include La Rochelle H.1590, a 54 x 9 x 1 cm terminal-perforated blade, and Kurtachi PRM 1931.86.177-.178, listed as gueir for the wapi ceremony.
- Function
- At Kurtachi, gueir bullroarers belonged to the wapi initiation complex; the roar voiced named urar figures made for the rite.
- Map confidence
- high - geocoded
- Source location
- Table 1, row 171; La Rochelle H.1590; PRM 1931.86.177-.178; PRM 1931 annual report | PRM 1931.86.177–178
- Forbidden to women