The Bullroarer Atlas

PNG22 - ethnographic attestation

Banaro

Papua New Guinea - East Sepik - Oceania - Sahul

Restricted

Bull-roarer with original fiber cord, collected in the 'grass country' between the Sepik and Keram Rivers — the Banaro homeland; the museum...
Representative image. Bull-roarer with original fiber cord, collected in the 'grass country' between the Sepik and Keram Rivers — the Banaro homeland; the museum record gives locality, not people. A representative regional piece; not confirmed as a Banaro object. Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, Division of Anthropology (YPM ANT 249221) CC0 Image source

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

Among the Banaro of the middle Keram River, in the East Sepik of Papua New Guinea, the most important supernaturals are the ghosts of the ancestors and the mischievous goblins. Each hamlet keeps one communal structure recorded in the ethnographic literature as the "goblin hall," and boys and girls alike pass through initiation, the girls marrying shortly afterward. Gourlay's 1975 survey of esoteric New Guinea instruments lists the Banaro among the peoples holding both the bullroarer and the sacred flute, the instruments by which such spirits are conventionally given a voice in the Sepik.

The most important supernaturals are the ghosts of the ancestors and the mischievous goblins, or minor spirit beings. Each hamlet also includes one communal structure, sometimes referred to as the "goblin hall."

"Banaro," Encyclopedia of World Cultures, citing Thurnwald 1916, Banaro Society (AAA Memoirs 3:4)
Object
bullroarer occurrence; bullroarer use; sacred flute occurrence; sacred flute use
Function
Gourlay source-catalog row with bullroarer use in PNG/Melanesia.
Map confidence
medium - alias_area
Source location
Table 1, row 22

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