PNG22 - ethnographic attestation
Banaro
Papua New Guinea - East Sepik - Oceania - Sahul
Restricted
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
- Forbidden to women
- Women-linked