PNG40 - ethnographic attestation
Maclay Coast
Papua New Guinea - Madang - Oceania - Sahul
Restricted
Lyop-lyop English
Source term: bullroarer / sacred flute / slit-gong flags
The "Maclay Coast" is the stretch of Astrolabe Bay in Madang where the Russian naturalist Nikolai Miklouho-Maclay landed in September 1871 and lived among the people of Bongu, Gorendu, and Gumbu, learning the Bongu language and conducting ethnographic work over repeated visits. On this coast the bullroarer belongs to male initiation: the swung blade is counted among the men's costume accessories, and the initiation house, where every boy aged roughly twelve to eighteen is secluded for about a month, stands deep in the forest, kept wholly closed to women and to uninitiated boys. Miklouho-Maclay Foundation expeditions that returned to the same villages in 2017 record the bullroarers of Gorendu under the name Lyop-lyop, carved and painted wooden instruments used during initiation. Gourlay's 1975 survey of New Guinea sound-producing instruments lists the coast as a documented bullroarer site.
male costume accessories during initiation
Miklouho-Maclay Foundation, Maclay Coast Collection catalogue, Lyop-lyop (bullroarer), items 4-6
- Object
- bullroarer occurrence; bullroarer use
- Function
- Gourlay source-catalog row with bullroarer use in PNG/Melanesia.
- Map confidence
- high - geocoded
- Source location
- Table 1, row 40
- Initiation rite