The Bullroarer Atlas

PNG43 - ethnographic attestation

Tapen

Papua New Guinea - Madang - Oceania - Sahul

Sacred / spirit

A long, slender bull-roarer from Bogadjim on the Rai Coast, collected by Kapitän Rohde in the nineteenth century, chip-carved bands and a...
Representative image. A long, slender bull-roarer from Bogadjim on the Rai Coast, collected by Kapitän Rohde in the nineteenth century, chip-carved bands and a notch-collared point at its head end; the nearest photographed piece to Tapen, in the hills behind the same coast. Übersee-Museum Bremen (D09862), coll. Kapitän Rohde CC BY-SA Image source

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

Among the Tapen of the Rai Coast in Madang Province, the bullroarer is recorded not just as present but as something actively used. The only source is K. A. Gourlay's 1975 survey of esoteric sound-producing instruments, which logs it for the Tapen and preserves nothing further about the rite or the sound.

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 43

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