PNG46 - ethnographic attestation
Sio
Papua New Guinea - Morobe - Oceania - Sahul
Sacred / spirit
Source term: bullroarer / sacred flute / slit-gong flags
Among the Sio, an Austronesian-speaking people of the Huon coast in Morobe Province, the bullroarer was one of the ordinary sound-makers, listed alongside wooden hand drums and conch trumpets. For two or three centuries before the Pacific War the Sio lived on a small offshore island; the major ceremonies, including male initiation, came with the rainy season of the northwest monsoon. In those rites a youth's maternal uncle had the leading role, instructing the boys in what the ethnographers recorded simply as "the laws." Initiation of this kind lapsed during the 1920s, the community having converted collectively to Lutheranism in 1919.
Traditional male initiation ceremonies, in which maternal uncles played a key role in instructing youths in "the laws," lapsed during the 1920s.
Harding, "Sio," Encyclopedia of World Cultures, Vol. 2: Oceania
- Object
- bullroarer occurrence; bullroarer use
- Function
- Gourlay source-catalog row with bullroarer use in PNG/Melanesia.
- Map confidence
- high - representative on-land anchor at Sio (regional coordinate fell just offshore of the rendered coastline); not an exact findspot
- Source location
- Table 1, row 46