The Bullroarer Atlas

No. PNG73

Utuwala

Papua New Guinea · Milne Bay · Oceania · Sahul

Function not recorded

A long reddish-brown lance-shaped bullroarer with pale-filled face and geometric carving across much of the blade, and cord threaded through its carved end.
Plate I. Representative — not this record’s object. A long lance-shaped bull-roarer. Image source

Utuwala is one of the rare places in eastern Papua where the bullroarer is found at all, and it kept a sacred flute besides. K. A. Gourlay called this stretch of the Central and Milne Bay districts the "Eastern Papua area of significant absence," where bullroarer, sacred flute and slit-gong turn up in only a small minority of places. What Utuwala did with its pair went unrecorded.

Nowhere, however, are their uses of sufficient importance in the esoteric field to undermine the general tendency.

Gourlay 1975, Sound-Producing Instruments in Traditional Society (New Guinea Research Bulletin No. 60), p. 16

Particulars

Function
Not recorded.

Source

K. A. Gourlay, Sound-Producing Instruments in Traditional Society: A Study of Esoteric Instruments and Their Role in Male-Female Relations (New Guinea Research Bulletin 60; Canberra and Port Moresby, 1975), Table 1, p. 7, entry 73, and p. 16

View the source

  • Awaiama and TaupotaPapua New Guinea · Milne Bay · Sacred / spirit
  • TopuraPapua New Guinea · Milne Bay · Restricted
  • Baluan IslandPapua New Guinea · Manus · Function not recorded
  • HubePapua New Guinea · Morobe · Function not recorded
  • KurtiPapua New Guinea · Manus · Function not recorded
  • MaisinPapua New Guinea · Northern · Function not recorded

Part of The Bullroarer Atlas, companion to The Eve Theory of Consciousness.