The Bullroarer Atlas

PNG9 - ethnographic attestation

Arapesh (incl.Kaboibus)

Papua New Guinea - East Sepik - Oceania - Sahul

Restricted

An incised Sepik-style bull-roarer photographed with its lime spatula, its blade banded with fine carving — a regional specimen, not an...
Representative image. An incised Sepik-style bull-roarer photographed with its lime spatula, its blade banded with fine carving — a regional specimen, not an Arapesh-documented object. University Museum of Bergen (photo: Knut Rio) CC BY-SA 4.0 Image source

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

Among the Arapesh of the East Sepik hills, the voice of the tamberan — the men's cult patron — was the sound of bamboo flutes and booming garamut slit-gongs, told to women and uninitiated children as the cry of a being who lived in the sea and stood tall as a coconut tree. Margaret Mead, who studied the Mountain Arapesh from the hamlet of Alitoa in 1931-32, recorded that women were not permitted to see the tamberan, and that young girls learned to push all thought of it from their minds lest they "endanger the order of the universe"; at initiation the boys learned the secret — the voice was only men with flutes and gongs. The cult could also punish: a man publicly shamed could have the tamberan summoned against his own house, its voice driving the couple out into the night while the men wrecked the wife's pots, net-bag and rings. Far to the east, in the huge lowland village of Ilahita, Donald Tuzin found the same cult grown monumental: at the great yam-harvest ceremonies, initiated men sounded bullroarers and giant voice-amplifying pipes behind the screens as the voices of the spirits — the bullroarer's drone belonging to Lefin, a red-bearded dwarf whose gigantic voice it was said to be.

The 'voice' of this tambaran is a bull-roarer, its eerie sound represented to the uninitiated as the gigantic voice of a dwarf with red hair and beard and a huge mouth with great teeth.

Donald Tuzin, 'Ritual Violence Among the Ilahita Arapesh,' in Herdt (ed.), Rituals of Manhood (1982)
Object
bullroarer occurrence; bullroarer use; sacred flute occurrence; sacred flute use; slit-gong occurrence; slit-gong use
Function
Voice of the men's-cult spirits; at Ilahita the bullroarer's drone was the voice of the spirit Lefin, and during the great yam-harvest ceremonies initiated men sounded bullroarers and giant amplifying-pipes as the spirits' voices.
Map confidence
high - geocoded
Source location
Table 1, row 9; Howes 2015, pp. 155-156; Tuzin 1982 in Herdt, Rituals of Manhood ('Lefin' section)

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  • KwomaPapua New Guinea - East Sepik - Restricted
  • BoikenPapua New Guinea - East Sepik - Restricted
  • WogeoPapua New Guinea - East Sepik - Restricted
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  • BanaroPapua New Guinea - East Sepik - Restricted
  • Murik / Kaup / KerauPapua New Guinea - East Sepik - Restricted