WIRZ1925-001 - ethnographic attestation
Marcer-anim Sosom blades
Indonesia - Dutch South New Guinea, Torassi (Bensbach) River - Oceania
Restricted
sosom
Source term: Schwirrhölzer (Sosom)
sosom: the Marind name for the bullroarer and for the giant dema whose voice it is.
Paul Wirz called these three blades Sosom, after the giant whose roar the Marind men turned loose on their boys at initiation, the giant said to swallow them whole. They came from the Marcer-anim on the Torassi, the river that now marks the border between Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, and the Torassi lay on Sosom's own road. The initiates told Wirz that Sosom still lived somewhere along the British coast to the east, and that his cult and his bullroarer had come west from there. One Torassi blade is cut with interlocking hooks; another carries a small carved figure above a band of crossed lines.
Schwirrhölzer (Sosom) von den Marcer-anim am Torassi-Fluß.
Bullroarers (Sosom) from the Marcer-anim on the Torassi River.
Paul Wirz, Die Marind-anim, Teil III (1925), key to Tafel 6, figs. 17–19
- Object
- Three palm-wood bullroarers, biconvex in section and apparently of Caryota wood; one carved with interlocking hooks, two carved on both faces, one of them with a figure above a band of crossed lines.
- Function
- Sosom bullroarers, the voice of the giant Sosom in the men's secret cult and its initiation.
- Source
- Paul Wirz, Die Marind-anim von Holländisch-Süd-Neu-Guinea, Teil III (Hamburg: L. Friederichsen, 1925), Tafel 6, figs. 17–19, with the plate key (Verzeichnis der Tafeln)
- Source location
Page references
Tafel 6, figs. 17–19 and key; Sosom cult and the Schwirrholz pp. 33–46 (eastern origin p. 44)
- Source confidence
- medium
- Location note
- Lower Torassi (Bensbach) River, Dutch bank; Wirz names the river, not a village. Offset west of the PNG-side Bensbach museum points.
Regions: Sahul · New Guinea · Melanesia
- Spirit voice
- Snake-linked
- Initiation rite
- Forbidden to women