{"id":"BLIER2015-001","label":"A hidden voice on an Ife pot","people_or_site":"Ancient Ile-Ife (florescence-era Yoruba city)","country_current":"Nigeria","historic_region":"Ile-Ife, Osun State","macroregion":"Africa / West Africa","local_name":"","source_term":"bull-roarer; bullroarer","source_language":"English","object_description":"A bullroarer shown in relief on one of ancient Ife's globe-shaped, narrow-mouthed terracotta ritual vessels; the particular vessel is not specified.","function_summary":"Not recorded for the ancient instrument; in later Yoruba practice the bullroarer is the voice of Orò, the executive branch of Ogboni.","attestation_type":"archaeological_find","source_key":"blier2015_art_and_risk_ife_vessels","source_type":"scholarly_monograph","source_url":"https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139128872","page_or_plate":"pp. 102, 140, 146–147, 149","map_confidence":"medium","plot_status":"plot_with_caveat","coordinate_basis":"Ile-Ife city anchor (OpenStreetMap/Nominatim); the bullroarer-bearing vessel is not isolated, so no single findspot among the Ife vessel sites is chosen.","jade_complex_role":"","blurb":"Wood rots in Ife's soil; fired clay keeps its shape. Around 1300, in the ancient Yoruba city, potters made globe-shaped vessels and covered them in relief: shrines, drums, knives and whips, leopards and snakes, severed heads, the staffs of the Ogboni elders. Some were set into the earth at shrines, one beneath a potsherd pavement with only its small mouth showing, perhaps to receive medicines or offerings. One of these vessels carries a bullroarer, the cord-swung wooden blade that in later Yoruba towns announced Orò, Ogboni's fierce enforcers, whose nighttime roar kept every household behind closed shutters.","pull_quote":"A bullroarer of this type is shown on one of these vessels.","pull_quote_translation":"","pull_quote_cite":"Suzanne Preston Blier, Art and Risk in Ancient Yoruba (2015), p. 149","term_gloss":"Orò (“fierceness”): the executive branch of the Ogboni society, identified today with bullroarers. Ogboni: the Yoruba society of elders with judicial authority.","cls":"unknown","class_label":"Function not recorded","color":"#6B7884","is_candidate":false,"flags":["snake"],"f_jade_complex":false,"f_women_taboo":false,"f_women_special":false,"f_snake":true,"f_archaeology":true,"archaeology_kind":"object","date_display":"c. 1250–1435 AD","date_qualification":"Obalara's Land site date applied to the vessel corpus; the bullroarer-bearing vessel is not individually dated.","date_basis":"broad_context","date_confidence":"low","date_citation":"blier2015_art_and_risk_ife_vessels, Blier 2015 p. 140 (Garlake)","sources":[{"citation":"Suzanne Preston Blier, Art and Risk in Ancient Yoruba: Ife History, Power, and Identity, c. 1300 (Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 102, 140, 146–147, 149","url":"https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139128872"}],"source_citations":"Suzanne Preston Blier, Art and Risk in Ancient Yoruba: Ife History, Power, and Identity, c. 1300 (Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 102, 140, 146–147, 149","source_display":"Suzanne Preston Blier, Art and Risk in Ancient Yoruba: Ife History, Power, and Identity, c. 1300 (Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 102, 140, 146–147, 149","date_citation_display":"Blier 2015 p. 140 (Garlake)","object_display":"A bullroarer shown in relief on one of ancient Ife's globe-shaped, narrow-mouthed terracotta ritual vessels; the particular vessel is not specified.","function_display":"Not recorded for the ancient instrument; in later Yoruba practice the bullroarer is the voice of Orò, the executive branch of Ogboni.","confidence_display":"medium","attestation_label":"archaeological find","etymology_hedge":"","people_key":"ancient ile","display_name":"A hidden voice on an Ife pot","image":{"full":"assets/objects/HAD1898-006_maa_1918_74_oro.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/HAD1898-006_maa_1918_74_oro_thumb.jpg","alt":"Abeokuta “Voice of Oro” bullroarer: a slender dark wooden blade with a cord hole near one end and a long, tangled fibre cord.","credit":"Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology, Cambridge, 1918.74","license":"© Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology, University of Cambridge — rehosted low-res for non-commercial research","source_page":"https://collections.maa.cam.ac.uk/objects/527807/","rehosted":true,"representative":true,"caption":"A Yoruba 'Voice of Oro' from Abeokuta, the cord-swung blade of later Orò.","pool_id":"auto-HAD1898-006_maa_1918_74_oro"},"slug":"blier2015-001-ancient-ile-ife-florescence-era-yoruba-city"}