{"id":"MUS2026-021","label":"Embungumbungu, a children's plaything","people_or_site":"Ovimbundu","country_current":"Angola","historic_region":"Elende, central Angola","macroregion":"Africa / Southern Africa","local_name":"embungumbungu","source_term":"bull-roarer","source_language":"English","object_description":"Bull-roarer of the Ovimbundu, in the collection of Field Museum (FM Anthropology 208743).","function_summary":"A children's plaything; among the Ovimbundu the bull-roarer was used only as a toy.","attestation_type":"museum_specimen","source_key":"field_museum","source_type":"museum_collection","source_url":"https://collections-anthropology.fieldmuseum.org/catalogue/208743","page_or_plate":"FM Anthropology 208743; Hambly 1934 p. 221 and p. 332","map_confidence":"medium","plot_status":"plot","coordinate_basis":"approximate culture/locality centroid","jade_complex_role":"","blurb":"Swung on its cord, the bull-roarer makes the droning roar that across much of the world is a spirit's voice — sounded in secret men's rites, hidden from women on pain of death. Among the Ovimbundu of Angola's central highlands it carries none of that weight. When Wilfrid Hambly collected at Elende in the early 1930s, he found the instrument only in the hands of children, a plaything and nothing more; the sacred voice heard elsewhere is here, he notes plainly, used only as a toy.","pull_quote":"among the Ovimbundu the instrument is used only as a toy","pull_quote_translation":"","pull_quote_cite":"Hambly, The Ovimbundu of Angola (1934), p. 332","term_gloss":"","cls":"play_practical","class_label":"Play / practical","color":"#24766D","is_candidate":false,"flags":["toy_survival"],"f_jade_complex":false,"f_women_taboo":false,"f_women_special":false,"f_snake":false,"sources":[{"citation":"Field Museum, Anthropology object 208743","url":"https://collections-anthropology.fieldmuseum.org/catalogue/208743","archive":"https://web.archive.org/web/20261013015555/https://collections-anthropology.fieldmuseum.org/catalogue/208743"},{"citation":"Hambly, The Ovimbundu of Angola (1934), pp. 221, 332"}],"source_citations":"Field Museum, Anthropology object 208743; Hambly, The Ovimbundu of Angola (1934), pp. 221, 332","source_display":"Field Museum, Anthropology object 208743; Hambly, The Ovimbundu of Angola (1934), pp. 221, 332","date_citation_display":"","object_display":"Bull-roarer of the Ovimbundu, in the collection of Field Museum (FM Anthropology 208743).","function_display":"","confidence_display":"medium","attestation_label":"museum specimen","etymology_hedge":"","people_key":"ovimbundu","display_name":"Embungumbungu, a children's plaything","image":{"full":"assets/objects/museum_harvest/bm_E_Af1937-0312-71.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/museum_harvest/thumbs/bm_E_Af1937-0312-71_thumb.jpg","alt":"Long orange-brown wooden bullroarer collected in Angola in 1937, with a pointed blade, cord at one end and several fibre strips wrapped around its middle.","credit":"© The Trustees of the British Museum (E/Af1937-0312-71)","license":"CC BY-NC-SA 4.0","source_page":"https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/E_Af1937-0312-71","rehosted":true,"representative":true,"caption":"Angolan bullroarer with attached cord.","pool_id":"auto-museum_harvest--bm_E_Af1937-0312-71"},"slug":"mus2026-021-ovimbundu"}