{"id":"SUBSAH-036","label":"Atakpamé painted Yoruba blade","people_or_site":"Yoruba (Ana-Ife) of Togoland, around Atakpame, central Togo","country_current":"Togo","historic_region":"German Togoland (central plateau, Atakpame country); modern central Togo","macroregion":"Africa / West Africa","local_name":"","source_term":"Bull roarer","source_language":"","object_description":"A painted bull-roarer in the Smithsonian's ethnology collection, exhibited in 1915 among African musical instruments as \"Bull roarer. Jorubas, Togoland.\"","function_summary":"Function not recorded; the object is classed only as a musical instrument in the museum index and the 1915 exhibition catalogue.","attestation_type":"museum_specimen","source_key":"nmnh_279049_yoruba_togoland_bullroarer","source_type":"museum_collection","source_url":"http://n2t.net/ark:/65665/3290c6070-9f1e-4fcf-a77c-e01803259049","page_or_plate":"Museum no. 279049 / catalog E279049-0; Panama-Pacific Exposition exhibits catalogue (Smithsonian, 1915) p. 59, 'Arts of the Africans (Musical)'","map_confidence":"low","plot_status":"plot_with_caveat","coordinate_basis":"Representative anchor at Atakpame, the principal town of the Yoruba (Ana-Ife) of central Togo, who are the 'Jorubas, Togoland' of the 1915 catalogue; the record names the people and region (Yoruba / Togoland) but no exact findspot, and the Leipzig Museum sourced an adjacent object from 'Atakpames, Togoland' on the same page.","jade_complex_role":"","blurb":"Among the Yoruba the whirring blade is the voice of Orò, the ancestral spirit of judgment who appears as sound and never as a body. When it rose over a town a curfew fell -- women and the uninitiated barred their doors, for a woman who saw the thing that made the voice was said to die for it. This painted blade came out of Togoland, from the westernmost Yoruba, the Ana around Atakpamé. A Yoruba bullroarer is Orò's.","pull_quote":"Bull roarer. Jorubas, Togoland, Africa. 279049. Collected by Leipzig Museum of Ethnology.","pull_quote_translation":"","pull_quote_cite":"The Exhibits of the Smithsonian Institution at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, 1915, p. 59","term_gloss":"","cls":"unknown","class_label":"Function not recorded","color":"#6B7884","is_candidate":false,"flags":["women_taboo"],"f_jade_complex":false,"f_women_taboo":true,"f_women_special":false,"f_snake":false,"sources":[{"citation":"Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Department of Anthropology, catalog E279049-0, \"Bull Roarer\" (accession 055702, 1913). Published in The Exhibits of the Smithsonian Institution at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, San Francisco, California, 1915 (Smithsonian, 1915), p. 59: \"Bull roarer; Jorubas, Togoland, Africa. 279049. Collected by Leipzig Museum of Ethnology.\"","url":"http://n2t.net/ark:/65665/3290c6070-9f1e-4fcf-a77c-e01803259049"}],"source_citations":"Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Department of Anthropology, catalog E279049-0, \"Bull Roarer\" (accession 055702, 1913). Published in The Exhibits of the Smithsonian Institution at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, San Francisco, California, 1915 (Smithsonian, 1915), p. 59: \"Bull roarer; Jorubas, Togoland, Africa. 279049. Collected by Leipzig Museum of Ethnology.\"","source_display":"Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Department of Anthropology, catalog E279049-0, \"Bull Roarer\" (accession 055702, 1913). Published in The Exhibits of the Smithsonian Institution at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, San Francisco, California, 1915 (Smithsonian, 1915), p. 59: \"Bull roarer; Jorubas, Togoland, Africa. 279049. Collected…","date_citation_display":"","object_display":"A painted bull-roarer in the Smithsonian's ethnology collection, exhibited in 1915 among African musical instruments as \"Bull roarer. Jorubas, Togoland.\"","function_display":"Function not recorded; the object is classed only as a musical instrument in the museum index and the 1915 exhibition catalogue.","confidence_display":"low","attestation_label":"museum specimen","etymology_hedge":"","people_key":"yoruba togoland","display_name":"Atakpamé painted Yoruba blade","image":{"full":"assets/objects/hunt_2026_10_08/SUBSAH-036_smb_IIIC27355_yoruba.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/hunt_2026_10_08/thumbs/SUBSAH-036_smb_IIIC27355_yoruba_thumb.jpg","credit":"Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Ethnologisches Museum, III C 27355 (coll. L. Frobenius); photo Susanna Schulz","license":"CC BY-NC-SA 4.0","source_page":"https://id.smb.museum/object/255843","rehosted":true,"representative":true,"caption":"A painted Northern Yoruba bullroarer collected by Frobenius."},"slug":"subsah-036-yoruba-ana-ife-of-togoland-around-atakpame-central-togo"}