BERN1903-001 - museum specimen
Mangamba / Abo country; ethnic attribution unrecorded
Cameroon - Abo country north of the Mungo River - German Kamerun - Central Africa
Function not recorded
Source term: Surrholz mit Bastschnur
In the Abo country north of the Mungo River, someone strung a wooden blade on a cord of bast — inner-bark fibre. Around 1900 it left Cameroon in a forty-object consignment from the Mangamba mission station, packed among the gear of the Koso and Isango secret societies: their great drum, the bamboo flutes that announced the societies' Sunday, a snake fetish with a carved wooden head and real snakeskin. For the bullroarer itself, Bern's inventory spared three words — Surrholz mit Bastschnur, 'whirring-wood with bast cord.' What it was for, nobody wrote down.
Surrholz mit Bastschnur
Bullroarer with bark-fibre cord
Jahresbericht des Historischen Museums in Bern pro 1903, p. 64
- Object
- Wooden bullroarer with a bark-fibre (bast) cord, listed in the Bern Historical Museum's 1903 printed inventory among the forty-object Wittwer collection from Mangamba; accession number, dimensions, and photograph not yet public.
- Function
- Not recorded.
- Map confidence
- medium_high - Modern Mangamba (Bonaléa commune, Littoral Region) as a regional anchor for the Basel Mission station locality in Abo territory; the museum records give no village of manufacture or use.
- Source location
- 1903 annual report, printed p. 64; 1979 register, printed pp. 192-193