EXH2026-051 - secondary catalog

Tswana (seburuburu)

Tswana country (SE Botswana - NW South Africa) - Southern Africa

Play / practical

The oldest musical instrument ever recovered from the ground in Botswana is a bull-roarer, the seburuburu. It was unearthed at the Early Iron Age site of Matlapaneng, on the outskirts of Maun, where the archaeologist James Denbow worked the southern margin of the Okavango Delta. Carved from a roughly worked bone fragment, it had been broken and mended, and carried holes drilled through both ends — some of them repairs — where a string was threaded so it could be whirled around the head to make its roaring sound. It is a little more than a thousand years old and shows the marks of long and careful use. Among the Tswana of more recent record the seburuburu is set down plainly as a child's plaything: J. Tom Brown's Secwana dictionary glosses it as "a whirling toy," and twentieth-century instrument catalogues list it the same way.

The oldest musical instrument recovered from excavations in Botswana is a bull roarer (seburuburu) made of a roughly carved bone fragment. It was unearthed at an Early Iron Age site at Matlapaneng on the outskirts of Maun. This artifact, which had been broken and repaired, had holes drilled through both ends (some as repairs), where it would have been attached to a string and whirled around the head to make a roaring sound; it is a little more than 1,000 years old.

Denbow & Thebe, Culture and Customs of Botswana (2006), p. 195

Object

Bull-roarer (seburuburu) of roughly carved bone, broken and mended, with holes drilled through both ends (some as repairs) for a whirling string; excavated at the Early Iron Age site of Matlapaneng near Maun and dated to a little more than 1,000 years old (Denbow & Thebe 2006, p. 195). Kirby's living specimens are a different matter: he found the Chwana seburuburu 'very roughly constructed', like the Korana one, and figured two (fig. 4.2 nos. 5 and 9) plus a photograph of a Bangwaketse boy from Kanye holding his (fig. 4.1, the chapter's frontispiece plate).

Function

Kirby, from fieldwork: the seburuburu 'is now merely a child's toy'. The word 'now' is his - the thousand-year-old Matlapaneng specimen is the same instrument in the same country long before that. Seburuburu is the instrument's Chwana name.

Map confidence

medium_high - SE Botswana Tswana heartland

Source location

Page references

Denbow & Thebe p. 195 (note 10, p. 219); Marcuse s.v. seburuburu; Levine pp. 159-160 area; Kirby 2013 ed., p. 100, figs. 4.1 and 4.2 nos. 5, 9

• Toy / secular survival

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