GRETSCHEL1913-001 - museum specimen
Auin (=Auen / Aokhoe) San, Gobabis-Epukiro
Namibia - Gobabis-Epukiro - southern Kaukauveld, German South-West Africa
Play / practical
An Auin hunter swinging this half-meter blade on its leather cord was not making music — he was setting a trap. Gretschel, cataloguing the Hannemann collection in Leipzig, recorded that the board's drone resembles the luring call of the male ostrich, and that hunters sounded it on the hunt to call a female off her nest and shoot her at the closest possible range. Dr. Hannemann, the government physician at Gobabis, collected it among the Auin of the southern Kaukauveld in 1909–1910.
Mehr praktische Bedeutung hat das Schwirrholz, ein langes, an beiden Enden zugespitztes Brett, das an einem Faden in der Luft geschwungen wird... Dann gibt es Töne von sich, ähnlich dem Lockruf des männlichen Straußen. Man benutzt es daher häufig auf der Straußenjagd, um das Weibchen aus seinem Nest zu locken und es möglichst aus der Nähe zu erlegen.
Of more practical importance is the bullroarer, a long board pointed at both ends, swung through the air on a cord... It gives off sounds resembling the luring call of the male ostrich. It is therefore often used in the ostrich hunt, to lure the female from her nest and shoot her at the closest possible range.
Gretschel 1913, p. 112
- Object
- Long light-brown wooden board pointed at both ends, undecorated, on a leather cord; GRASSI Leipzig SAf 01862: 52 cm long (115 cm with cord), 6.5 cm wide, 0.9 cm thick; Hannemann collection, before 1910.
- Function
- Hunting decoy: swung through the air on its cord so that its drone mimics the male ostrich's luring call, drawing the nesting female into close range.
- Map confidence
- high - Gobabis-Epukiro regional anchor for Hannemann's 1909-1910 collecting area; Gretschel names Epukiro, Rietfontein, and Gam but doubts the Gam attribution.
- Source location
Page references
Gretschel 1913, pp. 89-90, 112; Taf. 29, Abb. 6; SAf 01862