The Bullroarer Atlas

MUS2026-022 - ethnographic attestation

Cashinahua asu bullroarer (INC 1978)

Peru - Upper Purús - Juruá - South America - Upper Amazon

Function not recorded

Its companion child's rhombe from the same Urubamba accession.
Representative — not this record’s object. · Its companion child's rhombe from the same Urubamba accession Image source

asu Spanish

Source term: bull-roarer

asu — the Cashinahua (Panoan) name for the palo zumbador in the INC register; no gloss or use is recorded with it.

The Cashinahua asu is shaped like a weapon: a thin wooden blade cut as a sharp spear point, decorated, twenty centimetres from base to tip, narrowing to a throat where its cord ties on. Peru's national instrument survey registered it among the Panoan peoples of the eastern forests and could say nothing of its office — the form and the name survive, the purpose was never written down.

Bull-Roarer ... Native Name: "Yae" ... Cashinahua ... Peru | Rio Curanja ... Purchased from Kenneth M. Kensinger, 1965

Penn Museum object record, Cashinahua bull-roarer "Yae," object 295570 (accession 65-10-91)
Object
Palo zumbador of thin wood in the form of a spear point (sharp triangle), decorated, tied by a cord; the registered example measures 20 cm long, 5 cm across the base, narrowing to 1 cm at a throat where the cord is tied.
Function
Not recorded.
Map confidence
medium - approximate culture/locality centroid
Source location
INC 1978, p. 462, no. 9

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