MUS2026-082 - museum specimen
Comcaac (Seri), Bahia de Kino
Mexico - Bahia de Kino (Kino Bay), Hermosillo Municipality, Sonora - North America
Function not recorded
Source term: bull-roarer
A Seri bull-roarer of ironwood, made in 1959 — two oval blades, dark brown and black, smoothed thickest at the center and tapering to thin edges. A leather thong runs through holes at one end, doubled back on itself and lashed tight with white string; the whole piece runs 123 centimeters. It came from Edward Moser, the linguist who lived among the Seri of the Sonoran coast and Tiburón Island and whose work underlies their Seri-Spanish-English dictionary; the Penn Museum bought the object from him in 1962. What the Seri did with it is not recorded. W. J. McGee, who wrote the first full ethnography of the Seri, describes ceremonial dances at the girls' puberty feast accompanied by improvised drums, but mentions no whirled instrument, and the catalogue assigns the object no use.
Ironwood; two oval-shaped dark brown and black pieces of wood carefully smoothed and finished; thickest at centers tapering to thin edges; holes in one end with leather thong inserted; end of thong doubled back on self, tightly bound with white string.
Penn Museum object record 62-33-53 (object 233650)
- Object
- Two pointed wooden bullroarer blades with cordage attached at the blunt terminal ends, collected at Bahia de Kino in 1932 (NMAI 20/3236 / NMAI_216824); corroborated by the later Penn pair 62-33-53.
- Function
- Not recorded.
- Map confidence
- high - Representative Bahia de Kino mainland anchor from the catalog locality; not an exact collection spot.
- Source location
- 62-33-53; NMAI 20/3236 / NMAI_216824