The Bullroarer Atlas

MUS2026-264 - museum specimen

Upper Xingu painted toy blade

Brazil - Upper Xingu River - Mato Grosso - South America - Amazonia

Play / practical

Two Kuikuro zunidores painted with dark triangles and strung with cotton…
Representative — not this record’s object. · Two Kuikuro zunidores painted with dark triangles and strung with cotton… Image source

Source term: Bullroarer

In the Upper Xingu the dangerous voice belongs to the flutes, not to this. Karl von den Steinen watched Nahuqua men whirl their roarers on the open village plaza in all unconcern, as they would any everyday tool, and nobody drove the women off; on the Kulisehu the same whirring board went to the children. Forty-five centimetres of wood carries that easy status here — black triangles, some solid and some outlined, marching across both faces, brown stain sealing the ends and edges.

Object
Wooden toy blade, 45 × 8.8 cm; brown-stained ends and edges, with black solid and outlined triangles across both faces.
Function
A toy.
Source
Penn Museum 58-17-128; Upper Xingu River, Mato Grosso, Brazil; bequest of Harry B. Wright, 1958; catalogued “Toy; Bull-Roarer.”
Source location
Page references

58-17-128; object 177575

Source confidence
low Broad Upper Xingu regional anchor; no community or collection point is recorded.

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