MUS2026-342 - museum specimen
Itonama Machupo long-cord blade
Bolivia - Rio Machupo - South America
Function not recorded
Source term: Vinare
Erland Nordenskiöld listed the Itonama among the peoples whose bullroarers he carried out of Bolivia, and then wrote nothing whatever about what the sound was for — a silence Otto Zerries, sorting South America's roarers four decades later, could not fill either. What survives instead is the rig itself: a narrow thirty-centimetre blade off the Rio Machupo, austere to the point of plainness, and a cord that runs on far beyond the wood, still attached. Most museum bullroarers lost that cord long ago.
- Object
- A 30 cm narrow rectangular wooden blade with terminal perforation and a long surviving cord.
- Function
- Not recorded.
- Source
- Världskulturmuseerna 1915.01.1261; Rio Machupo
- Source location
- 1915.01.1261
- Source confidence
- low Broad Rio Machupo anchor; collection point unresolved.