The Bullroarer Atlas

SA-Z1953-025 - secondary catalog

Itonama

Eastern Bolivia - South America

Function not recorded

Itonama bull-roarer, Bolivia — a pale wooden slat inscribed in pencil with collection notes, its plaited cord looped loosely at the perforated...
Itonama bull-roarer, Bolivia — a pale wooden slat inscribed in pencil with collection notes, its plaited cord looped loosely at the perforated end; the documented culture, not the specific object cited here. Världskulturmuseet, Göteborg (1915.01.1261) CC BY 4.0 Image source

Source term: Schwirrgerät / Schwirrholz / bullroarer

Among the Itonama of the eastern Bolivian lowlands, the bullroarer is recorded only as a bare fact of existence. Erland Nordenskiöld noted the instrument in their territory but wrote nothing of what it was for, and Otto Zerries, surveying South American bullroarers decades later, could add no more: he placed the Itonama on his distribution map while marking plainly that the instrument's meaning there went unreported. Among neighboring northeastern Bolivian peoples the bullroarer turns up as a children's toy — a plaything for the Chacobo, Yuracaré, and Guarayu, and known to the Chimane as kakabadje — but for the Itonama even that much is unknown.

The bull-roarer exists also among the Itonama, but Nordenskiõld (1919, p. 162) has said nothing about its meaning.

Zerries 1953:288 (The Bull-roarer among South American Indians)
Object
Bullroarer exists but meaning not reported
Map confidence
low_medium - regional_anchor: Occurrence only; do not infer ritual function; source-sufficient as an unclear row
Source location
288; 302

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