The Bullroarer Atlas

SEA-006 - museum specimen

Makasae (Makasai)

Timor-Leste - Baguia, Baucau District, East Timor - Island Southeast Asia

Function not recorded

A leaf-shaped wooden blade knotted to a long swinging rod, a child's toy of the Kenyah/Klemantan on the Baram River, Sarawak; the Makasae mumu...
Representative image. A leaf-shaped wooden blade knotted to a long swinging rod, a child's toy of the Kenyah/Klemantan on the Baram River, Sarawak; the Makasae mumu documented here, a bamboo blade incised with a bird design, has not been photographed. © The Trustees of the British Museum (A/As1905-630) CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Image source

mumu

mumu — Makasae local name recorded for this bull-roarer in the Museum der Kulturen Basel object record (IIc 6268).

A bamboo bull-roarer twenty-two centimetres long, strung on a twisted cord and incised with a bird, collected at Baguia in the mountains of eastern Timor on Alfred Bühler's 1935 expedition for the Basel museum. The Makasae called it mumu. The museum's card sets down the bamboo, the cord, and the scratched bird — but unlike its Rote shelf-mate from the same voyage, whose card reads "children's toy," it records no use at all.

Object
Bamboo bull-roarer with twisted cord and an incised bird design, L 22cm, collected at Baguia by the Buhler expedition 1935 (Museum der Kulturen Basel, acc. IIc 6268).
Function
Not recorded: the museum card gives only the object — bamboo, cord, incised bird — with no use designation.
Map confidence
high - approximate territory centroid (mining 2026)
Source location
IIc 6268

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