The Bullroarer Atlas

SUBSAH-006 - museum specimen

Luba Tambo palm-leaf bullroarer

Democratic Republic of the Congo - Luba country - Tambo register note - Central Africa

Function not recorded

Luba palm-leaf bullroarer with plant-fibre cord wound around the stem.
Luba palm-leaf bullroarer with plant-fibre cord wound around the stem. · CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Image source

possibly Tambo English

Source term: bullroarer

'Tambo' appears on the museum register beside this object; its meaning is unknown.

A bullroarer cut from a palm-leaf stem, collected among the Luba during Emil Torday's 1907-1909 expedition to the Kasai Basin for the British Museum and registered there in 1909. The museum's entry carries the field note "BaLuba. Tambo." and nothing more: no rite, no spirit, no occasion is recorded for it. The material and the register line are all that came back with it.

Object
Bullroarer made of palm leaf stem
Function
Use not recorded.
Map confidence
low_medium - Broad Luba regional anchor not British Museum
Source location
Page references

British Museum object-page search result; British Museum Luba term page

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