The Bullroarer Atlas

SUBSAH-006 - museum specimen

Luba

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

Function not recorded

A Luba palm-leaf bullroarer collected by Emil Torday: the striated stem, tapering to a point, is wound at intervals with loops of plant-fiber...
A Luba palm-leaf bullroarer collected by Emil Torday: the striated stem, tapering to a point, is wound at intervals with loops of plant-fiber cord. © The Trustees of the British Museum (E/Af1909-0513-212) CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Image source

possibly Tambo English

Source term: bullroarer

"Tambo" is the British Museum register field note attached to the object ("BaLuba. Tambo."); it has no independent attestation as a Luba instrument name, function term, place, or sub-group, and is best read as an opaque collector's annotation rather than a glossable local term.

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
British Museum object evidence with no function recorded
Map confidence
low_medium - Broad Luba regional anchor not British Museum
Source location
British Museum object-page search result; British Museum Luba term page

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