SUBSAH-030 - museum specimen
Yalemba-Ligasa area, Upper Congo (?Topoke / ?Olombo / ?Lokele)
Democratic Republic of the Congo - Tshopo Province - Yalemba-Ligasa area - Central Africa
Function not recorded
Source term: Bullroarer
To make boys into men, the Lokele and their forest neighbours on the Upper Congo turned their elders into spirits: faces daubed white, brandishing knives and scimitars, the men burst from the sacred grove to terrify women and children and carry off the chosen. A survivor of this libeli rite won a single word — LILWA — that no woman could utter without a heavy fine. These two plain slats of whirled wood, collected here by the missionary A.R.D. Simpson, come from that world; a bullroarer's howl is the classic voice such spirits are given, though no record says which rite swung them.
Bullroarer made from plain wood. Long and narrow in shape, both ends have been rounded, one with a carved notch and a piece of string attached.
Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, object record 1979.615
- Object
- Two plain wooden bullroarers from the Simpson Upper Congo collection: MAA 1979.615 with string and notched rounded end, and companion MAA 1979.616.
- Function
- Function not recorded.
- Map confidence
- medium - Representative Yalemba-Ligasa / Tshopo Province anchor; not an exact object findspot.
- Source location
- MAA 1979.615-616