SUBSAH-032 - museum specimen
Southern Angola (Powell-Cotton collection)
Angola (Portuguese West Africa) - Southern Africa
Function not recorded
Source term: bullroarer
A bullroarer that came to the British Museum among the objects Diana and Antoinette Powell-Cotton gathered in Angola in 1936 and 1937, two English sisters who travelled the southern Angolan and northern Namibian borderlands recording a way of life before colonial rule reshaped it. The museum registered it as a bullroarer from Angola and little else: no community, no native name, no account of where it was sounded or to what end. What survives is the number on the slat and the expedition it rode home with.
- Object
- A bullroarer catalogued by the British Museum as part of the Powell-Cotton Angola collection, registration no. Af1937,0312.71. The museum object-type is 'bullroarer'; full materials and dimensions could not be confirmed in this pass because the British Museum collection record was unreachable (Cloudflare-gated).
- Function
- Function not recorded.
- Map confidence
- low - Representative regional anchor for southern Angola, the documented working area of the Powell-Cotton sisters' 1936-37 expedition (northern Namibia and southern Angola, the Cunene / Huila / Kwanyama-Nyaneka-Humbi border country), from which this Af1937,0312 series originates. The British Museum gives only 'Angola' as the place; no findspot, district or village is recorded for this object, so this is a regional anchor, not a collection locality.
- Source location
- British Museum registration no. Af1937,0312.71; series described in Braunholtz 1937, p. 163