An embarrassment of riches: the ontological aspect of meat and fat harvesting among subarctic hunters
If we hypothesize that Pleistocene hunters un- derstood animals to be self-aware other-than-hu- man persons, as contemporary hunter-gatherers tend to do, what evidence of this kind of rela- tionship might appear the material record? While the “turn to ontology” within anthropology has mainly used, a...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Book Part |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Universität Tübingen
2021
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10900/114227 https://doi.org/10.15496/publikation-55602 http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:21-dspace-1142274 |
| Summary: | If we hypothesize that Pleistocene hunters un- derstood animals to be self-aware other-than-hu- man persons, as contemporary hunter-gatherers tend to do, what evidence of this kind of rela- tionship might appear the material record? While the “turn to ontology” within anthropology has mainly used, as evidence, a group’s consciously held ideas, part of a people’s assumptions about reality are unconscious, and revealed only in be- havior. The chapter examines the potential of the ethnographic analogy, using the example of some contemporary North American subarctic hunters. In particular, I look at how their ontological as- sumptions are reflected in their material culture, such as in their treatment of animal bones, their pictographs and other decorations, their venera- tion of particular rocks, and the significance they attach to certain colors. The symposium and the volume "Human-elephant interactions: from past to present" were funded by the Volkswagen Foundation. |
|---|