Marking the Land: Hunter-Gatherer Creation of Meaning in their EnvironmentWilliam A Lovis, Robert Whallon Marking the Land investigates how hunter-gatherers use physical landscape markers and environmental management to impose meaning on the spaces they occupy. The land is full of meaning for hunter-gatherers. Much of that meaning is inherent in natural phenomena, but some of it comes from modifications to the landscape that hunter-gatherers themselves make. Such alterations may be intentional or unintentional, temporary or permanent, and they can carry multiple layers of meaning, ranging from practical signs that provide guidance and information through to less direct indications of identity or abstract, highly symbolic signs of sacred or ceremonial significance. This volume investigates the conditions which determine the investment of time and effort in physical landscape marking by hunter-gatherers, and the factors which determine the extent to which these modifications are symbolically charged. Considering hunter-gatherer groups of varying sociocultural complexity and scale, Marking the Land provides a systematic consideration of this neglected aspect of hunter-gatherer adaptation and the varied environments within which they live. |
Contents
Places on the Blackfoot Homeland Markers of Cosmology Social | |
Markers in Space and Time Reflections on the Nature of Place Names | |
Inuksuk Sled Shoe Place Name Past Inuit Ethnogeographies | |
Network Maintenance in Big Rough Spaces with Few People | |
Physical and Linguistic Marking of the Seri Landscape Are They | |
Bonescapes Engaging People and Land with Animal Bones Among | |
Unfolding Cultural Meanings Wayfinding Practices Among the San | |
Continuity and Change in Warlpiri Practices of Marking the Landscape | |
Signaling Presence How Batek and Penan Huntergatherers in Malaysia | |
Marked Sacred Places of HunterGatherer Bands | |
HunterGatherer Landscape Perception and Landscape Marking | |