ABSTRACT
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.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|120 pages
The Northern Latitudes
chapter 2|33 pages
Initializing the Landscape
chapter 3|22 pages
Places on the Blackfoot Homeland
chapter 4|22 pages
Markers in Space and Time
chapter 6|15 pages
Network Maintenance in Big Rough Spaces with Few People
part II|130 pages
The Southern Latitudes
chapter 8|28 pages
Bonescapes
chapter 9|21 pages
Unfolding Cultural Meanings
chapter 11|30 pages
Signaling Presence
part III|25 pages
Synthesis