ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests directions for future research through investigating marking concepts that is the stylistics of marking by forest-dwellers in Malaysia. It focuses on Batek living in and out of the national park Taman Negara via, wherever relevant, comparison with Penan groups in Sarawak. The Batek economy is based on hunting and gathering and collecting forest products to sell to outsiders, supplemented with a series of other activities, including some casual crop-planting, hosting and guiding tourists, and picking up day work here and there. The natural dendritic pattern of drainage systems in the Peninsula, Batek classify rivers hierarchically using kinship metaphors, in common with Jahai to the north. The complication is that pulling out symbolic or ritual marking from the normal course of life is tricky. A bird-song marked while walking along the trail might be an ecological indicator in one context and a message from the other-world in another.
