Unit 6: Ethnozoology

This image shows llamas pasturing among the ruins of Macchu Pichu, an Inca settlement on the eastern slopes of the Andes. Llamas are domesticated camelids (members of the camel family) which live in the higher elevations of the Andes in South America. Llama pastoralism is the basis of indigenous economy in the higher-altitude zones where cultivation of food crops is limited or impossible, providing meat and wool as well as being beasts of burden. Llamas are also symbolically important and are incorporated into traditional Andean religion (see Bastien 1978¹) and iconography. Because of the scarcity of fuel for heating at higher elevations, the significance of weaving and of clothing in making life possible underscores the significance of llamas as a foundation of Andean life. Photograph by Natasha Duarte June 2008, used with permission.

Ethnozoology is an eclectic field of study that includes classification and naming of zoological forms, cultural knowledge of wild and domesticated animals and their habitats or requirements, and the uses of wild and domestic animals. Ethnozoology slides untidily into myth, folklore, and symbolism. Rich sources of ethnozoological information are found in discussions of subsistence and livelihood in the ethnographic literature and in oral narratives and folklore.

The English folk sense of the word “animal” biases us first to look at mammals, and may cause us to overlook invertebrates as animals, although they certainly constitute a majority of the kinds of organisms found in an introductory zoology text. This tendency is common to many languages. As with plants, larger and more conspicuous forms are more widely noticed and closely differentiated. Insects, arachnids (spiders and their kin), worms, and marine invertebrates are more likely to be lumped into broad classes, with only a few distinctive types recognized and named. Ethnoentomology is a distinct field of study within ethnozoology.

Whether an animal, in the broad sense, is considered edible, and whether it may be seen as “clean” or “unclean,” varies among cultures as does the degree to which animals may be seen as non-human persons. For many hunting peoples, animal species may take on an aura of personhood; this perspective is plain in the extensive readings on Koyukon understanding of animals in the Nelson textbook Make Prayers to the Raven (1983). Zooarchaeology unravels past relations between human cultures and animals, an aspect of ethnozoology we will not focus on in this course.

Objectives

By the end of this unit you should be able to

1. explain the role of salience in the degree of elaboration of cultural knowledge of different vertebrate and invertebrate species.
2. discuss the cultural nature of concepts of edibility and inedibility of animals.
3. contrast the relationship to animals in societies that practise animal husbandry with those that hunt or fish for subsistence.
4. describe the uses and importance of animal species to Native North Americans for food, material culture, and medicines.

Footnote

¹ Bastien, Joseph. 1978. Mountain of the Condors, Metaphor and Ritual in an Andean Ayllu. St. Paul, MN: West Publishing Co.