Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2005. / Supervisor: John Lamphear. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis is about the mobility of northern Baikal hunters, reindeer herders and fishermen and their engagement with living in the world through the structures they build and use in the context of numerous development projects and innovations. This work suggests a shift from the ‘static perspective’ where local people’s spatial practices were analysed through the prism of their relationship to a particular stationary structure, such as a village or a hunter’s base to a dynamic one where a structure is interpreted as embedded in a complex network of movements connecting a number of locations. The houses or hunting log cabins that local people use within their routine do not exist separately from other practices. Therefore, this thesis approaches northern Baikal hunters and reindeer herders as people settled neither in the village nor in the forest, but rather as people moving in-between structures, which are not necessarily concentrated in one particular place. It analyses some spaces that are intensively used and others that are used occasionally or seasonally without creating a dichotomy. The way of life of northern Baikal hunters, reindeer herders and fishermen demonstrates a certain continuity. They always combined the use of stationary and mobile architecture as well as movements of different length with their daily tasks. Local people’s everyday practices were always based on intensive movements between numerous locations which functioned as points of constant return. Local people managed to incorporate numerous innovations and development projects by means of movements and for the purpose of movements. Hence, movements can be interpreted as a creative process which serves as an expression of local people’s own ideas and views. This is a thesis about people for whom to move means to live.

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Thesis (M.A.)--Brigham Young University, Dept. of Religious Education, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 145-156).

This study is an ethnography of Oka-Soiot human-animal relations in the Eastern Saian Mountains of westernmost Buriatia in South Central Siberia. It follows ten herder-hunter households from their winter residences to their summer camps, describing their year-round relations with dogs, reindeer, horses, and wolves. Although known in Russian literature as descendants of the people who first harnessed and saddled reindeer, contemporary Soiot herder hunters have shifted their skills to other species. Yet they continue to share with their Tozhu, Tofa, and Dukha neighbours a heritage of hunting, aided by transport reindeer. Historically, all four groups engaged other species alongside reindeer to varying degree. This diversity of animals is particularly magnified in Soiot households as a result of their proximity to Buriat settler pastoralists since the 18th century. In the early 20th century Buddhist ritual practice became widespread among these settlers, affecting also Soiot cosmology. Exploring Soiot relations with 'wild' and 'domestic' animals, this thesis positions domestication as 'ongoing perspectival expansion,' experienced at the intersection of shamanist and Buddhist approaches to sentient beings. The first part of the thesis focuses on how people and animals move between perspectives associated with forest and pasture, as a strategy for life in a shared landscape. It presents the Soiot household as a mirror image of the spirit-mastered household, while contrasting it to the Eurocentric model of the domus. It then shows how interspecies collaboration within the household can lead to perspectival expansion among its members, arguing that such a perspective furthers the recognition of affordances in the landscape. This is followed by a study of shamanist and Buddhist approaches to spirit masters, presenting parallel but non-identical views of the landscape. As the perspective of animals become As the perspective of animals becomes expanded in the human household, so householders' perspectives of the landscape are expanded in their encounter with the ritual domain of Buddhism. While Buddhist ritual practice attempts to domesticate spirit masters, it remains vital to Soiot hunters that the domestication of spirit masters remain incomplete, and that reciprocal relations with spirit households are maintained. Part two focuses on proximity between species, introducing dog-human and reindeer human collaborations. It examines the autonomy of dogs as hunters in their own right, and looks at evolving reindeer herd dynamics and species flux in Soiot households. Part three focuses on the material aspect of human-animal relations, focusing on implements and structures of the household as communicative devices rather than tools of domination. Horses and humans are seen to signal their intentions through roping techniques, while wolves and humans 'read each other' through trap design, den placement, and empathy. Being the first ethnography of Soiot human-animal relations, this thesis offers new knowledge to anthropology by filling a void in south Siberian ethnography, while calling renewed attention to a multi species perspective in Siberia. It contributes to classical debates on the human role in animal domestication, and challenges the division between hunting and pastoralist economies in its presentation of households that engage in both, and for whom the two remain inseparable.

This study examines mid- to late Holocene Later Stone Age archaeological residues – specifically flaked stone artefacts, ostrich eggshell beads and pottery – from Namaqualand, north-western South Africa. Through its implication in all models so far proposed, Namaqualand is crucial to understanding the introduction of herding to the southern African subcontinent. Despite numerous publications on early herding, many key debates remain unresolved. The study focuses on the northern and central Namaqualand coastline, but sites from other parts of Namaqualand are also described. The stone assemblages are grouped according to variation in materials and retouch and then, along with data from ostrich eggshell beads and pottery, analysed graphically for temporal and other patterning. A cultural sequence is then presented. Using this sequence, key debates on early herding are explored and a hypothesis on its origins is constructed. Indigenous hunter-gatherers occupied the region throughout the Holocene and made Group 1 lithic assemblages from quartz and cryptocrystalline silica with frequent retouched tools primarily in cryptocrystalline silica. A new population – likely Proto-Khoekhoe-speaking hunter-gatherers with limited numbers of livestock – entered the landscape approximately 2000 years ago. They made Group 3 assemblages from clear quartz focusing on backed bladelets. Diffusion of stock and pottery among the local population occurred during this period. Later, c. AD 500, a new wave of migrants appeared. These last were the ancestors of the historically observed Khoekhoe pastoralists; they made Group 2 lithic assemblages on milky quartz without retouched tools. Bead diameter generally increases with time and contributes nothing to the debate. The pottery sequence is still too patchy for meaningful interpretation but differs from that elsewhere. Overall, the differing cultural signatures in western South Africa suggest that, although many questions will likely remain unanswered, a better understanding of southern African early herding will only be possible with a study addressing all regions simultaneously.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Pennsylvania, 1977. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 520-547).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Cambridge University. / "Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology"--Cover. Includes bibliographical references (p. [245]-271.

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