Abstract
Among the Turkana of north western Kenya, as well as in many other eastern African pastoral societies, cattle are not only a source of food but also an essential tool for a man to establish his own concepts of aesthetic and to visibly express his own personal identity and social relationships among his people. A Turkana man achieves these objectives by choosing a specific male cow and then modifying its external appearance with branding to permanent alter the coat, with a forceful modification of the growth direction of the horns, and with peculiar cuttings of the ear margins and dewlap. These modern-day practices are identical to the images of cattle present in numerous Neolithic rock art scenes over widespread geographical areas. This present-day Turkana custom may facilitate a correct interpretation of prehistoric rock art and help to understand the systems of thoughts, values and aesthetic perceptions of long-vanished prehistoric pastoral societies.
Highlights
The information presented here was gathered during a decade of work as a Veterinary Officer in northern Turkana County, an area of Kenya west of Lake Turkana, bordering Sudan, Uganda and Ethiopia (Fig. 1), and various travels to north-eastern Uganda (Karamoja, Kidepo).Study area The area is populated by the Turkana, a homogeneous Eastern Nilotic group belonging to the “Karamajong Cluster”, comprising several closely related ethnic groups that speak a mutually intelligible language
This article is embracing the interpretation of ethnoarcheology put forward by David and Kramer: “ethnoarcheology is neither a theory or method but a research strategy” that includes “a range of approaches to understanding the relationship of material culture to culture as a whole, both in the living context and as it enters the archaeological record, and to exploiting such understandings in order to inform archaeological concepts and to improve interpretation” (David and Kramer 2001: 2)
This concept is more clearly summarized by the definition of the archeologist Lewis Binford: ethnoarchaeology is a “Rosetta stone: a way of translating the static material found on an archaeological site into the vibrant life of a group of people who left them there” (Binford 1983: 24)
Summary
The information presented here was gathered during a decade of work as a Veterinary Officer in northern Turkana County, an area of Kenya west of Lake Turkana, bordering Sudan, Uganda and Ethiopia (Fig. 1), and various travels to north-eastern Uganda (Karamoja, Kidepo).Study area The area is populated by the Turkana, a homogeneous Eastern Nilotic group belonging to the “Karamajong Cluster”, comprising several closely related ethnic groups that speak a mutually intelligible language. While areas of higher elevation receive more rainfall, agriculture is limited to a few riverine zones (McCabe 1987, Rutten 1989, Opiyo et al 2015). Because of such harsh ecological conditions, the Turkana are highly mobile pastoralists, managing a variety of livestock species (small stock, donkeys, cattle and camels) and balancing the challenges of living in an unpredictable ecosystem with a complex social network (Gulliver 1958, Wienpahl 1984, McCabe 1990, 1995, De Vries et al 2006, Juma 2009, 2016)
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