Abstract
AbstractThis paper is based on ethnographic research with Ju|’hoan San in Botswana starting in 1970 and on translation and transcription work with Ju|’hoan San trackers from Namibia who travelled to the Caves du Volp in the French Pyrenees in 2013 to do archaeological work. The Tracking in Caves project, headed by German archaeologists Andreas Pastoors and Tilman Lenssen-Erz, was investigating fossilized human footprints in the caves dating back to around 17,000 calBP. The paper discusses three main verbal formats that can provide useful information to the archaeology of tracking: (1) narrative in the form of folktales and other oral forms referring to animal behaviour, (2) talk in the form of accounts of actual hunts, and (3) consensual discussion in the form of deliberations among trackers as they seek to gain many types of information from tracks. The paper outlines how the trackers and the archaeologists, after an initial period of misunderstanding and miscommunication, mutually learned from each other and eventually bonded on the basis of the scientific method. It does so by drawing on evidence from narrative, talk, and consensual discussion. By investigating verbal data provided by People’s Science, the Tracking in Caves project shows us that skill in tracking, using the tools of egalitarian communication and based on extensive environmental knowledge, has been an enabling feature of the long human story.
Highlights
Tracking and TalkingWe should not speak of what we have been told, but only of what we ourselves see. . .What we don’t see well, we can’t speak of: only the things we see well. (Tsamkxao|Ai!ae [Tsamgao Ciqae], Pech Merle Cave, France, July 2013)A
I follow a roughly chronological path in telling how I learned what I have learned about the science of tracking and its importance for archaeology and other social sciences
Perhaps, far-fetched to suggest that this force may have been strong enough for long enough to set constraints on the way that information was best transmitted from person to person and acquired by individuals (. . .) (We advocate) re-examining our ideas on the function of old people as teachers or libraries and (. . .) examining closely the ways that information about subsistence is acquired and transmitted in hunter-gatherer societies. (Blurton Jones and Konner 1976: 345)
Summary
We should not speak of what we have been told, but only of what we ourselves see. . .What we don’t see well, we can’t speak of: only the things we see well. (Tsamkxao|Ai!ae [Tsamgao Ciqae], Pech Merle Cave, France, July 2013).
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