Anthropology of Hunting

The Olson site (5BL147) is a multi-component rock walled game drive located in the James Peak wilderness
area of Northern Colorado, USA. It is one part of a much larger game drive complex located at
Rollins Pass, situated above modern tree limit and along the Continental Divide, at approximately
3600 m above sea level. Byron Olson and James Benedict conducted work at the site in the late 1960s.We
combined their efforts with our recent field and lab work to produce a synthetic overview of the site. At
least 45 blinds and 1307 m of rock walls are present, to funnel game upslope to waiting hunters.
Radiocarbon and lichenometric dates suggest occupations spanning the last 3200 years, with diagnostic
tools suggesting even older use. Lithic analysis of the debitage and tools, from both excavated (blinds)
and surface contexts (intercept and processing areas), provides possible scenarios for the use of the site.
Large game drives of the Colorado alpine zone represent accumulated landscapes of artifacts and features,
the byproduct of many years of construction, use, and re-use, and built for a variety of reasons.

L’Homme pet (Mitshishkapeu), le Maître de la merde (Meiatshi) et l’Anus parlant du mythe de Carcajou sont-ils la même entité ? Un examen de la cosmologie et de la mythologie innues nous amène à penser que ces trois figures gagnent à être examinées conjointement. Les auteurs situent cette démonstration dans une réflexion plus large sur les rapports entre entités maîtres et figures prototypiques des temps mythiques dans les cosmologies autochtones. Dans un premier temps, ils confirment le statut de Maître de la merde de Meiatshi au sein de la cosmologie innue à partir d’une revue de la littérature et de données ethnographiques provenant d’Unamen Shipu (La Romaine). S’ensuit une analyse théorique des rapports entre entités mythiques et personnes autres qu’humaines dans les mondes autochtones. Cette réflexion amène à formuler l’hypothèse que, en contexte innu, les entités prototypiques des temps mythiques sont à situer dans une continuité avec les entités-maîtres du présent. Cet article se conclut sur une analyse de la figure de l’Anus parlant du mythe de Carcajou, qui établit une équivalence topologique entre cette figure et Mitshishkapeu.

In a context of stark opposition between supporters and opponents to the wolf, the extent to which this particular predator is dangerous for humans is still an open question.
What lies beneath the negative perception of the wolf?
What should be the historian's contribution, based on historical sources and historical methods?
Thanks to a database of 4,700 cases of wolf attacks on human having occurred in France between 1580 and 1880, it is now possible to grasp the chronological evolution and spatial evolution of wolf related risks.
Undeniably real, though mostly belonging to a remote past, and statistically rare, though anthropologically intolerable, these attacks point to two opposite groups, predatory wolves occasionally preying on humans on one hand, rabid wolves striking indiscriminately a whole population on the other.
The attacks of the first kind occurred regularly in an unsafe environment, and gave rise to tales of "Ferocious Beasts" in times of dramatic crisis (1594-1600, 1691-1694, 1746-1750, 1764-1767, 1814-1819).
The second kind was spatially and chronologically less widespread, but sowed the seeds of mass hysteria, all the more persistent since the underlying sickness it forebode remained without a cure before the last third of the 20th century.
The conclusion between these two different realities gave Canis Lupus its negative aura, significantly dimmed recently however since it has entirely lost its material basis, at least in France.

“The Romantic ideal of the hunter­-colonist is ... : a white man dressed in buckskins, who lives simply in the wilderness on intimate and friendly terms with the natives, dislikes white civilization, and hunts only to satisfy his basic need for food and clothing.” In this thesis, I examine the establishment of the concept of this Romantic hunter, analyze how this character has been heavily mythologized, and research the ways in which he still is still represented in contemporary American hunting literature.

The nutritional, economic and politícal importance of hunting in medieval Aragón is revealed by the development of a legal framework to legislate this activity and its survival until the middle of the 20th century. Our research on hunting in the kingdom of Aragón in the lih-15th centuries is based on the information provided by two groups of legal texts: those for local or regional areas (local charters, town letters, royal privileges, municipal statutes) and those that were applied to all the kingdom after the 13ili centory (general charters passed in the Courts). Comparative studies and the information provided by iconography, archaeology, notarial documentation and literature have permitted us to contrast, clarify and complete the development of our analysis, based on various points: 1) hunting as a natural resource whose exploitation is regulated and controlled by local and state powers; 2) hunting as an activity done from very different perspectives and with plural purposes, methods and valuations, closely related to the position of each person in the hierarchised medieval society; 3) hunting as a method of social control for sorne and of rebelliousness against the established order for poachers; and 4) the supplying and consumption of game as an indicator of diverse food cultures and systems that coexist in the same chronological and spatial framework.

This article presents new evidence with which to evaluate the validity of the popular picture of religious environmentalism in India. It examines accounts of a large number of incidents described in Indian language newspapers, the colonial archive, and hunting literature published between the 1870s and 1940s, in which British and other sportsmen clashed with villagers in India while hunting. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century the colonial sports-hunting obsession was in its heyday, but opposition to hunting across India was also mounting. Rural villagers, in particular, were often willing to lock into physical combat with hunters, apparently in order to protect local wildlife. Sportsmen often assumed that it was religious fanaticism that made Hindus defend the lives of what they saw as game animals, trophies, and specimens. The article provides evidence that in addition to religion, a mixture of other motivations explains Hindu interest in the conservation of certain species. Anti-colonial consciousness, assertions of local authority and territoriality, and an environmental ethic can all be identified as being at work. The end result was the increased conservation of certain species of wildlife.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

How are we to describe selected paintings and artists concerned with the evening, along with small communities or sociocultural groups coming together in the twilight founded on apparently esoteric hunting beliefs? In the first sense, we might think of paintings such as Joy Garnett’s Crepuscular Dawn, Shade, or Beacon, or of our appreciation for an apparition of an unidentified terrain, such as Arbor. Here, the terminology of vespertine connotes an enthusiasm for, and insider knowledge of, certain paintings or painters of the stars and their motions, such as Shields, on the River Tyne by Joseph Mallord William Turner (1823) or Starry Night over the Rhone by Vincent van Gogh (1888). The paradox is that such paintings and painters can have a simultaneously wide and specialist appreciation, although sunset tends usually to designate that powerful and seemingly fragrant portion of the day. In practice, understanding sunset in this sense is close to being an animal. The proof or mutual reinforcement of nightfall, of membership of those communities who appear at, or are active at, sundown, means that, say, hyenas, wolves, and frogs take the form of the “look” of the evening, of the nocturnal gesture, or even of one’s own knowledge of the gods, heaven, or the planets. Garnett’s almost shot-by-shot studies of the Crepuscular Dawn are characterized by their depiction of the setting at, or just after, sunset—cosmic events that have been logged in the encyclopedia of the stars and planets for millennia. Such paintings provoke an intense emotion of recognition of the earth and the desire for the endless repetition of the rising and setting of the sun. Yet these feelings can only be gratified by continually re-viewing the late afternoon covered with the sun’s rays, the witnessing of planets setting after the sun and the sun’s fullness, the construction of new imaginary planets and new imaginary suns by which the adepts recognize through each other a shared experience of the cusp of the day. A perfect painting, we may say, remains in our geological memory as a whole formation. However, Garnett’s paintings feature sporadically inhabited militarized topographies and susceptible living beings, and must live separately, not as an area of canvas or numerous patches of night-vision green and black but as a kind of evening prayer or evensong concerning both the menace of killer technologies and the paintings’ glorious relationship to the evening.[...]

相馬拓也（2011）モンゴル西部アルタイ系カザフ鷲使いたちの現在

《キーワード》
アルタイ山脈,　遊牧民,　バヤンウルギー,　イヌワシ,　無形文化遺産, 牧畜,　HAI,　サグサイ,　西部モンゴル,　鷹狩,　鷹匠
[Keywords]
Altai Mountains, animal-herding economy, Bayan-Ölgii, ecology, ethnic identity, ethnic minority, golden eagle, heritage sociology, transhumance, human-animal interaction, Sagsai, zoo-anthropology, Mongolia

This chapter explores patterns of communication between human hunters and the non-human animal, Corvus corax—the common raven. The scope of the chapter includes the general historical and anthropological context in which humans have interacted with ravens. The primary method utilized is semiotic analysis of historical and anthropological literature, along with personal ethnography. As the study of signs and sign processes, semiotics provides useful insights into ways both human and non-human animals give meaning to their world. Results demonstrate the potential for interspecies communication as a postmodern corrective to the human/nature divide imposed by modernism.

Walkabout (Nicolas Roeg, 1971) is a film about transitions: movement between childhood and adulthood, country and city, pre-modernity and modernity. My analysis of Roeg’s classic is part of a study of the genre of environmental film: representations or re-visioning of the human-nature relationship. I explore Walkabout’s transitions by observing how the film interweaves two coming-of-age stories: an aboriginal youth, Black Boy (David Gumpilil) on a walkabout (a trial to prove his readiness for manhood); and the Anglo children, Girl (Jenny Agutter) and White Boy (Lucien John, the director’s son), he rescues in the Australian outback, especially a girl on the threshold of womanhood. But these rites of passage in turn contribute to the film’s larger fabula told primarily through visual narrative: a critique of the post-industrial world’s attitudes towards nature, including its disconnect from (or repression of) what is untamed or natural in human nature.

Współczesne myślistwo jest tradycją kontrowersyjną ze względu na to, że wiąże się z zabijaniem zwierząt i nie ma jednoznacznego uzasadnienia. Obecne w dyskursie publicznym objaśnienia sensu polowań sięgają zarówno do argumentacji naukowej i względów praktycznych, które łączy hasło racjonalnego gospodarowania populacjami dzikich zwierząt, jak również dążenie do zachowania starych tradycji kulturowych i pierwotnych instynktów człowieka-łowcy. Prawomocności myśliwskich wyjaśnień przeciwnicy łowiectwa przedstawiają zarówno argumenty naukowe, jak i etyczne, wskazując na zmiany cywilizacyjne redukujące wiele dawniej akceptowanych okrutnych praktyk i zwiększające wrażliwość człowieka na cierpienie zwierząt. Krytycy postulują zaprzestanie lub ograniczenie polowań, najostrzej atakując te wykonywane dla tradycji, rozrywki lub dla trofeów, ponieważ ich zdaniem kontynuowanie takich praktyk utrwala instrumentalne i nasycone przemocą postawy wobec zwierząt i ludzi. Hołdowanie tradycjom łowieckim może również według nich blokować wprowadzanie nowych, lepszych sposobów rozwiązywania problemów wynikających z sąsiedztwa siedlisk człowieka i dużych dzikich zwierząt.
Książka „Sens polowania” w całości poświęcona jest analizie dyskursu toczonego wokół współczesnego myślistwa w Polsce, ukazując go na tle podobnych debat, które mają miejsce w Europie Zachodniej i Ameryce Północnej. W różnych krajach nieco inne tematy przyciągały jak dotąd uwagę opinii publicznej: w Wielkiej Brytanii była to głównie kwestia pogoni za lisem, w Norwegii ochrony wilka, w Niemczech myślistwa ekologicznego, a w USA - przeciwstawienia kultury miejskiej i popularnej tradycjom wiejskim. Szerszy, międzynarodowy charakter mają debaty nad chwytaniem zwierząt futerkowych i zabijaniem fok, handlem futrami oraz strzelaniem do ptaków wędrownych na południu Europy.
W Polsce dyskurs łowiecki poświęcony zarówno kwestiom kulturowym, jak i praktycznym, najbardziej intensywnie prowadzą wykonawcy polowań zrzeszeni w Polskim Związku Łowieckim. Z tego względu przeważającą część materiałów wykorzystanych do analizy w książce stanowiły publikacje myśliwskie: głównie z czasopisma „Łowiec Polski” oraz książki zawierające wspomnienia łowieckie i relacje biograficzne. W dalszej kolejności uwzględniono również te źródła spoza literatury myśliwskiej, do których chętnie odwołują się myśliwi, jak wybrane pozycje polskiej literatury pięknej i materiały historyczne. Omówiono również charakter myśliwskich motywów wybranych z tekstów „symbolicznych”, takich jak mity, legendy i bajki. Uzupełniające znaczenie w analizie miał przegląd myśliwskich forów internetowych oraz pisemnych opinii studentów. Przeprowadzono również badanie ilościowe poglądów myśliwych zebranych za pomocą ankiety pocztowej.

Safari hunters’ acute awareness of the widely held negative perceptions of their practice has led to their development of strong justifications and defensive assertions in favour of hunting. Far from being a primarily destructive practice, they claim that safari hunting in the Okavango Delta, Botswana, can be seen as an exemplary form of ecotourism, which benefits local communities, facilitates environmental conservation and provides the ultimate nature experience for participants. While research
supports their claims to an extent, the ethical quandaries evinced by hunters themselves, the complex dialectic between local and global controls, and the elite, racialised
and gendered nature of hunting speaks to a more complex and conflicted situation.

Social scientists and ecologists have too often portrayed wolves as part of human-wildlife conflicts and have thereby construed them primarily as a problem. To counter this view it is necessary to rethink human-wolf relationships by considering wolves as part of human life-worlds rather than just focusing on situations of conflict. I will draw on a case study of the Mongolian Tuva to show the complexity of relationships that animal herders may have with wolves, although their very existence is threatened by the predators. For the Tuva, wolves are predators, prey, sacred animals, healers, as well as neighbours. The underlying relational approach used in this article suggests that the meanings attributed to the wolf by the Tuva are not necessarily shaped by the media and other forms of public discourse, but develop through encounters with real wolves. Thus the animals themselves shape how they are conceived.

This contribution presents a review of results from ethnobiological research conducted among Penan Benalui (PB) and Kenyah Badeng (KB) people on the Lurah River, Long Pujungan Sub-district, between 1991 and 1993. Most of the study area lies in the Kayan-Mentarang National Park in East Kalimantan, Indonesia. The primary research aim was to find out how knowledge of forest mammals is, and has been, changing among the two ethnic groups. A necessary secondary aim was to document, with a principally ethnographic approach, the ethnoecology of hunting practices, which entailed gathering information on hunting knowledge, forest ecology and human utilization of flora and fauna (see Puri 1997b).

Human-animal transformation in Amazonian shamanism and cosmology provides a prime example of the fluidity between Western categories such as “nature” and “culture.” Amerindian perspectivism explains animal transformation by reference to a worldview of “multinaturalism,” an inversion of Western notions:  society (rather than biology) is the common bedrock of human and animal life while bodies (rather than cultures) are what vary among different social groups, including biological species.  Within this slippery world where phylogeny capitulates to ontology, all that is required for a person to become a jaguar is a change in perspective.  After working for many years among the Matsigenka of Peru and encountering numerous cases of human-jaguar transformation, I identified a common theme:  the people most likely to turn into jaguars and become a threat to family and village are the old, decrepit and senile.  How could old people be considered a mortal threat associated with the most feared predator of the forest?  I found an explanation that depends as much on natural history as it does on cosmology:  jaguars, too, become old, weak and toothless, hanging around villages to kill easy prey such as dogs, chickens and even human children.  It is precisely these old, decrepit jaguars that old people transform into:  healthy jaguars are less of a threat because they maintain a safe distance. Certain dead people are buried with sticky resin (taviri) in their nostrils to avoid this possibility: when the beast finally sheds its human form, it suffocates. While the notion of “cosmological perspective” contributes to this phenomenon, it is equally important to understand this set of beliefs and practices as emerging from a close observation of jaguar life histories, and a metaphorical association between old humans, dependent and weak and a burden on their families, and old jaguars.

In this thesis I contrast historical and contemporary forms of hunting and gathering among Lakota people currently living in village-communities on reservations in the states of North and South Dakota (USA). In particular, the focus and main locus of analysis is laid on the Standing Rock Sioux reservation, while examples from other Lakota reservations as well as Plains Cree reserves in Alberta, Canada, are only brought up as a means for making transnational or cross-tribal/cultural comparisons among Plains peoples yet regionally limited to the Northern Great Plains.
I show that although social organization, economic relevance of hunting and type of animals predominantly hunted by the Lakota have changed throughout history in processes of adaption responding to larger infrastructural shifts, specific aspects of a worldview related to hunting, which was strongly shaped by the nomadic way of life of these peoples on the Northern Plains during the 19th century, have persisted and still ideationally permeate many spheres of social life. I argue that shared communal values and emic perceptions about human-nature relationships among Lakota and other Plains peoples are to a great extent ontologically rooted in a cosmology that was an outcome of a historical lifestyle as hunter(-gatherers) of buffalo. Despite socio-economic changes leading to the demise of that very foundational subsistence-based nomadic existence, elements of this lifestyle have nevertheless survived into modern day by their sustained relevance, adaption and application in social, economic, political, healthcare and educational contexts (to serve individuals’ quests for self-discovery and to support political aims for self-determined development of Native nations).
Hunting and gathering are analyzed along two dimensions - as a practice and as a constitutive basis of a worldview and values. While, when looking at historical processes, it can be seen that the practice has changed in many ways due to technological, political and socio-economic shifts, its pursuit remains an economic necessity for some and it is still regarded by many as a continuation of a traditional way of life reflecting certain values, serving also as a source or marker of cultural identity.
Furthermore, I argue that these cultural values, which originally fulfilled particular social functions (and to some extent still do today) in a nomadic hunter-gatherer societal structure and its contemporary remnants (for instance by regulating the distribution of food, encouraging commensality and defining social hierarchies), have been adapted in political contexts by tribal agents; They are either emphasized, silenced or reinterpreted to foster conditions of social, economic and political well-being on reservations or reserves and thus aiding nation-building processes embedded within larger institutional contexts of (inter-)national politics in a global market economy.

An illustrated Byzantine manuscript of the Cynegetica by Pseudo-Oppian, housed in the Biblioteca Marciana of Venice, has deserved the attention of scholarship because it contains a vast collection of zoological, mythological and hunting images that could be traced back to an original Roman model. However, a careful examination of some of its miniatures reveals details that may be better understood in a Byzantine context. This is the case of a falconry scene on fol. 2v of the manuscript. A general overview of falconry and hunting from Antiquity to the late Byzantine Empire will let us focus on every single element of hawking of the aforementioned scene. The falconer, the hound and the partridges depicted by the Byzantine miniaturist of our codex unveil that this image is not just an illustration of the text, nor a copy of an ancient model, but the representation of a widely practiced activity in the Byzantine world.

Since Solon’s Laws in the 6th century BC, societies have developed specific regulations to contain, hunt down, then eradicate wolves. In order to protect themselves, the public authorities have used an unequalled repressive arsenal. They have even devoted an institution to combating wolves, which supposedly goes back to the year 800 and still exists today: the wolf-hunting officers or louveterie.
    However, the wolf is also one of the few animals to have caused so much internal conflict between men. Seen as a public enemy of society, it has occupied many unfavourable statuses. Although hunting was for the privileged, the danger caused by wolves led to exceptions to the ban on carrying weapons, and to appeals for wolf hunts which were even encouraged by the authorities. The wolf became a focal point for social resentments resulting from antagonism about revenues, lifestyles, and ways of occupying space. Today, the animal’s transition to protected status has not resolved the endless conflict pitching men against wolves. It has even rekindled tensions since the natural return of wolves to France in 1992. With emotions running high, open-mindedness and knowledge of the realities call for compromises. Over the course of a remarkable conflict spanning over 2000 years, Man versus Wolf offers an authoritative summary to contribute to a topical debate.

В своей бакалаврской работе я попытался описать роль стрельбы из лука в культурной и социально-политической жизни маньчжуров, народа, правившего Китаем на протяжении двух с половиной веков.

Основное внимание уделено:
1) Символическому значению лука у маньчжуров и родственных им народов.
2) Роли лука в маньчжурском языке.
3) Роли стрельбы из лука в политической идеологии и национальной идентичности маньчжуров.

Основные источники - Дацин Личао Шилу и Маньвэнь Лаодан, главные теоретики, на работы которых опирается работа - Эллиотт,  Геллнер, Лакофф и Хобсбаум.

Особая благодарность Питеру Деккеру и Константину Тертицкому.

The hunting of wild animals for food, sport or for the defence of people and herds, was common in the ancient Near East, especially in early times. This paper gives a survey of hunting practices in pre-Islamic Arabia primarily from the beginning of the first millennium BCE to the eve of Islam in light of the epigraphic evidence and of rock art as well as archaeological discoveries.

This paper is a study of the traditional use of a special kind of wood in bow construction in Eurasia and North America. This special kind of wood, called compression wood and coming from coniferous trees, has unique qualities that makes it suitable for bow construction. Bows made using this special wood have been referred to as Finno-Ugric bows, Sámi bows, Two-Wood bows and Eurasia laminated bows. These bows appear to have developed from archaic forms of compression wood self bows that were made from a single piece of wood. Recently features similar to the Eurasian compression wood bows have been discovered in bows originating from Alaska, and the use of compression wood for bow manufacture has been known to some Canadian Inuit groups. This paper addresses the origin and possible diffusion pattern of this innovation in bow technology in Eurasia and suggests a timeframe and a possible source for the transfer of this knowledge to North America. This paper also discusses the role of the Asiatic composite bow in the development of bows in Eurasia.

In 2013, the wolf seems to have won the game. Since 1992, his eventful return in France, has rekindled old passions and sparked a new craze, though forgetful of history. As is set up a Sixth National Plan on the wolf (2013-2017) to initiate a "differentiated" management of the animal, the imperative of "regulation" has not disappeared: it is even heart of most of the policies advocated to account for recolonisation dynamics of the species. Regionalised and graduated responses are now on the agenda to protect both the predator and herds, challenging. In this reactivation, an institution that claims to be celebrating its 1200th anniversary Charlemagne: the louveterie which France seems to have exclusivity in the world. The approximately 250 wolves have returned to the territory have therefore resurrected the divisions that had pitted men for centuries. But then it was, for generations, know how to push the public enemy number one, before being able to exterminate the last few decades is the protection of canid that arouses more voltages. Each time, the latter, able to take advantage of any lack of social consensus, any contradiction in management decisions, to any weakness in the organization of agricultural activities, pulls out of the game.
The successful return - but still problematic - the wolf makes it necessary to open a historical perspective for the whole of France, which had Canis lupus over its continental territory, the North Sea coast to the Mediter- ranean, the Raz-Rhine. Structural, his presence was the wild symbol in nature that man hardly managed to dominate. With 10 to 15 thousand wolves at least in France, as it can be estimated for the late eighteenth century, the pressure of canine.
En 2013, le loup semble avoir gagné la partie. Depuis 1992, son retour mouvementé dans l’Hexagone, a rallumé des passions anciennes et a suscité un engouement nouveau, bien oublieux de l’histoire. Alors que se met en place un VIe Plan d’action national sur le loup (2013-2017) pour engager une gestion « différenciée » de l’animal, l’impératif de « régulation » n’a pas disparu : il est même au cœur de la plupart des politiques prônées pour tenir compte de la dynamique de recolonisation de l’espèce. Des réponses territorialisées et graduées sont désormais à l’ordre du jour pour protéger à la fois le prédateur et les troupeaux, véritable gageure. Dans cette réactivation, une institution qui se réclame de Charlemagne fête son 1200e anniversaire : la louveterie dont la France semble bien avoir l’exclusivité dans le monde. Les quelque 250 loups qui sont revenus sur le territoire ont donc fait resurgir les divisions qui avaient opposé les hommes, des siècles durant. Mais alors qu’il s’agissait, de génération en génération, de savoir comment repousser l’ennemi public numéro un, avant d’être en mesure de l’exterminer, depuis quelques décennies, c’est la protection du canidé qui suscite le plus de tensions. À chaque fois, ce dernier, habile à mettre à profit toute absence de consensus social, toute contradiction dans les choix de gestion, toute faiblesse dans l’organisation des activités agropastorales, tire son épingle du jeu.
Le retour réussi – mais toujours problématique – du loup rend nécessaire d’ouvrir une perspective historique pour l’ensemble de la France qui a connu Canis lupus sur tout son territoire continental, de la Mer du Nord à la côte médi- terranéenne, de la pointe du Raz au Rhin. Structurelle, sa présence était le symbole du sauvage dans une nature que l’homme ne parvenait guère à dominer. Avec 10 à 15 000 loups au moins dans l’Hexagone, comme on peut l’estimer pour la fin du XVIIIe siècle, la pression du canidé

Fayard - Pluriel - L’homme contre le loup - 110 x 178 - 4/6/2013 - 13 : 40 - page 8
8 L’HOMME CONTRE LE LOUP
était sans commune mesure avec ce qu’elle est aujourd’hui. Bien loin de se réduire à un secteur marginal dans l’écono- mie et dans l’espace, comme on le mesure en 2013 avec l’agro-pastoralisme de montagne, son impact s’étendait à tout le territoire – plaines et forêts, plateaux et marais, mon- tagnes et vallées – et, tant que l’économie reposait sur les animaux domestiques, à de nombreux champs d’activités, de l’agriculture alors dominante à la métallurgie, nichée aux portes des forêts, des transports, assurés au pas des chevaux, des mulets ou des bœufs, jusqu’aux placements des citadins, qui prisaient le « bail à cheptel » autant que le livret A aujourd’hui. On ne peut comprendre la place qu’occupe le loup dans notre culture si l’on ignore l’intensité de cette confrontation entre le loup et l’homme dans le temps comme dans l’espace. Plus de 1 500 communes en portent ici le témoignage.
La poursuite des recherches sur le sujet vient renforcer les analyses déjà présentées en 2011 dans la première version de cet ouvrage. Pour le seul aspect délicat, et récemment discuté, des attaques de loup sur l’homme, on aboutit pour l’heure à plus de 7 600 victimes dont 4 603 causées par des loups anthropophages et plus de 3 000 dues à des agressions de loups enragés, soit un doublement des premiers chiffres livrés dans l’Histoire du méchant loup, en 2007. Sans commune mesure avec les destructions opérées par l’homme lui-même contre l’animal – 6 500 pour la seule année 1796- 1797 –, ce corpus signale néanmoins, par sa perception par l’homme – une transgression anthropologique de première gravité lorsqu’elle s’accompagne de scènes parfois insoute- nables – et sa répartition aléatoire, l’ancrage de la peur viscérale que Canis lupus a longtemps suscitée.
Comprendre les raisons de cette peur et les effets qui en ont découlé dans l’histoire de l’humanité pour mieux contextualiser aujourd’hui l’impact du retour du loup en France, voilà une raison parmi d’autres pour découvrir ou redécou- vrir ce livre, désormais accessible à un large public.

Parcourir les vieux traités de vénerie offre à l’anthropologue quelques aperçus remarquables sur les transformations du rapport à l’animal en Occident. Depuis sept cent cinquante ans, des chasseurs lettrés ont collecté les règles techniques et morales de leur art, depuis l’élevage des chiens courants, en passant par les méthodes de lecture des empreintes et des laissées, jusqu’à la façon de célébrer dignement la prise d’une bête. Un chapitre ne manque jamais dans ces dissertations, si poétiques ou savantes soient-elles, c’est le chapitre « boucher » où l’on enseigne au novice les secrets de l’art d’écorcher et de défaire le cerf.

How do we take indigenous animism seriously in the sense proposed by Viveiros de Castro? In this article, I pose this challenge to all the major theories of animism, stretching from Tylor and Durkheim, over Lévi-Strauss to Ingold. I then go on to draw a comparison between Žižek's depiction of the cynical milieu of advanced capitalism in which ideology as " false consciousness " has lost force and the Siberian Yukaghirs for whom ridiculing the spirits is integral to their game of hunting. Both know that, in their activity, they are following an illusion, but still they go along with it; both are ironically self-conscious about not taking the ruling ethos at face value. is makes me suggest an alternative: perhaps it is time for anthropology not to take indigenous animism too seriously.

Hunting inspired some of the greatest songs and stories of Gaelic literature and tradition—a theme which runs from the earliest Old Irish sources down to the literature of Modern Scottish Gaelic. This thesis examines the cultural history of hunting in the Scottish Highlands stemming from the late-medieval period through to the early modern. The three main areas covered are the iconography, literature and tradition of the chase.
Many hunting topoi appear upon late-medieval west Highland sculptures, remarkably similar to those on earlier Pictish sculpture, which are complimented by the Gaelic literature and lore of hunting contained within Fenian ballads and narrative stories. The apogee of Gaelic hunting motifs are contained within panegyric poetry and verse of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, sustained in the main by a late manifestation of an heroic age. Such imagery reinforced and perpetuated the identity of the chief as the paragon of pre-modern Gaelic society, who was always seen as a hunter-warrior. Hunting themes and motifs are also prevalent within Gaelic folksong tradition. Although this overlaps in terms of content with the bardic imagery of professional poets, the vernacular folksongs offer a more emotive and direct response to moments of crisis or celebration. The scale of these great hunts in the Highlands, borne out by the literary evidence, from the medieval period onwards, reflects a complex matrix of power, patronage, politics and ultimately propaganda. As well as being a surrogate for war the tinchel, in Gaelic terms, was a seasonal mobilising of the sluagh, or host, who followed the fine, the Gaelic nobility. This enhanced their status while reinforcing clan solidarity in a shared symbol of sporting endeavour, by chasing the noble quarry of the deer. Notable, also, is illegal, or covert hunting which masked a complex deer-culture, and marked the familiar tension of exploiting natural resources by the many against the privileged few who tried to implement their inherited rights to hunt. Inevitably, superstition pervades much of the traditions of the hunt, as it would in any given belief system centred upon age-old customs.
Hunting was an integral part of European culture, and it was a theme reflected in Gaelic literature, song, and tradition more evidently than in many other European cultures of a comparable period. This was because it reinforced strongly and perpetuated the idealised image of a warrior-hunter, the archetypal leader engendered within Gaelic cultural identity.

Hunting has been a cornerstone in the artistic, religious, and philosophical traditions of countless cultures throughout history -- in fact, it is older than civilization itself. Yet few pursuits continue to be as controversial, for the hunting of prey strikes at the very core of such fundamental questions as death, embodiment, nonhuman life, and morality.

Hunting - Philosophy for Everyone presents a thought-provoking collection of new essays from across the academic and non-academic spectrum that move far beyond familiar arguments and debates about hunting. This philosophically stimulating book provides fresh perspectives on a variety of topics, including:

 Issues relating to the ethics of hunting
 The experiences and perspectives of the hunter
 The relationship of hunting to nature and human nature
 Hunting in culture, politics, and tradition

Chosen from an overwhelmingly large pool of abstracts, nineteen contributors from a wide range of disciplines and walks of life have each written a chapter that is both philosophically stimulating and inviting to a general reading audience. In order to recuperate the ancient appeal of philosophy as a broadly accessible means of critical awareness, volumes in this series balance contributions by professional philosophers with academics from other disciplines, as well as non-academic writers. This book is no exception, with philosophy, biology, archeology, anthropology, sociology, geography, communications, religion, and fine arts representing the academy. Moreover, among the contributors are three confirmed non-hunters and nine confirmed hunters, seven women authors, one aboriginal author, two confirmed anti-hunters and one confirmed ex-vegan!

Hot on the trail of one of the most controversial issues of contemporary society, Hunting - Philosophy for Everyone is a stereotype-shattering volume that invites us to think deeply about what it means to be human.

Link to Publisher's Website:  http://ca.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1444335693.html
Google Books link:  http://books.google.ca/books?id=6iPRfC1jIZcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=hunting+philosophy+for+everyone&hl=en&ei=YUFgTLPwCInmsQOAz8SqCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

Despite numerous tweaks, revisions, and extensions, Paleolithic archaeologists continue to rely heavily on many ethnographically-derived concepts put forward decades ago by Lewis Binford. Prominent among these are ideas about logistical vs. residential mobility, expedient vs. curated technologies, embedded vs. direct toolstone procurement, zooarchaeological utility indices, and many others. Binford often presented these ideas in the form of "law-like" generalizations that the archaeological profession has subsequently come to accept and apply with far too little concern for their validity, even in the ethnographic contexts that originally gave rise to them. Some of these classic "Binfordisms" (e.g., logistical and residential mobility) not only don't stand up well when explored more deeply in the ethnohistoric record, but they focus on the movement of food, people, and materials across landscapes yet totally ignore the fundamental issue of transport. Others (e.g., embedded toolstone procurement) are inherently illogical when assumed to be the universal norm, they are largely unsupported by the ethnohistoric and ethnographic record, and they are surprisingly unanthropological in conception, despite Binford's clarion calls for an explicitly "anthropological archaeology." Still others (e.g., zooarchaeological utility indices) suffer from Binford's (inadvertent) imposition of the decidedly Western culinary preference for muscle tissue (i.e., "steaks") in developing his utility rankings of different ungulate body parts. To many traditional northern peoples, these meaty cuts were looked upon as "dog food" or "white man's food" because they contained little or no fat. These and other "Binfordisms" need to be carefully and thoroughly reexamined in the ethnographic and ethnohistoric realm and their theoretical shortcomings identified; they then need to be rebuilt from the ground up. Unfortunately, most contemporary Paleolithic archaeologists seem to have swallowed them hook, line, and sinker, and devote the lion's share of their effort, not to questioning and reexamining the original concepts, but instead to looking for new and ever more sophisticated methods for "seeing" them in the archaeological record. Without much more attention to the validity of these "Binfordisms," and to the real-world variability they subsume and largely ignore, many of the currently fashionable attempts to force the archaeological record into the typological "pigeonholes" fostered by Binford's "law-like" generalizations are likely to produce a library's worth of dubious fairytales.

Review of Sara Reguer, Winston S. Churchill and the Shaping of the Middle East, 1919–1922, Academic Studies Press, 2020.

The 1921 Cairo Conference — a meeting of Britain's Middle East experts a short time after WWI — was a pivotal moment in the history of the Middle East, approving a plan for giving control over large parts of the former Ottoman territories to the Hashemite family. In this review I revisit the conference from an original angle, tracing the story of the two lion cubs included in the photo taken at the conference opening. Named Abdullah and Fatima, the two lions came to represent the newly acquired territories of Palestine and Mesopotamia, while Churchill, who called the photo the "Forty Thieves" (a reference to the number of delegates at the conference), assigned himself the role of Ali Baba.