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- Title
Ritually Orchestrated Seascapes: Hunting Magic and Dugong Bone Mounds in Torres Strait, NE Australia.
- Authors
Ian J. McNiven; Ricky Feldman
- Abstract
People dwell in a world of their own subjective making. For many hunters, engagement with the natural world is a negotiated affair because animals, like people, possess spirits. A critical part of the negotiation process is mediation of the humanprey relationship by hunting magic. Torres Strait Islanders of NE Australia are skilled hunters of dugongs, a marine mammal whose capture entails a broad range of ritual practices. Following ethnographic expectations, excavation of bone mounds reveals ritual treatment of dugong bones, especially skulls, to increase hunting success. Extensive use of dugong bones in ritual sites has important implications for the extent to which secular midden deposits are representative of Islander subsistence practices. Since dugong bone mounds provide archaeological insights into Islander spiritual relationships with dugongs, chronological changes in use of these sites inform us about historical developments in Islander ontology and their ritual orchestration of seascapes and spiritual connections to the sea.
- Subjects
RITUAL; HUMAN-animal relationships; HUNTING; DUGONG; RITES &; ceremonies; SUPERSTITION
- Publication
Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 2003, Vol 13, Issue 2, p169
- ISSN
0959-7743
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1017/S0959774303000118