Author: Donna L. Gillette Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media ISBN: 1461484065 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 287
Book Description
Social and behavioral scientists study religion or spirituality in various ways and have defined and approached the subject from different perspectives. In cultural anthropology and archaeology the understanding of what constitutes religion involves beliefs, oral traditions, practices and rituals, as well as the related material culture including artifacts, landscapes, structural features and visual representations like rock art. Researchers work to understand religious thoughts and actions that prompted their creation distinct from those created for economic, political, or social purposes. Rock art landscapes convey knowledge about sacred and spiritual ecology from generation to generation. Contributors to this global view detail how rock art can be employed to address issues regarding past dynamic interplays of religions and spiritual elements. Studies from a number of different cultural areas and time periods explore how rock art engages the emotions, materializes thoughts and actions and reflects religious organization as it intersects with sociopolitical cultural systems.
Author: Leslie F. Zubieta Publisher: Springer Nature ISBN: 3030969428 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 311
Book Description
This book shares timely and thought-provoking methodological and theoretical approaches from perspectives concerning landscape, gender, cognition, neural networks, material culture and ontology in order to comprehend rock art’s role in memorisation processes, collective memory, and the intergenerational circulation of knowledge. The case studies offered here stem from human experiences from around the globe—Africa, Australia, Europe, North and South America—, which reflects the authors’ diverse interpretative stances. While some of the approaches deal with mnemonics, new digital technologies and statistical analysis, others examine performances, sensory engagement, language, and political disputes, giving the reader a comprehensive view of the myriad connections between memory studies and rock art. Indigenous interlocutors participate as collaborators and authors, creating space for Indigenous narratives of memory. These narratives merge with Western versions of past and recent memories in order to construct jointly novel inter-epistemic understandings of images made on rock. Each chapter demonstrates the commitment of rock art studies to strengthen and enrich the field by exploring how communities and cultures across time have perceived and entangled rock images with a broad range of material culture, nonhumans, people, emotions, performances, sounds and narratives. Such relations are pivotal to understanding the universe behind the intersections of memory and rock art and to generating future interdisciplinary collaborative studies.
Author: Yusuf M. Juwayeyi Publisher: Boydell & Brewer ISBN: 1847012531 Category : Art Languages : en Pages : 266
Book Description
First comprehensive account of the origins and early history of the Chewa as revealed by oral tradition and archaeology that allows a more accurate picture of a pre-literate society.
Author: A.R. Willcox Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1315515350 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 392
Book Description
It has long been known that all forms of art – rock paintings, carvings and scribings, and also portable sculpture – are present at various locations throughout Africa. This book was the first inclusive survey and brings together in one volume accounts of African rock art which were previously scattered in scholarly monographs, journals and travellers’ tales. The range of the coverage is geophysically comprehensive, from the Atlas Mountains to the Cape of Good Hope. The art styles are set into a firm chronological framework, and are displayed against a background of human, physical and cultural evolution. Considerable discussion is also devoted to the varied purposes which the paintings and carvings served in the communities which produced them, looking at the differing interpretations fully and fairly. A fascinating collection of illustrations, some in colour, truly reflects the variety of forms in which African rock art is manifested. Originally published 1984.
Author: Brian Morris Publisher: Springer ISBN: 3319452584 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 357
Book Description
This book is a pioneering and comprehensive study of the environmental history of Southern Malawi. With over fifty years of experience, anthropologist and social ecologist Brian Morris draws on a wide range of data – literary, ethnographic and archival – in this interdisciplinary volume. Specifically focussing on the complex and dialectical relationship between the people of Southern Malawi, both Africans and Europeans, and the Shire Highlands landscape, this study spans the nineteenth century until the end of the colonial period. It includes detailed accounts of the early history of the peoples of Northern Zambezia; the development of the plantation economy and history of the tea estates in the Thyolo and Mulanje districts; the Chilembwe rebellion of 1915; and the complex tensions between colonial interests in conserving natural resources and the concerns of the Africans of the Shire Highlands in maintaining their livelihoods. A landmark work, Morris’s study constitutes a major contribution to the environmental history of Southern Africa. It will appeal not only to scholars, but to students in anthropology, economics, history and the environmental sciences, as well as to anyone interested in learning more about the history of Malawi, and ecological issues relating to southern Africa. /div
Author: Bron Taylor Publisher: A&C Black ISBN: 1441122788 Category : Reference Languages : en Pages : 1927
Book Description
The Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature, originally published in 2005, is a landmark work in the burgeoning field of religion and nature. It covers a vast and interdisciplinary range of material, from thinkers to religious traditions and beyond, with clarity and style. Widely praised by reviewers and the recipient of two reference work awards since its publication (see www.religionandnature.com/ern), this new, more affordable version is a must-have book for anyone interested in the manifold and fascinating links between religion and nature, in all their many senses.
Author: R.M. Dilley Publisher: Berghahn Books ISBN: 1789203902 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 256
Book Description
The apparently simple notion that it is contextualization and invocation of context that give form to our interpretations raises important questions about context definition. Moreover, different disciplines involved in the elucidation and interpretation of meanings construe context indifferent ways. How do these ways differ? And what analytical strategies are adopted in order to suggest that the relevant context is "self-evident"? The notion of context has received less attention than is due such a central, key concept in social anthropology, as well as in other related disciplines. This collection of contributions from a group of leading social anthropologists and anthropological linguists addresses the question of how the idea of context is constructed, invoked, and deployed in the interpretations put forward by social anthropologists. The ethnographic focus embraces peoples from regions such as Bali, Europe, Malawi, and Zaire. Primarily theoretical in its aims, the work also draws on expertise from anthropological linguistics and philosophy in order to set the issue as much in a comparative disciplinary perspective as in a comparative cross-cultural one.
Author: Peter Mitchell Publisher: OUP Oxford ISBN: 0191626147 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 1077
Book Description
Africa has the longest and arguably the most diverse archaeological record of any of the continents. It is where the human lineage first evolved and from where Homo sapiens spread across the rest of the world. Later, it witnessed novel experiments in food-production and unique trajectories to urbanism and the organisation of large communities that were not always structured along strictly hierarchical lines. Millennia of engagement with societies in other parts of the world confirm Africa's active participation in the construction of the modern world, while the richness of its history, ethnography, and linguistics provide unusually powerful opportunities for constructing interdisciplinary narratives of Africa's past. This Handbook provides a comprehensive and up-to-date synthesis of African archaeology, covering the entirety of the continent's past from the beginnings of human evolution to the archaeological legacy of European colonialism. As well as covering almost all periods and regions of the continent, it includes a mixture of key methodological and theoretical issues and debates, and situates the subject's contemporary practice within the discipline's history and the infrastructural challenges now facing its practitioners. Bringing together essays on all these themes from over seventy contributors, many of them living and working in Africa, it offers a highly accessible, contemporary account of the subject for use by scholars and students of not only archaeology, but also history, anthropology, and other disciplines.
Author: Owen J. M. Kalinga Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield ISBN: 0810859610 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 599
Book Description
Malawi, established as the British protectorate of Nyasaland in 1891, gained its independence in 1964 and moved immediately into three decades of one-party rule. Since the mid-1990s, however, the country has held multi-party elections, as directed by its constitution, and President Bingu wa Mutharika is currently serving his second term. The fourth edition of the Historical Dictionary of Malawi, now newly expanded and updated, covers a wide range of areas in Malawi history, including the rise and fall of state systems, religious and socio-political movements, the economy, environment, transportation, war, disease, and natural sciences. Author Owen J. M. Kalinga charts developments from pre-history to the post-Banda Malawi, from Tom Bokwito to James Sangala, and from the UMCA mission at Magomero to the second term of Bingu wa Mutharika's presidency, paying particular attention to the individuals, groups, communities, and forces that have molded this South African country. The dictionary itself contains over 1,000 cross-referenced entries on crucial aspects of Malawi history, and it is the most extensive single-volume reference work on Malawi available. In addition to the dictionary entries, Kalinga provides a chronology containing important dates and events and an informative bibliographical section organized by subject. The final part of the bibliography gives the reader a list of current and obsolete newspapers and periodicals related to Malawi, an ideal resource for further research. This newly updated edition is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Malawi.
Author: Donna L. Gillette
Author: Leslie F. Zubieta
Author: Yusuf M. Juwayeyi
Author: Leslie F. Zubieta
Author: A.R. Willcox
Author: Brian Morris
Author: Bron Taylor
Author: R.M. Dilley
Author: Peter Mitchell
Author: Owen J. M. Kalinga