For the making of a hut, materials needed to be gathered and prepared, the frame constructed and latched, and finally the leaves or thatch applied. Construction takes place as a group activity with women playing a key if not a determining role in these efibrts. In many of the places discussed in this chapter and in some of the subsequent ones women are responsible for the entire construction. Whether it be the! Kung in South Africa or the Sioux on the American Plains, women build and ofi:en in a sense “own” the hut. This is even true for nomadic tribes in Asia and Africa, the Rendille, for example, and even for the Maasai in Kenya, as will be discussed later. For huts that require processing larger structural elements, this part of the work is ofi:en done by the men. The men of the Andamen Island cultures will assemble the larger poles for their communal houses. In riverine cultures that developed timber buildings, men usually chop down the trees and prepare the poles, whereas the women dig the ground and do most of the finishing work. The large structures of the Yanomami in South America are, for example, built by both men and women, with the men doing most of the structural work, and the women preparing the thatch. Whether heavy labor like this in combination with carpentry led to a transition in some places toward male-oriented architectural crafi:s is hard to say. In Mesopotamia, it was probably the shift: to mud bricks that led to the masculinization of the construction site. Even so women still probably applied the stucco. The shift to agriculture also played a role. Among the Batammaliba in Togo, for example, the houses, built of mud walls and timber roofs, are designed by men who lay out the structure according to prescribed cosmological patterns having to do with the significance of the sun deity. Here, architecture is placed in the purview of the male priest, who is responsible for the plan of the house. That tradition, though old, contrasts significantly with the ancient building practices of the First Society (Figures 3.29, 3.30, and 3.31).
> Figure 3.29: Danakil woman building her hut, Ethiopia. Source: Victor Englebert
< Figure 3.30: Danakil women building their house, Ethiopia. Source: Eric Lafforgue
<< Figure 3.31: A Maasai woman building her hut, Kenya. Source: Victor Englebert
ENDNOTES
1. One of the questions anthropologists face is whether these modern “hunter-gatherer” societies are similar enough to the ancient ones to draw conclusions about ancient history. Edwin Wilmsen believes that the difference is too great. See Edwin N. Wilmsen, Land Filled with Flies: A Political Economy of the Kalahari (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989): 8-12. Most specialists who study hunter-gatherer ecology disagree with this conclusion. See for example Richard B. Lee and M. Guenther, “Errors Corrected or Compounded? A Reply to Wilmsen,” Current Anthropology 36, no. 2 (1995): 298; Richard B. Lee, “Art, Science, or Politics? The Crisis in Hunter-Gatherer Studies,” American Anthropologist 94, no. 1 (1992): 31-54.
2. Miguel Albero Bartolome, “Shamanism among the Ava-Chiripa,” in Spirits, Shamans, and Stars: Perspectives from South America, eds. David L. Browman and Ronald A. Schwarz (The Hague: Mouton, 1979): 96.
3. The terms “San,” “Khwe,” “Sho,” “Bushmen,” and “Basarwa” have all been used to refer to hunter-gatherer peoples of southern Africa. Each of these terms is somewhat problematic because they have historically been used by outsiders to refer to the! Kung, typically with pej orative connotations.
4. They refer to themselves in the aggregate as “Saasi,” and their language as “!Kabee.” The main groups of Kalahari Bushmen who still live in the Kalahari region and on its borders are: the! Kung, the Khomani San, the Vasekela, the Mbarakwena, the /Gwi, //Ganaa, Kua and! Xo. See Richard Katz, Boiling Energy: Community Healing Among the Kalahari Kung (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982); Richard B. Lee, The! Kung San: Men, Women, and Work in a Foraging Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979); Marjorie Shostak and Nisa, Nisa, the Life and Words of a !Kung Woman (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981).
5. Alan Barnard, Hunter and Herders of Southern Africa: A Comparative Ethnography of the Khoisan Peoples (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992): 28-29.
6. The information in this paragraph is condensed from Christopher Ehret, The Civilizations of Africa (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2002): 26-58.
7. Jacqueline S. Solway and Richard B. Lee, “Foragers, Genuine or Spurious? Situating the Kalahari San in History,” in Perspectives on Africa: A Reader in Culture, History, and Representation, eds. Christopher B. Steiner and Roy Richard Grinker (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996): 269-292.
8. See Eleanor Burke Leacock and Richard B. Lee, Politics and History in Band Societies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 1-20; Edwin Wilmsen, “The Ecology of Illusion: Anthropological Foraging in the Kalahari,” Reviews in Anthropology 10 (1983): 9-20; Richard Elphick, Kraal and Castle: Khoikhoi and the Founding of White South Africa (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977).
9. Religion among the Bantu speakers is quite diverse, but generally speaking there is a primary de-ity—usually the sun—that is held responsible for the creation of the world. This deity is remote and abstract and not worshiped by intermediaries or priests. Different groups call the god by different names. There is also a wide range of nature spirits, some benevolent, some dangerous. Beyond that there is a form of ancestor worship.
10. Much of the information in this section comes from Richard B. Lee, The Dobe! Kung (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1984).
11. John E. Yellen, “Long Term Hunter-Gatherer Adaptation to Desert Environments: A Biogeographical Perspective,” World Archaeology 8, no. 3 (February 1977): 267-268.
12. Patricia Draper, “Social and Economic Constraints on Child Life among the! Kung,” in Kalahari Hunter-Gatherers: Studies of the! Kung San and Their Neighbors, eds. Richard B. Lee and Irven DeVore (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976): 199-217.
13. According to the researcher Ed Wilmsen in a discussion he had with me, ethnographers have assumed that this type of house has only recently been adopted by! Kung and other Khoisan-speaking peoples, but historical records show that they have at least sometimes used it since the early nineteenth century and probably long before that. Both types are found at some archaeological sites.
14. Bernard Grant Campbell, Human Ecology: The Story of Our Place in Nature from Prehistory to the Present (New York: Aldine de Gruyer, 1995), 131-132; Pablo Arias, “Rites in the Dark? An Evaluation of the Current Evidence for Ritual Areas at Magdalenian Cave Sites,” World Archaeology 41, no. 2 (2009): 262-294.
15. Simon Hall, Burial and Sequence in the Later Stone Age of the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa,” The South African Archaeological Bulletin 55, no. 172 (December 2000): 137-146; D. Lewis-Williams, “A Visit to the Lion’s House: The Structure, Metaphors and Sociopolitical Significance of a Nineteenth-century Bushmen Myth,” Voices from the Past: !Xam Bushmen and the Bleek and Lloyd Collection, edited by Janette Deacon and Thomas A. Dowson (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1996): 122-141.
16. Alan Barnard, Hunter and Herders of Southern Africa: A Comparative Ethnography of the Khoisan Peoples (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992): 57-58.
17. The word “Aboriginal” has been used ever since the arrival of the white man to describe the people of Australia (from ab: from, and origo: origin, beginning). The term is intended as etymologically neutral, but is now seen as having negative connotations. The more acceptable and correct expression is “Aboriginal Australians” or “Aboriginal people.” In recent years “Indigenous Australians” has found increasing acceptance.
18. The book used for this discussion—and a model for excellent research—was Paul Memmott, Gun-yah, Goondie + Wurley: The Aboriginal Architecture of Australia (Queensland: University of Queensland Press, 2007).
19. Sir Baldwin Spencer, Native Tribes of the Northern Territory of Australia (Adelaide: E. S. Wigg, 1879): 276-279.
20. Ibid., 251-256.
21. Ltfi Yondri, “A Short Review of the Megalithic Function in Indonesia,” in Archaeology: Indonesian Perspective: R. P. Soejono’s festschrift, ed. Truman Simanjuntak (Menteng, Jakarta: International Center for Prehistoric and Austronesian Studies, 2006): 289.
22. P. Hiscock and S. Mitchell, “Stone Artifact Quarries and Reduction Sites in Australia: Towards a Type Profile,” Australian Heritage Commission Technical Publication Series 4 (1993); Donald F. Thomson, Economic Structure and the Ceremonial Exchange Cycle in Arnhem Land (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1949).
23. See the entry “Kunapipi (Australia),” in Christian Roy, Traditional Festivals: A Multicultural Encyclopedia. Volume 2 (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2005): 234.
24. In the Pilbara, corroborees are known as yanda or jalarra. Across the Kimberley the word junba is often used to refer to a range of traditional performances and ceremonies.
25. “The Aboriginal Memorial: Malarra and Wolkpuy-Murrungun People,” National Gallery of Australia [website], Http://nga. gov. au/AboriginalMemorial/malarra. cfm (accessed July 8, 2011).
26. See Neal Sobania, “Fishermen Herders in Northern Kenya,” Journal of African History 29 (1988): 41-56.
27. Blackburn, “The Okiek and Their Neighbors: The Ecological Distinction.” Paper presented at the African Studies Association Conference (Baltimore, MD, 1978): 4. See also Roderic H. Blackburn, “The Okiek and Their History,” Azania 9 (1974): 139-157.
28. Colin M. Turnbull, “The Lesson of the Pygmies,” in Perspectives on Africa: A Reader in Culture, History and Representation, eds. Roy Richard Grinker, Christopher B. Steiner, and Stephen C. Lubke-mann (New York: Blackwell, 2010), 179.
29. For a description of the ceremony, see Colin M. Turnbull, The Forest People (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1968): 73-93.
30. Shiho Hattori, “Utilization of Marantaceae Plants by the Baka Hunter-Gatherers in Southeastern Cameroon,” African Study Monographs, Suppl. 33 (May 2006): 29-48.
31. Paul Schebesta, Die Bambuti-Pygmden von Ituri, Volume 1 (Brussels: Marcel Hayez, 1938): 142-155.
32. Norbert Schoenauer, 6,000 Years of Housing (New York: WW. Norton, 2000): 18-19.
33. Colin M. Turnbull, Wayward Servants: The Two Worlds of the African Pygmies (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1976): 143.
34. Daou V. Joiris, “A Comparative Approach to Hunting Rituals among the Baka Pygmies (southeastern Cameroon),” in Cultural Diversity Among Twentieth-Century Foragers: An African Perspective, ed. Susan Kent (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996): 269-272.
35. Nicholas Wade, Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors (New York: Penguin Press, 2006): 87.
36. Much of the information in this section comes from Vishvajit Pandya, Above the Forest: a Study of Andamanese Ethnoanemology, Cosmology, and the Power of Ritual (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993. I would also like to thank Professor Vishvajit Pandya for sharing his insights on the Andamanese.
37. A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, The Andaman Islanders (New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1964).
38. George Weber, “The Andamanese: Clothes, Clay and Beautycare,” George Weber’s Lonely Islands, Www. andaman. org/BOOK/chapter13/text13.htm (accessed July 11, 2011).
World History
