Transmission of Ecological Knowledge Through Star Myths

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dc.contributor.advisorSugiyama, Michelle Scaliseen_US
dc.contributor.authorDieni, Caryssaen_US
dc.date.accessioned2020-06-04T21:24:18Z
dc.date.available2020-06-04T21:24:18Z
dc.descriptionProject is comprised of 21 page pdf and presentation recording in mp4 format.en_US
dc.description.abstractEthnoastronomical research indicates that early agricultural societies used regular changes in the positions of asterisms to predict seasonal change and determine when to plant crops, and that this knowledge was encoded, in part, in myth. Our project investigates whether hunting-and-gathering peoples used the stars to predict seasonal availability of wild resources and, if so, whether narrative was used to transmit this knowledge. If so, we would expect star narratives to identify key stars/asterisms, associate them with seasonal change, and reference important seasonal resources (or environmental cues associated with their availability). To test this, we surveyed a cross-cultural sample of forager story collections for etiological star narratives: we found story collections for 74 different forager culture regions, 44 (59.5%) of which contained star narratives. These narratives were then coded for the presence of the predicted information. Results indicate that star narratives consistently (1) provide information that facilitates identification of targeted asterisms, and (2) associate these asterisms with seasonal change and key resources. However, the information that asterisms can be used to predict seasonal change and/or resource availability tends to be implicit; thus, for each region, we checked the ethnographic record to ascertain whether asterisms were indeed used for these purposes. These complementary lines of evidence strongly suggest that star myths performed an ecological function in hunter-gatherer societies.
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1794/25362
dc.rightsCreative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0-USen_US
dc.subjectAsterismsen_US
dc.subjectStar mythsen_US
dc.subjecttraditional narrativesen_US
dc.subjectethnoastronomyen_US
dc.subjectEcologyen_US
dc.subjectForagersen_US
dc.subjectStar lore
dc.subjectOral tradition
dc.subjectMyth
dc.subject2020 URS Data Stories
dc.titleTransmission of Ecological Knowledge Through Star Mythsen_US

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