Week 2:
1. Environment: This will be your introductory paragraph to your ethnology, so keep
that in mind when writing this opening section. Introduce your readers to your
chosen culture by providing this information:
Geographical location
They migrated from Asia and crossed the sea into Australia. They used to
live all throughout Australia with the highest population being along the coast.
Climatic description: This includes
average temperature, rainfall, sun exposure,
snowfall levels (if any), and any other
information that will describe the type of environment in which your culture
lives. This should also include how much variation exists in the environment
annually, i.e., how much change does your population need to adapt to
throughout the year in temperature and rainfall?
In
Australia:
The
average temperature in is 55 degrees Fahrenheit.
They
receive on average 24.8 inches of percipation annually
On
balance there are 55 days annually with measurable frost
Hours
of sunshine range between 4.6 hours per day in June
and 9.1 hours per day in January
Mean
relative humidity for an average year is recorded as 47.8% and on a monthly
basis it ranges from 35% in January & December to 64% in June.
Their 'territories' ranged from lush woodland
areas to harsh desert surroundings.
Their
tools and implements reflected the geographical location of these different
groups. For example, it is known that coastal tribes used fishbone to tip their
weapons, whereas desert tribes used stone tips.
Those Aboriginal tribes
who lived inland in the bush and the desert lived by hunting and gathering,
burning the undergrowth to encourage the growth of plants favoured by the game
they hunted. They were experts in seeking out water.
The territories
or 'traditional lands' were defined by geographic boundaries such as rivers,
lakes and mountains.
Population setting: Does your
culture live in an urban or rural setting? Do they have a high level of
competition for resources with other cultures or are they isolated?
My culture has
lived in rural and urban (because of forced assimilation) settings. Since the
people in my culture are semi-nomadic hunters and gatherers, with each clan having its own
territory they are isolated in their own field of interests at that moment in
time.
Flora & Fauna: What type of
plants and animals make up the environment of your culture?
The
Australian continent provides plentiful animal foods - land mammals, birds,
reptiles, seafood and insects - plus a bewildering variety of plant foods.
large game, birds and fish. They generally hunted the kangaroo in groups.
Rabbits also ran rampat, mountain bunya pines were utizlized to its full
extent.
Environmental stresses: What type of climatic/environmental
stresses must your culture adapt to or has it adapted to over time? A stress
includes anything that makes it difficult for the population to live or
threatens the survival of the population.
My culture has
adapted to extreme temperatures. Very hot weather, traveling through parts of
the forest, in the summer, and extreme cold weather.
2. Adaptations:
Physical: Identify two (2)
long-term
physical
adaptations (meaning genetic adaptations) exhibited by your culture to the
environmental stresses in which they live. You should not include short-term or facultative
adaptations in this discussion. Provide a clear description of these long-term
adaptations and how they help the culture adapt to the stress.
1. Adaptations for the heat acclimation
consists of adaptations that mitigate physiological strain of heat stress,
which improve thermal comfort and exercise capabilities
2. Adarpatioms for the heat The exact determinant of which pattern will be
induced by chronic cold exposure is unclear, but the magnitude and extent of
body cooling, frequency and duration of exposure, and individual factors all
influence the adaptive process. Habituation is characterized by blunted
shivering and cutaneous vasoconstriction; body temperature may decline more in
the acclimatized than unacclimatized state. It is the most common cold
adaptation and results from periodic short-term cold exposures. Metabolic
adaptations are characterized by enhanced thermogenesis that develops when cold
exposures are more pronounced, but not severe enough to induce significant
declines in core temperature.
Cultural: Identify three
(3) cultural adaptations exhibited by your culture which helps them adapt to
their environment. Provide a clear description of these adaptations and how
they help the culture adapt to the stress.
Images: You should be ready to include images on your
blog post for each section, at least one per section, but use as many as you
wish to present your material clearly. Search Google for appropriate images,
save them in a specific file on your computer and add them in after you copy your
post onto your blog during Week 8. Do NOT insert them into your Word document
as these will not copy into Blogger correctly. You will be learning how to add
images to your posts in this week’s blog post.
In cold weather Aborigines would often sleep between fires at
night - though it might bring the risk of rolling on to hot embers
Temperature alters solute transport in
growth plate cartilage.
Week 3:
1. Language: Include the following
information in this section
· Name of language
Australian
or Papuan. This doesn’t account for all of the different languages spoken in
the 200 plus tribes that call Australia their home.
· Unique qualities of this
language: What traits distinguish this language from others.
Australian
is grammatically different than English.
· Is there a written version
of this language? What can you infer about your culture from
this?
2. Gender
Roles: For this section, you will be describing modal
personality traits of culture, or traits that generally
define that culture (see your text for further explanation).
There
is not written language for this culture. They live with and through nature and
keeping who they are with nature and apart of it.
· Identify general gender
roles: What are the defining roles for the genders in your culture?
well
defined gender roles (secret women's business)
in some
situations men and women may need to avoid entering through the same door
men's and
women's business may need to be kept separate
· How strictly defined are
these roles? Are there strict delineations of these gender
roles or can there be crossover, with one gender being permitted to perform the
roles of the opposite gender?
They
are very strict. Though they have changed in the Nyungar society.
1. Subsistence: This section should tie in
with the environmental section you wrote in week two, since the environment
will dictate the food available to your culture. Include the following
information in this section
· Identify and describe
the traditional subsistence pattern of your culture. If there is evidence that
your culture is perhaps transitioning into a different subsistence pattern,
include that in your discussion.
They
were hunter-gatherers on land and at sea.
· Describe the main food
items that make up your culture’s diet. Are these items available year round or
are they seasonal?
Large
and small game, kangaroo, dingo, seafood form being near the coast, and an
endless supply of fruit and vegetable from the trees.
· Is there a division of
labor in your culture’s subsistence pattern? How is the work divided based upon
age, sex, and/or social class?
Women
used to collect and gather more than the men did and that changed. Mostly the
older men of the tribe and younger boys that have been initiated into manhood.
1. Marriage:
· Describe the marriage
pattern of your culture (monogamous, polygynous, etc.). Do they practice any
form of cousin marriage? If so, explain.
Although most men
had only one wife at a time, polygyny
was considered both legitimate and good. The preference of cross cousin
relationships (the child of a mother’s brother or a father’s sister. Some
societies favor matrilateral cross-cousin marriage—marriage of a man to his
mother’s brother’s daughter or woman to her father’s sister’s son.) exists
among food foragers.
· How are marriage
partners determined?
Reciprocity was a fundamental rule in Aboriginal kinship systems and
also in marriage.
Marriage was not simply a relationship between two persons; it linked two
families or groups of kin, which, even before the union was confirmed and most
certainly afterward, had mutual obligations and responsibilities.
· Does you culture
practice any type(s) of economic exchange for the marriage? Describe.
Remember
that they may practice more than one form. What does this say about the value
of males and females as marriage partners in your culture? Is one more valued
than the other?
-
Generally,
throughout Aboriginal Australia those who received a wife had to make repayment
either at the time of marriage or at some future time. Among food
foragers, who inherit relatively little in the way of property, such marriages
help establish and maintain ties of solidarity between social groups.
2.
Kinship:
· What kind of descent
pattern does your culture practice? What does this say about the kin
relationships your culture feels are most important? Do they ignore the other
descent lines or are they just less emphasized?
The kinship system allows
individual naming for up to 70 relationship terms in some tribes. That is, far
more than the European terms "father/mother",
"grandfather/grandmother", "uncle/aunt" etc. It is also the
system where brothers of one's father are also called, in one sense,
"father", and cousins may be called "brother" or
"sister".
· Using kinship terms,
which individual possesses the most authority within the family in your
culture?
They
respect their elders.
· Do the inheritance
patterns match the descent patterns, i.e., are goods and property passed on via
descent lines or by some other rules of inheritance?
It is
passed down the lines, that is my they do matrilineal pairings.
Week 6:
1. Social Organization: Briefly
describe the social organization of your culture, addressing the following
points:
· Is your culture
stratified in any way or is it generally egalitarian?
Aborigines had no chiefs or other
centralized institutions of social or political control. In various measures
Aboriginal societies exhibited both hierarchical and egalitarian tendencies,
but they were classless; an egalitarian ethos predominated, the subordinate
status of women notwithstanding.
· If it is egalitarian,
does that mean that all individuals within the population have equal status
and
social power? Explain.
The value of a kinship
system is that it structures people's relationships, obligations and behaviour
towards each other, and this in turn defines such matters as, who will look
after children if a parent dies, who can marry whom, who is responsible for
another person's debts or misdeeds, and who will care for the sick and old. It
is very egalitarian.
· If it is stratified,
what defines the social levels (i.e., economics, gender, status, aggressive
behavior,
inherited status, child number, etc.)? Describe the stratification system of
your culture. Is there mobility across status levels, and if so, how to you
change your status?
Female marriage.
2. The
Role of Violence
· Describe
at least two ways that violence is presented in your culture. What
are the affects of violence in this culture? Are these affects viewed
positively or negatively by this culture?
The Aborigines of Australia provide an example of a male
initiation rite into manhood. When the elders decide the time for initiation,
the boys are taken from the village (separation), while the women cry and make
a ritual showoff resistance. At a place distant from the camp, groups of men
from many villages gather. The elders sing and dance, while the initiates act
as though they are dead. The climax of this part of the ritual is a bodily
operation, such as circumcision or knocking out of a tooth.
Week 7:
1. Religion: Provide the following information on your culture’s religion.
a.
Does your culture practice a particular religion that you can
identify? Does it have a
name? Is it related at all to any other larger branch
of religion?
b.
The heart of Aboriginal religion was the
idea of the Dreaming. This idea was kept alive in the stories about the
spirit-ancestors, stories varying among Aboriginal groups but usually rich in
detail. These are often referred to as myths, though to Aborigines they were
not myths but truths forming the basis of social life. The spirit-ancestors, as
outlined above, laid down patterns of behaviour that had to be followed -
failure to observe these and carry out the proper rituals could lead to a lack
of rain or food, as well as punishment for the wrongdoer.
c.Is the religion monotheistic, polytheistic or
does it not have a particular deity as its focus
of worship? If possible
identify the name or the deity (if it is monotheistic) or several of
the
primary deities (if it is polytheistic).
The religion is polytheistic.
d.
Does their religion have an origin story of how their culture/people
came to be?
Summarize the story.
The expression 'Dreamtime' refers to the 'time before time', or 'the
time of the creation of all things', while 'Dreaming' is often used to refer to
an individual's or group's set of beliefs or spirituality. The
Aboriginal people clearly lived very close to nature, or more correctly,
regarded themselves as at one with nature - part of a natural order in which
animals, plants and Aborigines were linked together. The heavens, too, were
part of this natural order. For Aborigines totemism brought humans and the
environment together.
e.
Identify some of the important rituals and practices that are unique
and define this
particular religion.
Like
other matters in Aboriginal society the concept of totemism could be quite
complicated. There were differences, for example, in the way totemism was
observed. sometimes a person's totem was identified by the elders, who
decided exactly what spirit-child could have entered a mother's body through a
particular food she had eaten, or through her being near a totem center at some
stage. some types of totem were inherited - a child could inherit the totem of
the father's or maternal uncle's cult group./ but everywhere the totems were
greatly honoured, and normally Aborigines could not kill or eat their own totem
animal or plant; instead, they would carry out rituals to increase its numbers.
Thus totems were held in great respect.
f. How important is
this religion and its practice to your culture? Would it function without
it?
It would
necessarily function without, they cannot separate the role of nature in their
everyday lives.
2. Art: For each of the following broad art forms, briefly describe (a) how it
is most commonly
expressed in your culture and (b) what function of benefit it provides
to your culture. If your culture does not express a particular type of art
form, say so, but then speculate as to why they don’t.
a.
Artwork: This can include any type of material artistic expression, including
paintings, drawings, ceramics, weaving, body art, etc.
They expressed
themselves through visual art. There was also the painting of the human
body for ceremonial purposes. Other forms of artistic expression, such as
making designs on skin cloaks and modeling with beeswax, were uncommon. some of
the results of artistic expression.
Performance: This includes any type of physical
expression, such as dance, theater, etc.
Sacred ritual provided immense scope for aesthetic expression,
especially in dramatic performances with stylized posturing and complicated
dance movements. Less intense but sometimes almost as elaborate were the
nonsacred ceremonies (corroborees) with dance, mime, and singing designed for
entertainment and relaxation. Songs
ranged in style from the succinct verses or couplets of central Australia and
the Great Sandy Desert, which were made up of three, four, or more words
repeated in linked sequences, to the more elaborate songs of northeastern Arnhem
Land, which were long verses building up complex word pictures through symbolic
allusion and imagery. Oral literature is also messed with it.
b.
Religions Art: This can include art expression included in any of the above
categories,
but if applicable, highlight the way art is used to enhance
religious expression in your
culture.
everyday life is suffused with religious belief and interpretation
it may be difficult to separate out humans from non-human (whether dead
or spirit); nature from super-nature and past from present
culture is characterized by a unity of meaning in which all is
explicable and any action rarely accidental
the underlying
principle for all this is known as 'the Dreaming' or the Law
Bibliography
http://www.janesoceania.com/australia_aboriginal_traditional_society/index1.htm
http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/newssummary/news_23-9-2011-10-41-8
http://www.survivalinternational.org/tribes/aboriginals
http://www.aboriginalculture.com.au/socialorganisation.shtml
http://austhrutime.com/australian_aboriginal_tribes.htm
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/43873/Australian-Aboriginal-languages
http://www.downunderonline.com/Australia_Holiday_Aboriginal_Culture.htm
http://www.australia.climatetemp.info/
http://editor.nourishedmagazine.com.au/articles/australian-aborigines-living-off-the-fat-of-the-land
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