Signifying Animals: One World Archaeology

Introduction 1 The pangolin revisited: a new approach to animal symbolisim 2 Cultural attitudes to birds and animals in folklore 3 Animal language in the Garden of Eden: folktale elements in Genesis 4 A semantic analysis of the symbolism of Toba mythical animals 5 Back to the future: trophy arrays as mental maps in the Wopkaimin’s culture of Place 6 Sheep bone as a sign of human descent: tibial symbolism among the Mongols 7 Ecological community and species attributes in Yolngu religious symbolism 8 Pictish animal symbols 9 The idea of fish: land and sea in the Icelandic world-view 10 Animals in Hopi duality 11 Eat and be eaten: animals in U’wa (Tunebo) oral tradition 12 Tezcatlipoca: jaguar metaphors and the Aztec mirror of nature 13 Nanook, super-male: the polar bear in the imaginary space and social time of the Inuit of the Canadian Arctic 14 Antelope as self-image among the Uduk 15 The track of the python: a West African origin story 16 Nigerian cultural attitudes to the dog 17 Rodeo horses: the wild and the tame 18 The beast without: the moa as a colonial frontier myth in New Zealand 19 The meaning of the snake

Roy Willis, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Edinburgh.

A fresh assessment of the workings of animal symbolism in diverse cultures. Reconsiders the concept of totemism and exposes common fallacies in symbolic interpretation.