Is hunting and gathering a ‘way of life’ (culture) or simply an economic activity (subsistence strategy)? Draw on multiple case studies to support your argument. Readings: Select readings from your tutorials that are appropriate for the support of your argument. Introduction Hunting and gathering is the most successful adaptation in human history until at about 12 000 years when farming began. Hunting and gathering is mainly performed by hunter-gatherer societies (foragers) as they literally go hunt for big game animals and gather wild plant foods. Throughout history, many anthropologists have set out to study the hunter-gatherer societies to gain a better understanding of how our ancestors lived and survived then. In this essay I will be …show more content…
Across the whole globe different types of art have be discovered and interpreted accordingly using ethnography. (Lombard 2002) stated in his paper that, since ethnography and archaeological studies have allowed us to interpret the San’s religion as shamanistic, then it is also acceptable to apply the concept of shamanism to a broader spectrum of hunter-gatherer societies around the world whose ritual practices are based on the altered states of consciousness. When shamans enter into a trance, they experience entoptic forms and geometrical imagery (Lewis-Williams et al. 1998). During a trance, the shaman will experience a visual impression that he is looking into or moving through the vortex. To demonstrate this point, Lombard (2002), describes the ritual culture of Siberian shamanism. The Siberian shaman ritual dress has a disk with a hole attached to it. This disk represents the vortex in which the shaman will enter to go into the spirit world and also the very same vortex where the “bad” spirits can be returned to the underworld by the shaman. Similarly, the bored stone of the San people represents the tunnel of communication to the spirit world to interact with the ancestors and the