Signifying Animals

Signifying Animalsexamines what animals mean to human beings around the world, offering a fresh assessment of the workings of animal symbolism in diverse cultures. The essays in the book are based on first-hand field research with peoples as dissimilar as the Mongolian nomads of Soviet Central Asia, Aboriginal Australians, Inuit hunters of the Canadian Arctic and cultivators of Africa and Papua New Guinea. The essays look at accounts of mythical beasts among the Amerindian peoples of Andean South America, alleged sightings of an extinct giant bird in New Zealand as well as the complex symbolism of the American rodeo. Others discuss animal symbolism in the Middle East, India and the ancient picts of Scotland. The book advances a powerful argument against some prevalent fallacies in symbolic interpretation.

Foreword	p. vii
Preface	p. xxv
Preface to the Paperback Edition	p. xxvi
Introduction	p. 1
The Pangolin Revisited: a New Approach to Animal Symbolism	p. 25
Cultural Attitudes to Birds and Animals in Folklore	p. 37
Animal Language in the Garden of Eden: Folktale Elements in Genesis	p. 43
A Semantic Analysis of the Symbolism of Toba Mythical Animals	p. 55
Back to the Future: Trophy Arrays as Mental Maps in the Wopkaimin's Culture of Place	p. 63
Sheep Bone as a Sign of Human Descent: Tibial Symbolism Among the Mongols	p. 74
Ecological Community and Species Attributes in Yolngu Religious Symbolism	p. 85
Pictish Animal Symbols	p. 103
The Idea of Fish: Land and Sea in the Icelandic World-View	p. 119
Animals in Hopi Duality	p. 134
Eat and Be Eaten: Animals in U'Wa (Tunebo) Oral Tradition	p. 140
Tezcatlipoca: Jaguar Metaphors and the Aztec Mirror of Nature	p. 159
Nanook, Super-Male: the Polar Bear in the Imaginary Space and Social Time of the Inuit of the Canadian Arctic	p. 178
Antelope as Self-Image Among the Uduk	p. 196
The Track of the Python: a West African Origin Story	p. 204
Rodeo Horses: the Wild and the Tame	p. 222
The Beast Without: the Moa as a Colonial Frontier Myth in New Zealand	p. 236
The Meaning of the Snake	p. 246
Index	p. 253
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