Canoes and Culture in a Guyana Swamp

Beschreibung

This book explores the interplay between a people, their physical environment, the means of mobility that connect the two, and how these elements combine in the creation of cognitive and cultural landscapes. Specifically, it examines how Indigenous Warrau people in the village of Imbotero, Guyana, use traditional dugout canoes in the surrounding swamp forest and on connecting waterways; how canoes mediate between the Warrau and their landscape; and how the relationship is bi-directional: that is, how people use boats to conceptualise and exploit the landscape while, simultaneously, the landscape influences culture, cognition, and boat use.

The book traces the history of the Warrau canoe from the earliest evidence of prehistoric use to the present. It describes how dugout canoes are built and handled, how they form the basis of Imbotero’s economy and culture, and how they enable access to, and exploitation of, the environment. It explores the roles of age, gender, and social status in canoe use, examines the fading spiritual component of canoe construction, and discusses challenges to the Warrau’s canoe heritage, with suggestions of how that heritage might be safeguarded. The role of the physical environment upon culture is analysed within Christer Westerdahl’s maritime cultural landscape (MCL) framework, which is applied here for the first time to a contemporary swamp society. The swamp is shown to be fully compatible with the MCL concept, in that watercraft and their daily use play central roles in the people’s engagement with the environment, their worldview, and their identity.

Bob Holtzman holds a PhD in Archaeology and a Master of Arts in Maritime Archaeology from the University of Southampton and a Master of Marine Affairs degree from the University of Rhode Island. He studies the design, construction, and use of vernacular watercraft outside the Western plank-on-frame boatbuilding tradition, with a particular focus on logboats (i.e., dugout canoes). In addition to fieldwork in Guyana for the present work, he has done ethnographic studies of logboats in Belize and Ecuador and researched archaeological logboats in Britain. Author of the blog Indigenous Boats (indigenousboats.com) for more than 15 years, Dr. Holtzman has worked as an Acquisitions Editor for International Marine/McGraw Hill and as Communications Director for the Penobscot Marine Museum in Maine. The author of three books on wilderness survival and camping skills, he also wrote a series of educational books about boats for children. He is currently co-editing a book on the hūri logboats of the Middle East–Indian Ocean region.

This book explores the interplay between a people, their physical environment, the means of mobility that connect the two, and how these elements combine in the creation of cognitive and cultural landscapes. Specifically, it examines how Indigenous Warrau people in the village of Imbotero, Guyana, use traditional dugout canoes in the surrounding swamp forest and on connecting waterways; how canoes mediate between the Warrau and their landscape; and how the relationship is bi-directional: that is, how people use boats to conceptualise and exploit the landscape while, simultaneously, the landscape influences culture, cognition, and boat use.

The book traces the history of the Warrau canoe from the earliest evidence of prehistoric use to the present. It describes how dugout canoes are built and handled, how they form the basis of Imbotero’s economy and culture, and how they enable access to, and exploitation of, the environment. It explores the roles of age, gender, and social status in canoe use, examines the fading spiritual component of canoe construction, and discusses challenges to the Warrau’s canoe heritage, with suggestions of how that heritage might be safeguarded. The role of the physical environment upon culture is analysed within Christer Westerdahl’s maritime cultural landscape (MCL) framework, which is applied here for the first time to a contemporary swamp society. The swamp is shown to be fully compatible with the MCL concept, in that watercraft and their daily use play central roles in the people’s engagement with the environment, their worldview, and their identity.

Autor*in

Robert Holtzman

Themen in »Canoes and Culture in a Guyana Swamp«

Maritime Ethnography Vernacular Watercraft Dugout Canoes Logboats Warrau People Warao People Indigenous People in South America Amerindians in Guyana Maritime Cultural Landscape Intangible Cultural Heritage Coastal and Marine Cultural Heritage Safeguarding Cultural Heritage Caribbean Watercraft

Stimmen zu »Canoes and Culture in a Guyana Swamp«

“Written in striking detail, Holtzman provides a study of the conceptualization of landscape by coastal Warrau peoples of Guyana and Venezuela. In applying Westerdahl’s landscape framework in analysis of Warrau canoe life, the author provides a comprehensive overview of a lifeway so rarely studied. Its exploration of the role of canoes mediating between people and their landscape captures the importance of the way canoe life perpetuates cultural heritage. This beautifully illustrated and professional work is an engaging and informing read—an important contribution.” (Mark Plew, Distinguished Professor Emeritus (Anthropology), Boise State University)

“Amidst the threads of globalized consumerism and planetary warming, questions of what constitutes tradition and authenticity are paramount to indigenous studies. Bob Holtzman's welcome meditation on swamp maritimity is also an incisive celebration of indigenous ingenuity and self-determination in the face of rapid changes, and what it might mean to let go of heritage.” (Sara Rich, author of “Shipwreck Hauntography: Underwater Ruins and the Uncanny”)

“Bob Holtzman's book opens new horizons for the reader about a population living in symbiosis with nature in the permanently flooded spaces on the margins of the Orinoco Delta.” (Béat Arnold, retired director of archaeology, Canton of Neuchâtel)

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