Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T11:29:14.250Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Ticuna knowledge, Worecü stars and sky movements

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 July 2011

Priscila Faulhaber*
Affiliation:
Museu de Astronomia e Ciências Afins (MAST), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil email: [email protected]
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

This paper focuses on the Ticuna interpretation of the iconography inscribed on ritual artifacts collected by the ethnographer Curt Nimuendaju in the early 1940s. The Ticuna describe certain celestial bodies depicted in the iconography of artifacts that are used in the Ticuna girls' puberty festival as ‘Worecü stars’. They relate these stars to various aspects of indigenous mythology expressed in ritual songs and speeches about worecü, a Ticuna word meaning the girl for whom the initiation is being performed. I hold that by incorporating Ticuna mediations into anthropological analysis we enrich this analysis by associating iconic images with mythical meanings transmitted generation by generation through ritual performances in which mythical thinking has the persuasive force of prescriptive action. In thinking about how the Ticuna read the iconography I avoid seeking a strict correlation between Western scientific explanations and the Ticuna's own knowledge about a special star known by them as the Woramacüri star. However, by postulating an association between the Worecü stars and the planets, we can examine the possibility that the Woramacüri Star is correlated with a particular planet at certain times, in specific circumstances.

Type
Contributed Papers
Copyright
Copyright © International Astronomical Union 2011

References

Faulhaber, P. 2009, Anthropology of weather and indigenous cosmology inscribed in ritual artifacts. In Jankovic, V. & Barbosa, C. (eds), Weather, Local Knowledge and Everyday Life. Issues in Integrated Climate Studies, MAST, Rio de Janeiro, pp. 245252.Google Scholar
Gell, A. 1999, The Art of Anthropology. Essays and Diagrams, Athlone Press, London & New Brunswick.Google Scholar
Katz, E., Goloubinoff, M. & Lammel, A. 2002, Introduction. Éléments pour une anthropologie du climat. In Katz, E., Goloubinoff, M. & Lammel, A. (eds), Entre Ciel et Terre. Climat et Sociétés, IRD/Ibis Press, Paris, pp. 1521.Google Scholar
Lévi-Strauss, C. 1978, Myth and Meaning, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London.Google Scholar
Nimuendaju, C. 1952, The Tukuna, University of California Press, Berkeley.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ruggles, C. L. N. & Saunders, N. J. 1993, The study of cultural astronomy. In Ruggles, C. L. N. & Saunders, N. J. (eds), Astronomies and Cultures, University Press of Colorado, Niwot, pp. 131.Google Scholar
Salomon, F. 2002, Patrimonial khipu in a modern Peruvian village. In Quilter, J. & Urton, G. (eds), Narrative Threads: Accounting and Recounting in Andean Khipu, Texas University Press, Austin, pp. 293319.Google Scholar
Salomon, F. 2006, Los Quipocamayos. El Antiguo Arte del Khipu en una Comunidad Campesina Moderna, IFEA/IEP, Lima.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tambiah, S. J. 1985, Culture, Thought and Social Action, Harvard University Press, Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Urton, G. 2003, Signs of the Inka Khipu, University of Texas Press, Austin.Google Scholar