Subsistence Essay

There has been much debate over whether hunting and gathering is an economic practice for subsistence or whether it is a way of life- a cultural practice. Subsistence methods can rarely be separated from culture- cultural aspects grow, over a span of many years, around the methods people use to survive. Subsistence methods and culture are not mutually exclusive. There are occasional variations depending on the group, location, and time period in question, but this is mostly the case. To illustrate this, examples can be made of Bushmen communities in and around Southern Africa as well as some groups in other parts of the world, in reference to the spiritual beliefs they hold and the art they produce.

Much of hunter-gatherer spiritual belief

1988; Whitley 1994: 9). Because “ the brain attempts to recognise, or decode, these forms as it does impressions supplied by the nervous system in a normal state of consciousness” (Lewis-Williams et al. 1988: 203), what shamans interpret from the entoptic phenomena will naturally be based on their cultural background, including animals and activities which surround their methods of subsistence. Kalahari Bushman informants- shamans- have spoken of “riding a rain animal to the top of a mountain and killing it so that its blood would fall as rain” (Lewis-Williams 1992: 57). Out of body experiences or spiritual journeys were also often undergone in the form of an animal (Lewis-Williams 1992: 57). A core belief in !Kung Bushman society is that supernatural potency, or n/um, can be gained from the fat of the Eland, an animal which is frequently hunted. The close relationship the !Kung have developed with an animal they have come to rely on, both for subsistence as well as for their cultural practices, induces a spiritual belief based on it. The relationships shamans formed with “animal spirit helpers were central to the development of identity and professional competence, providing powers to carry out a variety of activities.” (Winkelman 2002: 1878). Apart from “structuring relationships of the individual to the collectivity and the cosmos” (Winkelman 2002: 1878), trance enables shamans to promote “economic activity by, for example, guiding antelope into ambushes and controlling rain” (Mazel 1989: