Front cover caption
A boy shows off on his horse at the annual festival of racing, games and music in Barsko'on, Kyrgyzstan in October 2007. The festival includes endurance races of up to 36 kilometres over steep, rocky mountain paths and streams, a far cry from the bowling-green surfaces of Churchill Downs and Newmarket.
Abdildechan, an expert in horse games in Kyzyl Suu, explained that horse games and competitions such as these derive from the importance of horses to the nomadic and warrior traditions of the Kyrgyz people. Horses enable people to move away from danger, he explained, and are also essential for work and food. Cars are becoming increasingly common in Kyrgyzstan, but many people believe that they will never completely replace horses in this mountainous region. 'Young people may have cars', says shepherd Jakshylyck Orgochor, 'but where there is a Kyrgyz person there is always a horse: a horse is a man's wings'.
In this issue, Rebecca Cassidy scrutinizes claims about the distinctiveness of the Kyrgyz horse and considers the political consequences of evaluating domesticated animals on the basis of contested categories including 'breed' and 'type'.
Back cover caption: Human-Animal Relations
Ros Coard, lecturer in archaeology and specialist in archaeozoology and forensic taphonomy in the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Wales Lampeter, examines forensic evidence taken from the scene of a suspected big cat kill in West Wales, UK.
The skulls in the foreground belong to an array of known big cat species, and Coard compared tooth pit data from these skulls with those found in sheep and horses killed in unusual circumstances. These data have been used to provide evidence for the existence of at least one large predatory felid in West Wales.
However, even without this scientific corroboration, many people around the UK report sightings of non-endemic ‘alien’ big cats (ABCs) on a regular basis, attributing to them an almost mythical status, and this makes them an interesting phenomenon to be considered from an anthropological perspective.
Coard has been working collaboratively with Samantha Hurn, an anthropologist who has been documenting narratives relating to big cat sightings in West Wales. In this issue of ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY, Hurn outlines the data collected so far. She argues that ABCs do, indeed, exist in West Wales, and discusses how and why her informants from the local Welsh farming community regard these predators in positive terms. Many see ABCs as both important keystone species performing the valuable function of keeping other problematic predators (notably foxes) in check, and highly politicized animals who symbolize their own marginalized position within contemporary UK society.
As Lévi-Strauss put it long ago, animal-human relations are, indeed, good to think with.
Contents
Antonius C.G.M. Robben 1
Anthropology and the Iraq war: An uncomfortable engagement
Marshall Sahlins 3
The teach-ins: Anti-war protest in the Old Stoned Age
Samantha Hurn 6
Here be dragons? No, big cats! Predator symbolism in rural West Wales
Rebecca Cassidy 12
The horse, the Kyrgyz horse and the ‘Kyrgyz horse’
Helen Lambert 16
Evidentiary truths? The evidence of anthropology through the anthropology of medical evidence
Petra Rethmann 21
Post-communist ironies in an East German hotel
COMMENT
Laura Jeffery 24
Chagossians refused right to return home: A sequel to Vine (AT 24[4])
Kalman Applbaum 26
Free markets and the unfettered imagination of value: A response to Hart/Ortiz and Gudeman (AT24[6])
Julia Elyachar and Bill Maurer 27
Retooling anthropology: A response to Hart/Ortiz and Gudeman (AT24[6])
Roberto J. González 27
Springing a leak: A comment on the Human Terrain Team handbook
LETTERS
Gillian Hansford 28
Topical AT
NEWS 28 CALENDAR 29 CLASSIFIED 30
