Sacrifice as the ideal hunt: a cosmological explanation for the origin of reindeer domestication

Abstract

The Siberian Northeast shows striking parallels between the cosmologies of hunters and reindeer herders. What may this tell us about the transformation from hunting to pastoralism? This article argues for a structural identity between hunting and sacrifice, and for the domestication of the reindeer as the result of hunters' efforts to use sacrifice to control the accidental variables of the hunt. Hunters can practise their ethos of ‘trust’ with prey only through highly controlled ritual enactments. We describe two: the famous bear festival of the Amur Gulf region and the consecrated reindeer of the Eveny. Both express the same overall logic by which sacrifice functions as an ideal hunt. The animal is involved in a relation not of domination but of trust, while also undergoing a process of taming. We therefore suggest that the reindeer's domestication may be based not only on ecological or economic adaptations, but also on cosmology.

Eating (With) Piranhas: Untamed Approaches to Domestication

“…Here it is worth localizing some of the research and analyses that point to different reasons for doing so. To start with we can cite the more general approaches to the emergence of animal domestication, as explored, for instance, in the ethnology of Siberia by Willerslev et al (2014) or in Amazonia by Descola (1994 and2013: 377 ff. ).…”

Les rennes d’Amadjuak

“…Mais il faut probablement complexifier encore le processus car, si, sur une courte période de temps, comme c'est le cas ici, les chasseurs inuits ne se montrent pas du tout attirés par l'élevage, nonobstant la solution qu'il offre pour éviter la famine, on ne sait pas ce qui peut se produire sur une très longue échelle temporelle, ni les implications qu'aura, sur un plus long terme, la christianisation, par exemple. L'idée de Willerslev et al (2015) selon laquelle cette transforma tion passe par le sacrifice reste indémontrable, et aucune donnée ethnographique dans ces expériences alaskiennes ou canadiennes ne va dans ce sens.…”

Animals

“…What is more, the flight response of wild animals, and the one-off nature of the hunter-prey encounter, appears on the face of it to militate against the establishment of enduring interpersonal relationships between particular humans and animals. It is for this reason that several writers have proposed that we look instead to herders and their livestock for instances of what they call 'human-animal co-sociality' (Knight 2005(Knight , 2012Willerslev et al 2014).…”