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Ticuna knowledge, Worecü stars and sky movements

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 July 2011

Priscila Faulhaber
Priscila Faulhaber*
Affiliation:
Museu de Astronomia e Ciências Afins (MAST), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil email: pfaulhaber@globo.com
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Abstract

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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.

Keywords

ethnologyiconographycultural heritagesign language
Type
Contributed Papers
Information
Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union , Volume 7 , Symposium S278: “Oxford IX” International Symposium on Archaeoastronomy , January 2011 , pp. 58 - 64
Copyright
Copyright © International Astronomical Union 2011

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