Six days towards the polar star

Orientation among Tubu Teda

Bibliographic Data

ID14770698
AuthorsTilman Musch (0000-0002-4851-7151, University of Bayreuth, corresponding author)
Year2015
Volume85
Issue1/2
Pages282-310
Publication date2015-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal des africanistes (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0399-0346 • E-ISSN: 1957-7850
PublisherOpenEdition (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.4000/africanistes.4609
OpenAlexW2729201965
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited22

In social and behavioural science, there is an ongoing debate discussing whether mental mapping or practical mastery is preferentially used for orientation. In particular in anthropology, dead reckoning, as a third principle of orientation, is often neglected by scholars, whereas it seems to be the most important one in scarcely-or not-inhabited large-scale environments, as for example deserts. Based on observations, and also on oral and drawn evidence gathered during fieldwork in Niger, the present paper studies orientation among Tubu Teda. The evidence indicates that dead reckoning is their basic principle of orientation when navigating in the desert. During navigation, landscape patterns acquire a polyvalent function, as they not only allow verification but also serve as temporal and directional indices and thus support a line and a circle of position

Cartography · Dead reckoning · Desert (philosophy · Epistemology · Geography · Geometry · Global Positioning System · Orientation (vector space · Scale (ratio · Sociology · Telecommunications · Categorization, perception, and language · Computer Science · Geography Education and Pedagogy · History · Mathematics · Philosophy · Spatial Cognition and Navigation

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