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Hunting as Intangible Heritage: Some Notes on Its Manifestations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2007

Lyndel V. Prott
Lyndel V. Prott
Affiliation:
Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University; School of English, Media Studies and Art History, University of Queensland. Email: l.prott@anu.edu.au
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Abstract

This article seeks to relate hunting practices, of which some good examples have been given in this volume, to the way such practices are dealt with in the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage 2003. The extraordinary ubiquity of hunting behavior, ritual, and representation creates an enormous field of study, which can only be touched lightly by such an international legal instrument.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
International Journal of Cultural Property , Volume 14 , Issue 3: Special Issue: Hunting as Heritage , August 2007, pp. 385 - 398
Copyright
© 2007 International Cultural Property Society

I like the hunting of the hare;

New sports I hold in scorn.

I like to be as my fathers were,

In the days e'er I was born.

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt1

English poet Wilfrid Scawen Blunt (1840–1922).

A great part of the animal kingdom survives by hunting. Humankind inherited both the instinct and the need to hunt and was itself hunted. Although hunting became formalized in many human societies, there is an unbroken tradition back through the different ages and evolutions of humanity to its earliest days.

The Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage 2003 in its description (for it is hardly a legal definition) states that “‘intangible cultural heritage’ means the practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills—as well as the instruments, objects, artefacts and cultural spaces associated therewith—that communities, groups and, in some cases, individuals recognize as part of their cultural heritage” (Art. 2[1]). The same section states that it is

manifested inter alia in the following domains:

(a) oral traditions and expressions, including language as a vehicle of the intangible cultural heritage;

(b) performing arts;

(c) social practices, rituals and festive events;

(d) knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe;

(e) traditional craftsmanship. (Art. 2[2])

Hunting, as we shall see, clearly falls within that description and is manifested in all five of the domains described. Most languages have specialized hunting terms. There is music directly associated with or inspired by hunting. Many performances, drama, dance, religious rituals, story-telling and song reflect hunting, reenact it, or pay homage to its animal victims. Graphic art represents the hunters' prey from the caves of Lascaux to other early rock art sites all over the world. Symbols of birds and animals who were the prey, or who preyed on humans, have been adopted by hunters to represent certain prized traits (the eagle in many cultures from Roman to Austrian to North American, the panther in Mesoamerica, the lion in China). Hunting skills and knowledge, as well as the making of appropriate weapons, are well represented across human communities all over the world.

Hunting, like other intangible heritage, is a dynamic human practice that has dramatically evolved because of changes of climate and location in the animal kingdom, the sophistication of weapons used, and imagery as well as the relative importance of hunting to different communities. The change from hunting as a key component of human survival, providing an important element of diet, to the formalized outdoor activity of Royal Hunts and aristocratic sport, as well as the change to commercial exploitation, mark significant changes in the legacy of hunting.

A web site devoted to representing iconic embodiments of England states the following:

The old pursuit of hunting foxes provided England with much of its traditional folk imagery over the centuries. Country pubs are adorned with pictures of the hunt, inns are named after it, and the stirring sight of packs of hounds and riders gathering in the early morning is depicted on many a place-mat and in many a painting.2

And yet, the sport of fox hunting has recently been abolished by the British parliament, despite vociferous protest from its adherents.

SIGNIFICANT PLACE OF HUNTING IN HUMAN COMMUNITIES' ACTIVITIES, SKILLS, KNOWLEDGE, RELIGIONS, AND OTHER CULTURAL MANIFESTATIONS

The breadth of reference and embodiment in intangible heritage defies a complete catalog, but a few examples can be given in the following text.

Music

The hunting horn has been traditionally used by many composers to evoke hunting. An Internet search for music relating to hunting turns up many recordings of hunting horns by a wide group of known, and some anonymous, composers. One well-known classical music piece is Haydn's 1782 “La Chasse” (The Hunt), the fourth movement of his Symphony no. 91, which features hunting horn calls. This movement was originally composed as the overture to Haydn's opera La Fideltà Premiata (Fidelity Rewarded). Leopold Mozart, Wolfgang's father, composed the Hunting Symphony using bugle, hunting horn, live ammunition, and (if possible) dog yelps and hunters' cries.3

Handel composed Concerto for Two Hunting Horns in F (from his Water Music 1717).

Beethoven's Piano Sonata no. 18 in E flat, op. 31, no. 3 (1802) is known as “The Hunt,” but in fact that is only really applicable to its final movement. (Indeed, it is unknown why this tag has been associated with certain pieces of music, mostly not by the composer, but by subsequent critics or the public. It may mean no more than a jaunty piece of music that reminds someone of a good gallop.) Wolfgang Mozart's String Quartet no. 17 in B-flat major is known as the “Hunt,” K. 458 (1784) and his Horn Concertos 2, 3, and 4 are also associated with hunting, probably because they feature horns.

Even today contemporary composers use this traditional instrument of the hunt as a source for inspiration, as do groups playing hunting horns, performing on occasions such as Saint-Hubert's (the patron saint of hunters) day in November. The characteristic tones from horn instruments are also found in philharmonic orchestras.4

Opera

Where would classical European opera and ballet be without the accidental discoveries made while heroes get lost on hunting parties, and without the hunting horns liberally used in such scenes?

Handel's opera Deidamia (1741) has a hunting scene in act II. The central event of the Haydn's opera La Fideltà Premiata (1781) is a hunting scene because the presiding goddess is Diana who appears in the end to the sound of a rousing hunting call. Weber's Der Freischütz (1821) has a spirited hunting chorus in act III. There is a hunting party in act III of Wagner's Götterdämmerung (1876). In Berlioz's Les Troyens (composed 1856–1858), a symphonic interlude between acts III and IV represents a Royal Hunt and Storm, an idea apparently suggested to Berlioz by a passage in Virgil's Aeneid (Book IV, lines 117–168). A tranquil natural scene is interrupted by the sound of hunting horns and the entrance of Trojan and Carthaginian hunters. Verdi's Don Carlo has a first act set in a hunting scenario. Alan Berg's Wozzeck, premiered in 1925, includes a hunting song (act I, scene 2) and a hunters' chorus (act II, scene IV).

Besides these occasions, the use of the hunt to forward the plot is found in a plethora of performances. In Wagner's Tannhauser (1845) hunters discover the hero5

Act I, scene 2.

as he returns from a sojourn with a siren. Golaud, in Debussy's Peleus and Melisande (1902), follows a well-worn track when, having got lost while hunting, he comes across a beauteous maiden.

Dance

Hunting is well represented in ballet: There is a hunt in act 1 of Giselle (by the French composer Adolphe Adam 1841) and act 1 of Swan Lake (1895), whereas the prince who awakes the Sleeping Beauty (composed 1888–1899) in act II finds his way through the forest to the enchanted castle while hunting (both these ballet scores composed by Tchaikovsky). Dances all over the world imitate the movements of the hunters or those of the animals being hunted.

The first important evidence of ancient Chinese dance was found in the Sun Chia Chai archaeological excavations in the Ta Tung state in western China. Pottery found there was recognized as from the Neolithic Yang-Shao culture of the fourth millennium b.c. Pictures painted on it were of dancers miming hunting. They were painted with weapons in their hands. Some of them were singing.6

For the Penan Benalui people in Indonesia's rainforest of eastern Borneo, a hunt offers the opportunity for younger Penan to learn crucial survival skills, knowledge of the environment, local geography, genealogy, history, and beliefs and values as well as the special techniques required to be a successful hunter. Songs and stories recount hunting adventures and legends, whereas ceremonial dances demonstrate the coordination and agility required of the expert hunter.7

The Bashkir people, in the Republic of Bashkortostan in the Russian Federation, have dances expressive of their hunting traditions such as horse riding, running, galloping, spurring the horse, and others. Young men were taught these dances, because they thus developed skills in wielding ancient Bashkir arms: a bow and arrow, sword, and saber. In hunting dances the performer might express the brave and adroit hunter; a horse; or the movements of a bird or an animal being pursued, the chase, the wounding, and collapse. The Bashkirs often hunted using specially trained birds (eagles). That may be why they often imitated birds and their flight.8

In Peru there are traditional hunting dances such as the llipi-puli and choq'elas. They are dances from the altiplano (the Andean high plateau) related to hunting the vicuña.9

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peruvian_dances/ (accessed June 26, 2007).

The Gaur dance of the Sing Marias or Tallaguda Marias (Bison-horn Marias) of South Bastar is one of the most popular performed in Madhya Pradesh (India). This spectacular dance symbolizes the hunting spirit of the tribe. The word gaur means a ferocious bison. In the bison dance, the men attack one another and chase the female dancers. The Marias imitate a number of bison movements: Most of them perform like frisky bulls, hurling wisps of grass into air, charging, and tossing horns.10

Literature

Xenophon (431–ca. 350 b.c.e.) wrote a sportsman's manual on hunting, with detailed information on the choice of hunting dogs and the habits of the hare.11

The text is available on the Internet at http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/x/xenophon/x5hu/ (accessed June 26, 2007). Translated by H.E. Dakyns.

An entire book12 has recently been published on the culture of the hunt in Shakespeare, listing actual scenes as well as allegorical use. Isaac Walton's idiosyncratic The Compleat Angler is a well-loved classic, first published in 1653 and continually revised by him until the fifth edition in 1676. Herman Melville's famous novel Moby-Dick relates the obsessed Captain Ahab's hunt for a whale.13

Melville, Moby-Dick.

Vikram Seth's wolf hunt in A Suitable Boy14 (during which two wolves, a fox, and two huntsmen all manage to avoid being shot) is unforgettable.

The nineteenth-century English novelist Anthony Trollope was a passionate huntsman and included hunt scenes in three of his novels. He also wrote Hunting Sketches in 1865 in which he describes the man who hunts and doesn't like it, the man who hunts and does like it, the lady who rides to hounds, the hunting farmer, the man who hunts and never jumps, the hunting parson, the master of hounds, and how to ride to hounds. As illustrated by hunting, his observations of manners, social practices, and class distinctions are acute and amusing.15

Electronic text available at etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/t/trollope/anthony/hunting/ (accessed June 26, 2007).

Poetry

The Greek poets Homer (eighth or seventh century b.c.e.) and Hesiod (seventh century b.c.e.), who are thought to be the first Greeks to have embodied much older oral traditions in written form, both mention the myth of Meleager and his beloved Atalanta, who hunted and killed a wild boar. The story was retold by the Roman poet Ovid in Metamorphoses (8 b.c.e.).

In Virgil's epic poem The Aeneid (19 b.c.e.) Dido and Aeneas consummate their love while seeing shelter from a storm during a hunt.16

Virgil, The Aeneid, Book IV.

The Orkneyinga Saga, compiled sometime between 1192 and 1206 by an unknown Icelandic scribe, mentions otter hunting and deer hunting. Rudyard Kipling wrote The Fox Meditates on the changes in the fox hunt from Biblical days to the twentieth century. In The Ballad of the Foxhunter, W.B. Yeats describes an old man dying to his favorite sounds of horses and hounds. “The Man from Snowy River”17

Paterson A.B. “The Man from Snowy River” was first published in the Journal The Bulletin, Sydney, in 1890 and subsequently in the collection Paterson, A.B. The Man from Snowy River and Other Verses published in 1895. It can now be found in any collection of Australian bush ballads. The full text is available at http://home.vicnet.net.au/~ozlit/snowy02.html#first (accessed September 15, 2007).

is an iconic poem of Australiana describing the pursuit of wild horses (brumbies) in the Australian Alps.

One of the most famous hunts in poetry must be “The Hunting of the Snark (An Agony in 8 Fits)” by Lewis Carroll, a nonsense poem about a group of adventurers hunting a legendary beast, first published in 1876. It clearly relies on much of the imagery of hunting, without which there would be no plot at all. It was translated into German by Michael Ende, who wrote an opera based on it.

Art

Paleolithic art in Europe often represents animals which must have been the objects of hunting. At Grotte Chauvet in southeastern France, the stone engravings and more than 400 paintings, estimated to be approximately 32,000 years old, depict lions, rhinoceroses, bears, horses, and other creatures. Ivory figurines depicting animals and birds, dating from approximately the same period as the Grotte Chauvet paintings, have been discovered at various sites in Swabia, in southwestern Germany.

In the eighth millennium b.c., the first inhabitants of the Nile Valley began to make engraved drawings on the cliffs, particularly in Upper Egypt and Nubia. Among them are scenes of wild game and hunting. Magnificent reliefs on the North Palace of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh included the famous Royal Lion Hunt scenes of the second millennium b.c.e., now in the British Museum. In the great age of mosaics, hunting was a popular motif. There is a fine mosaic of a hunt, dating from the third century b.c., at the World Heritage site of El Djem, now in the Bardo Museum, Tunis. A wonderfully detailed scene from a resort near Antioch (modern Turkey) is now in the Worcester Museum (United Kingdom). Brueghel's Hunters in the Snow (1565) is one of the best known and most loved hunt paintings. Peter Paul Rubens painted Meleager and Atalanta Hunting the Boar (1635–1637).

Portraits in hunting costume became very popular in Europe. Goya's Charles III in Hunting Costume (1786–1788) is one example of hundreds of royalty, aristocrats, and wealthy hunters immortalized by artists.

Tapestry

Although the English tradition of hunting is strong, so is the French. The Capet Kings were passionate about hunting, which led to its representation in many forms and to its adoption by the aristocracy.

Mediaeval tapestries often included hunting scenes or used them allegorically, most famously in the series The Lady and the Unicorn in the Cluny Museum in Paris. Consider, for a later example, the Chateau of Cheverny, described currently on the Internet as a tourist attraction and “the perfect example of a seventeenth-century Château. Built between 1604 and 1634 and never altered, it presents an immaculate picture of symmetry, harmony, and the aristocratic good life—descendants of the first owners still own, live in and go hunting from Cheverny today.” The Cheverny hunt and its dedicated hunting dogs are famous. Indeed, the same site advises the following:

The kennels near the main entrance are certainly worth a look: a hundred lithe hunting hounds mill and loll about while they wait for the next stag; feeding time (5 pm) is something to be seen. Cheverny's hunt culls (or kills, depending on your point of view) around thirty animals a year, a figure set by the National Forestry Office.18

A commercial site on the Internet advertises a tapestry of the Chateau of Cheverny. Others of the Royal Hunt series, Fox Hunt and Hunt of the Falcon are equally offered for sale.19

See http://www.shopdrops.com/royalhunt.html/ (accessed June 26, 2007).

TRADITIONAL MYTH AND RITUAL

In the beliefs of Aboriginal peoples across the whole of the continent of Australia, the spiritual relationship of each group is linked to specific points or landmarks. These are based on Dreamtime stories, which relate the advent of mythical beings and animals to these points. They explain the descent of a group from a particular being, now embodied in an animal that is a totem for that human group. As many anthropologists have noted, this animal then is sacred for all humans in that group. It can be seen that this arrangement meant that every native animal was sacred in some area and, therefore, in the long run was protected by a kind of ecological reserve in the territory for which that group was responsible.

This can be exemplified by the work of an expert on the natural history and ecology of the red kangaroo of Central Australia who has analyzed the significance of the Arrernte people's Red Kangaroo Dreaming stories and claims that stories about Red Kangaroo Dreaming and the sacred spring at Krantji “may have an underlying ecological rationale.” Several kangaroo ancestors feature in the myths of the Arrernte and the names of many of the places include vocabulary related to their Dreaming tracks. “A map of the ancestor's overland trek near Krantji—breathing life and form into the landscape as they went, corresponded with uncanny precision to maps of preferred habitats of red kangaroo.” The most important of these sites is Krantji. “Totemites approaching the site did so in silence and reverence, already having laid down their weapons some way off to indicate to the ancestors their homage and peaceful intent. They would approach with closed eyes, feeling their way along the rock-face.”20

Newsome, “The Eco-Mythology,” 327–33.

Most importantly, there was no hunting near totemic sites; thus red kangaroos were protected near their best habitat. During increase ceremonies the rocks, trees, and sacred hollows, representing the ancestors, were struck; and it was believed every grain dislodged arose as a kangaroo when next it rained.21

Newsome, “The Eco-Mythology,” 330, 332–33.

“The ancient Aborigines who created these legends must have been well acquainted with the ecology of the red kangaroo, and appear to have passed that knowledge into the mythology to be hidden by allegory.”22 It should be evident from this that the mannered and often upper class practice of hunting in Western societies may be a practice described as intangible heritage. However, it is in a different class altogether to the central place in the spiritual and ethical universe of a holistic system, such as that of the Arrernte where hunting skills go hand in hand with a sacred mission based on the relationship of the hunters to the beings who first populated the land and gave it in perpetuity to a human group dependent on that animal and bound by a strict system to revere it and its special places.

In many traditional communities, dependent on hunting, special rituals are followed, before and after the hunt, to ensure the increase of the animals and the safety of the hunters.

When hunting is important for survival, it is not surprising that there are significant links with the spiritual beliefs and ethical rules of that society. In classical times the goddess of hunting was Artemis (in Greek, Diana for the Romans). She became the rationale for a myriad of sculptures and other art works representing women in scanty attire—some of them surprisingly unathletic.

THE LAW

Legal traditions in themselves are part of the intangible heritage. The sophisticated structures of Jewish law, Canon Law, and Western European law as well as the culture of legalism as the primary method of dispute settlement all ultimately deriving from ancient examples in Mesopotamia, are an enduring and indelible feature of those cultures. Without tracing in detail how these legal systems have historically dealt with hunting, its importance in current law is easily shown.

A key case in U.S. law is the case of Pierson v. Post in 1805.23

Pierson v. Post. Supreme Court of New York, 1805 3. Caines' Reports 175. Johnson's Reports, 17–20.

Post was hunting a fox through a vacant lot when Pierson shot it dead. Post argued that he had ownership of the fox. The Supreme Court of New York had to decide whether the hunter was entitled to possession of a wild animal because he was in its pursuit. It held that the mere giving of chase was insufficient as the basis of legal actions against others who intercepted it because “it would prove a fertile course of quarrels and litigation.” In effect this led to the development of a new rule that mere pursuit of a wild animal does not constitute its possession. This view has been characterized as the pragmatic argument. A dissenting judge gave reasoning in support of Post, on the ground that the hunt served a useful purpose in ridding the countryside of vermin and therefore should be encouraged. This form of reasoning has been characterized as the teleological argument. This relatively simple case has become a key example used by legal theorists to explain different concepts of legal reasoning, and a vigorous debate is currently waged in the law faculties of the United States on this 200-year-old case.24

New Zealand brothers who ran a hunting business had a helicopter used for killing deer. It was seized under legislation that required written authority for the hunting of red deer by helicopter. They challenged the actions of the Department of Conservation, which is responsible for the control of conservation of different wild species in New Zealand. The allegations of conspiracy, fabrication of evidence, tampering with documents, suborning witnesses, and committing perjury were found by the New Zealand Court of Appeal to be “extravagant … and grossly improper and unfounded.” Nonetheless, the brothers appealed to the Privy Council in London (final court of Appeal for New Zealand), which delivered a decision in 2005, some 15 years after the event. This appeal was also lost, leaving the appellants with a huge bill in costs.25

P.F. Sugrue Limited v. The Attorney General Appeal No. 37 2004, advance copy of the judgment available at www.privy-council.org.uk/files/word/sugrue.doc (accessed May 20, 2007).

The case illustrates the continuing presence of controversy concerning hunting and the passion typical of those who feel that controls on the practice not only interfere with their rights but are activated by malevolence.

A final example showing the enduring influence of hunting in shaping legal theory and practice can be given from the European Community. European Council Directive 79/409/EEC of April 2, 1979 was adopted to protect migratory birds who pass through a number of European countries. Although European countries agree in principle, the political cost at home may be high. Accordingly, since its adoption there have been seven cases directly related to this directive: Decisions have been given against Belgium, Spain, and the Netherlands; a case against Germany was unsuccessful; and there have also been Advisory Opinions given by the European Court on French, Italian, and U.K. law concerning its implementation.26

A summary of each of these cases can be found at http://www.birdlife.org/eu/pdfs/ecj_report_rspb_final.pdf (accessed May 20, 2007).

These cases are sufficient to show the influence of hunting in the evolution of legal traditions of interpretation and legal theory right up to the present day. As conservation becomes increasingly important because of the growing concern for endangered species and the development of concern for animal rights, the high profile of hunting in the law is unlikely to diminish.

EVOLUTION OF HUNTING

Another aspect of hunting as intangible heritage is the evidence that, as older systems of hunting die out (because of climate changes, changes in human dependency, loss of species, etc.) new forms of hunting are still evolving. Feral camels now occupy more than 37% of the Australian continent. Within the Northern Territory, feral camels occur over an area of an estimated 2.8 million square kilometers.27

These camels were introduced to the center of Australia by Afghan camel drivers and were an essential part of the communication and transport network in nineteenth-century Australia. Allowed to go wild when their role was overtaken by road (and later rail) transport,28

The overland railway from Adelaide to Darwin was completed only in 2004. The train that now runs on it is called The Ghan, recalling the pioneering role of the early Afghan camel drivers.

they have become a considerable nuisance by breaking down fences, multiplying into areas where there is pastoral activity, and reducing scarce fodder. However, they now have considerable commercial value, because they provide a genetic variation to inbred stocks of camel in other parts of the world. There is therefore commercial interest in their capture and sale to the Arab states, especially where the breeding of camels for racing is a serious undertaking.

Another such new form of hunting is the capture of wild horses. Horses were first introduced into Australia by the European settlers in 1788. The animals adapted well to these new conditions. Numbers rose rapidly and they were first recognized as feral pests in Australia in the 1860s. Australia has the highest number of wild horses in the world,29

Dobbie, Berman, & Braysher, Managing Vertebrate Pests.

mostly in remote, usually rugged, semiarid areas. Brumby running is an activity that began soon after the arrival of horses in the Australian Alps in southeastern Australia, where they damage the ecology as a large and hard-hoofed animal occupying an environment that evolved without similar species. Scientists are concerned about soil compaction and the damage to vegetation and stream banks. At times, the only active management of wild horses in the Australian Alps National Park was brumby running.

However, there is a considerable amount of folklore associated with wild horses in the Australian Alps; and many people see them as having cultural value. They feature on the Australian $10 note and were the subject of the famous poem “The Man from Snowy River” made into a film in 1982 (with a sequel in 1988). Controlling them is therefore a sensitive issue. Traditionally, certain rural workers also used to catch and break young horses as a form of supplementary income (a practice that produced crack riders such as the famous Snowy River man). Current studies have shown that although brumby running is a form of recreational harvesting, it can suppress populations to less than carrying capacity and can be used as a management tool.

Neither camel hunting nor brumby running, with their own traditional skills and practices, seem likely to fade away and are even less likely to be suppressed in the foreseeable future.

SOME CONCLUDING REMARKS AND QUESTIONS

What is the point of this somewhat random collection of images and stories and practices related to hunting? I think the list demonstrates many things: the universality of hunting and its imagery throughout the world and through all ages. The incidental nature of hunting in many modern industrial societies as a sport or hobby is nevertheless to be contrasted to the near-sacred character of hunting for communities still dependent on its manifest necessity for life and its inevitable link to practices to preserve essential game—an aspect almost completely lost in modern Western societies.

These seven points bring us back to the concept of intangible heritage:

1. By any test, hunting falls within the ambit set out in the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage 2003. Indeed, the description is so broad as to include all the practices and skills of hunting anywhere in the world. The only limits appear to be human rights (animal rights have not yet found their way into international rights instruments) and the need for the survival of the intangible heritage in question to be threatened in some way (see point 7). Hunting practices are integral to the heritage of many peoples, albeit in diverse forms. However, only individual national examples of hunting practice, its rituals, or its reflections in cultural expressions such as ritual, drama, music, and art can be nominated and inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity established by the 2003 Convention (Art. 6[2]) in accordance with the procedure established by that Convention.

2. However, how the Convention can be applied and whether legal means are effective in its safeguarding have to be examined. (“‘Safeguarding’ means measures aimed at ensuring the viability of the intangible cultural heritage, including the identification, documentation, research, preservation, protection, promotion, enhancement, transmission, particularly through formal and non-formal education, as well as the revitalization of the various aspects of such heritage” (article 2[3]).

3. The Convention also includes certain associated aspects of tangible heritage, “instruments, objects, artefacts, and cultural spaces associated therewith,” which greatly widens its ambit. This inclusion would cover preserved relics of hunted animals, the weapons used to slay them, their representations in every conceivable form of art, as well as sites associated with them. Here, there seems to be an overlap with other UNESCO normative standards: Museum objects have already been dealt with in a number of UNESCO Recommendations30

Recommendation on International Principles Applicable to Archaeological Excavations 1956; Recommendation on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property 1964; Recommendation Concerning the Preservation of Cultural Property Endangered by Public or Private Works 1968; Recommendation Concerning the International Exchange of Cultural Property 1976; Recommendation for the Protection of Movable Cultural Property 1978.

and they are also the subject of three international agreements.31

Protocol 1954 to the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict 1954; Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property 1970; UNIDROIT Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects 1995.

The application of some provisions could well be incompatible with those of the 2003 convention, whereas the World Heritage List established by the UNESCO Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage 1972 already includes at least one incontrovertible example of a cultural space primarily related to hunting: Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump in Alberta, Canada, where there is evidence of a 6000-year-old practice of Native Americans hunting bison over a precipice and then butchering the remains.

4. Hunting has evolved enormously over the generations of its practice. The only limitations on nominations to the Representative List are set out in Article 2(1) of the 2003 convention: “For the purposes of this Convention, consideration will be given solely to such intangible cultural heritage as is compatible with existing international human rights instruments, as well as with the requirements of mutual respect among communities, groups and individuals, and of sustainable development.”

The World Heritage site of Peking Man in China represents hominid occupation for 300,000 years (the earliest hominid remains so far found there are said to be 500,000 years old) and numerous tools and animal remains make it evidently a significant site for the practice of hunting.32

Norway is presently promoting a project “Wild Reindeer Hunting as World Heritage,” which aims to promote the inclusion of wild reindeer, the cultural heritage associated with wild reindeer hunting, and the landscape in which they both are found on UNESCO's World Heritage List http://www.villreinfangst.no/eng/index.php/. Portugal foresees a nomination of a Royal hunting lodge and hunting park as part of Portugal's World Heritage nomination of the site of Mafra http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=MAFRA+HUNTING+LODGE+WORLD+HERITAGE/. This information may also be found at http://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/1981/ (accessed September 15, 2007).

But like the driving of bison over a cliff in Alberta, this particular form of hunting is not still practiced there today, and the word viability (see point 2) seems to suggest that it would not fall within the 2003 convention on intangible heritage.

5. Although an intangible heritage that is no longer practiced is not specifically excluded from the ambit of the Convention, Article 13 (c) provides that a State party shall “foster scientific, technical and artistic studies, as well as research methodologies, with a view to effective safeguarding of the intangible cultural heritage, in particular the intangible cultural heritage in danger.” It may be extremely important to research such an extinct practice in order to understand the evolution of humanity (Peking Man site) or the references and imagery in artwork and literature (as in the case of Shakespeare's use of the hunt in his plays). It could certainly be argued that the demolition of certain monumental sites (hunting lodges or hunting museums) or the conversion of former hunting grounds into national parks (unless carefully planned to include interpretation giving the history of the site) endangers intangible heritage that is no longer practiced.

6. In some communities hunting retains high significance and is associated with community ritual, art, and tradition in ways that are crucial for that society's cultural survival. However, for many of these traditional societies, the distinction between tangible and intangible, and between natural and cultural, makes no sense. The idea of maintaining a ritual intimately connected with a site (such as in the Arrernte case described earlier) is unintelligible to them without access to the site itself. However aspects such as land rights are not covered by the 2003 convention.

7. Although in some places hunting practices are threatened by the extinction or endangerment of the prey, in others it is threatened by an evolution of attitudes against violence (fox hunting in Britain) and in still others by efforts to preserve biological diversity (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora 1973), which aims to prevent the continued destruction of certain species. The debate about whale hunting is a good example of some of the anomalies occurring here.

RESPONSES?

Some questions raised here may be resolved by approval of the criteria for the establishment, updating, and publication of the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity established by the 2003 Convention (Article 6[2]). These are to be drafted by the UNESCO Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (Article 5).

Unquestionably, hunting as intangible heritage poses immediate questions for ethnologists and communities with practices and related tangible heritage that fall within the ambit of the Convention as well as for heritage administrators and lawyers. How these will be resolved is yet to be seen.33

For a more thorough discussion of these and other issues, see my article, Prott, “An International Legal Instrument.”

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