Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Simple Form of Ecosystem Management

I keep thinking about a few words (I just used in a post) from that A.M. Gibson quote from “The American Indian (1980).” I came across it on page 25 of that book:
“…simple form of ecosystem management.”
I think, alternately, “Yes it’s simple,” but then, as I look at the contributions at RockPiles, I say “No, it’s not that simple.”
There’s so much interconnected stuff going on – there’s the practical and the ceremonial, there’s a reflection of the sky in there, tied to the land, the sea, the rivers, the springs, and so much more that is missing from the “record,” the history, that we Rock Pilers see evidence of in stone structures - and the outcrops of the big stone we call Earth.
(He even uses a figure I've written about, drawn my own conclusions from, and has prompted me to draw my own pictures (like here: http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2006/10/more-gary-snyder-control-burn.html) as I look at stone structures all around me...)
Gibson writes about “The Golden Age of American Prehistory,” describes the Southwestern Cultures and the eastern Hopewell and Adena, but what about that eastern seaboard – and beyond?
There’s a story in these stones, placed as they were after the glaciers retreated, continued to be placed just so over the next 20,000 years as Native American civilizations advanced and thrived until very recently, the past few hundred years just a drop in the bucket...


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