Browsing by Subject "Hunting"

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    The Curious Case of Erysichthon
    (2019-12) Torresson, Elizabeth
    The rejuvenation of once-adult figures in Hellenistic poetry is unique. This transformation is especially apparent in Callimachus, where it functions both as a metapoetic and a political strategy. In rejuvenating gods and other figures of the tradition, Callimachus is able to rewrite or reinvent the tradition, all while working in the court of the first three Ptolemies, who themselves were in the process of legitimizing their new, Greek reign in Egypt. Thus, Callimachus’ first four hymns, which include explicit and implicit references to the Ptolemies and various political events, focus on the birth and successful coming-of-age of the gods, while the final two hymns contain opposing, complementary inset narratives of mythic youths. In the fifth hymn, Bath of Pallas, Teiresias, the old seer of tragedy becomes a youth and in the sixth hymn, the Hymn to Demeter, Erysichthon, a father both before (in Hesiod) and after (in Ovid) Callimachus, is now a childless young man. This dissertation focuses primarily on the sixth hymn. Whereas the first five hymns include successful birth and maturation tales, the six hymn is distinct for narrating just the opposite. Within a frame celebrating a ritual of Demeter is the tale of Erysichthon, who, together with his man-giants, barges into the goddess’ sacred grove and attempts to chop down a tree. Disguised as the priestess Nicippe, Demeter is unsuccessful in changing Erysichthon’s evil behavior, and so, punishes the youth with insatiable hunger and thirst. From his entrance to the end of the narrative, Erysichthon regresses from man (φῶτα, 45) to child (παῖς, 56), and finally, to infant (βρέφος, 100). In this final stage, distraught at the financial consequences of his son’s ravening hunger, Erysichthon’s father wishes that Apollo had stricken down his βρέφος (96-110). Rather than pimping out his daughter for food (as in Hesiod and Ovid), Erysichthon lands at the crossroads, where he begs for filthy cast-offs from the feast (115). Although this dissertation will likely be restructured in future iterations, at present, it largely follows the progression of the narrative as Callimachus himself unfolds it (rather than e.g. by genre). I take mainly a socio-cultural approach to Erysichthon’s regression and examine each step through the lens of rites of passage. I begin with hunting, with which Callimachus is most clearly concerned in the Hymn to Artemis and especially the partner hymn of the Hymn to Demeter, Bath of Pallas, where the motif is a well-researched, clear example of a successful transition into adulthood through the marginal ground of the hunt. This is the foundation for my discussion of the negative inversion of this trajectory in the Hymn to Demeter, where I examine Erysichthon as failed “hunter” by exploring Callimachus’ allusions and manipulation of the literary tradition in two key passages: Erysichthon’s boar hunt and the lioness simile. The transition of Erysichthon from human to animal and the related, simultaneous regression from youth to infant occurs during the hunt, and it is from this perspective that I analyze Erysichthon’s destructive appetite. I argue that through his all-consuming hunger and thirst, Erysichthon slips into childhood or infancy, which the Greeks viewed negatively and regularly aligned with animals. The last chapter thus focuses on Erysichthon’s final metaphorical transition into brephos, a weighty term—for which, see the appendix, where I lay out the use and significance of all pre-Callimachean attestations—applied to both animals and newborns and most frequently, the child exposed at birth. In this final chapter (VII), I consider the implications of exposure and the related motif of abortion, and in doing so, suggest a new reading for the end of Callimachus’ Erysichthon narrative and the hymns as a collection.
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    Effects of vertebrates, insects, and pathogens on patterns of early plant recruitment in tropical forests.
    (2010-07) Beckman, Noelle Gabriele
    Vertebrate seed dispersers and seed predators, insect seed predators, and pathogens are known to influence plant survival, population dynamics, and species distributions. The selective pressure of these mutualists and antagonists have resulted in a myriad of plant adaptations, including morphological and nutritional fruit traits to attract seed dispersers, and plant defenses to deter seed predators and pathogens. The importance of vertebrates, insects, and pathogens for plant communities has long been recognized, but their absolute and relative importance in early recruitment of multiple coexisting tropical plant species has not been quantified. Further, little is known about the relationship of fruit traits to seed dispersal and natural enemy induced seed and seedling mortality in tropical plants. My dissertation investigates the importance of these groups of organisms in the sequential stages of early plant recruitment (i.e. from fruit developing in the crown to seedlings on the ground) in tropical forests. I used a combination of empirical and theoretical studies: an experimental study of pre-dispersal seed mortality in plant canopies of seven species, a bioassay experiment examining patterns of fruit toxicity for eleven species, a simulation study of the interacting effects of seed dispersal and enemy attack on spatial patterns of surviving seedlings in theory, and a field study of the effects of partial defaunation of vertebrates (by hunting) on pre-dispersal seed predation and seed removal in two tree species. To determine the influences of vertebrates, insects, and pathogens on reproduction of plants varying in fruit traits, I investigated reductions in fruit development and seed germination due to vertebrates, insects, and fungal pathogens through experimental removal of these enemies using canopy exclosures, insecticide, and fungicide, respectively at the Canopy Crane Access System in Parque Natural Metropolitano in Central Panama. Results suggest that predispersal seed mortality is attributable to different natural enemies in different canopy species. Fruit morphology explained some of the interspecific variation in fruit development and seed survival in response to natural enemy removal treatments. This is the first experimental test of the relative effects of vertebrates, insects, and pathogens on seed survival in the canopy. To investigate patterns of fruit toxicity, I used bioassays involving brine shrimp (Artemia franciscana) and two foliar fungal pathogens (Fusarium sp, Phoma sp.) to understand how chemical defenses of coexisting canopy plants differ from the immature to the mature stage of fruit development and between the seed and pericarp. Every plant species tested in this study exhibited toxicity to at least one bioassay organism but patterns of toxicity depended on plant species and bioassay organism. To explore how patterns of natural enemy attack and seed dispersal affect seedling recruitment patterns, I developed a spatially-explicit, individual-based model to study plant life stages following seed dispersal. With this model, I explored how different seed deposition patterns and natural enemies affect the spatial patterns of surviving seedlings in a simulated model community. The seedling recruitment patterns observed in the model reproduced the range of patterns observed empirically. Recruitment patterns were sensitive to the type of natural enemy attack and the movement distances and fecundity of natural enemies, as well as to seed dispersal distances and the degree of clumping. To investigate how hunting alters seed dispersal and seed predation, I compared these processes for two canopy tree species that differ 16-fold in seed size in both hunted and protected forests in Central Panama. The results of this study suggest that in hunted areas there are greater reductions in seed removal and seed predation of the larger-seeded compared to the smaller-seeded tree. Overall, the results of my dissertation contribute to an emerging, but still very incomplete, trait-based approach to understanding interspecific variation in biotic interactions. Determining the relative roles of vertebrates, insects, and pathogens throughout the stages of plant recruitment will aid in our understanding of the mechanisms that limit plant populations, contribute to our knowledge of diversity maintenance, and is critical to predicting the consequences of anthropogenic pressures on plant communities.
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    Hunters and After Riders: A History of Hunting and the Making of Race in the Waterberg, 1840s-Present
    (2018-10) Vig, Paul
    This dissertation investigates the historical constitution of race through hunting, particularly the role of the unequal power of English and Afrikaner settler farmer archives in constituting the contested historical experiences and representations of black Africans in the complex ongoing struggles over the scarce resources (land, animals, cultural capital) of hunting in South Africa. It examines the historical problem of tenacious racial formations that have continued to pose challenges in the post-apartheid era and that have been reconstituted as development claims. Spanning a ‘long 20th century,’ this dissertation analyzes hunting narratives and policies from the 1840s into the post-apartheid present to show how they discursively produced social difference as racial through ordering hunting practices between black African/English/Afrikaner and their narration and representation. Identified early in the 19th century with conquest and exploration, and the gathering and construction of knowledge of Africa, hunting is one of the key spaces in which a white colonial imaginary was created. This was, and remains, an imaginary of heroism, superiority, and the ‘civilizing mission’, to which the narrative and imagery of hunting made a substantial contribution. Additionally, hunting serves as a barometer of African displacement, dispossession, and conscription through its association with control of land and resources. The concern here is with the consequences of accumulating discourses of hunting that figure black African practices, colonial and apartheid legacies, and modern/technologized developments in an increasingly globalized world determined by unequal relationships of social, economic, and political power. By interrogating the processes of (re)telling hunting’s histories in the Waterberg District, this dissertation gets at how hunting is intricately tied to the hierarchies and politics of South Africa’s colonial and apartheid past, as well as present attempts to overcome, or in some cases perpetuate, those legacies. Hunting serves as the opening through which to trace the complex consequences and negotiations of the ambiguity in the writing of history and in the writing and (de)construction of a history of hunting, in an attempt to figure answers to the social questions and problems posed to colonial and post-colonial governance by and through the making and persistence of race.