PhD - Bushcraft Research

Paul Moseley

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Great, but we don't have to agree. Bushcraft might be descriptive rather than definable, but a nebulous noun is still a noun, otherwise, everything is potentially not-not-bushcraft :)

There are substantive differences between using firelights on a weekend away and a culture with intergenerational hearths. Those differences are interesting to explore.

The definition of cosmology that I am using is based on its use in metaphysics.

Craft and identity, particularly in how it potentially includes place-responsive kinship with the more-than-human, is especially interesting to me.
 

Minotaur

Native
Apr 27, 2005
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Ok, I am deeply confused at the moment.
What we call Bushcraft is what was done before writing.
We are trying to work out how they did things with a lot more scope than anyone in an academic setting so we may get answers just not the right ones.
Memory Code is about a woman's experience walking round Stonehedge who had been exposed to Aboriginal life and art.
The problem being the Romans killed our Songlines/Memory Places. We are left with the children's stories at best.
 

Pattree

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Craft and identity, particularly in how it potentially includes place-responsive kinship with the more-than-human, is especially interesting to me.
References to craft on BcUK in particular might indicate an identity and artefact-responsive kinship.
The casual visitor to this site might get the impression that our iconography is centred upon cutlery.
 

Laurentius

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Aug 13, 2009
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The postgraduate has been phenomenal, and Dr Lisa Fenton is pioneering some amazing positions and approaches to understanding it more fully, as well as how it can be used towards quite different ends. My PhD is exploring just one of these.
I have downloaded and am reading her thesis at the moment, I have to say it is not pleasant reading for me as it feels a bit like trespass or even sacrilege. Still I have my trees and my trees will still be there when I am gone and that is what matters. Some things are beyond words and beyond understanding, they cannot be pinned down into an essay, a book or even a whole library.
 
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Paul Moseley

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I have downloaded and am reading her thesis at the moment, I have to say it is not pleasant reading for me as it feels a bit like trespass or even sacrilege. Still I have my trees and my trees will still be there when I am gone and that is what matters. Some things are beyond words and beyond understanding, they cannot be pinned down into an essay, a book or even a whole library.
It can be uncomfortable reading something that you do not want to agree with. I like to be curious and find perspectives that challenge my own.

Fortunately, different perspectives can exist. For some, it is mystical and sacred and feels universal. For others, there is value in asking questions about a modern framing and context of TEK and exploring colonial concepts around universality. Aesthetics can be nomadic, but ontologies move much slower :)

It is perfectly reasonable to say that for you, you can not put things into reason or words, whilst others try and do.
 
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Paul Moseley

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Ok, I am deeply confused at the moment.
What we call Bushcraft is what was done before writing.
We are trying to work out how they did things with a lot more scope than anyone in an academic setting so we may get answers just not the right ones.
Memory Code is about a woman's experience walking round Stonehedge who had been exposed to Aboriginal life and art.
The problem being the Romans killed our Songlines/Memory Places. We are left with the children's stories at best.
If that perspective works for you, then great :)

Those involved in the academic side of bushcraft are very experienced in the field of it. Rather than academics approaching bushcraft, rather, this is people with a experience in bushcraft using academia to explore it in new, challenging ways :)
 

Minotaur

Native
Apr 27, 2005
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Birmingham
If that perspective works for you, then great :)

Those involved in the academic side of bushcraft are very experienced in the field of it. Rather than academics approaching bushcraft, rather, this is people with a experience in bushcraft using academia to explore it in new, challenging ways :)
Is not experimental archaeology already doing this?
I would really recommend Dr Lynne Kelly's thesis which is basically the book Memory Code as it at least will give you a scope for how much knowledge needs reconstructing.

I think farming did a pretty good job before the Romans :)
Not so much, the Romans killed the Druids who were more than likely the last keepers of our memory knowledge. All we have left is the bits and pieces from tales and the even smaller amount from archaeology.

For example, I am really curious to know why the Norse had such a thing about Mistletoe?
Or why the fairy tales spent so much time warning against step-parents?
 

Pattree

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I’m a Druid (Of a sort)

I have read every document written about Druids in their own time (Roughly 140 bce to 460 ce). I read it every time I give a talk about Druids. It doesn’t take long :)

Everything we have of what Druids knew, believed or did is a few pages of text written by Greek and Roman commentators who weren’t themselves Druids. Ronald Hutton says there are twelve pages. I can only count nine and a bit in Koch & Carey and the same in T D McKendrick. This of course is in English translation but in McKendrick’s appendix the original Latin and Greek is also nine + pages.

These nine pages contain a lot of repetition and clearly build upon each other. Those nine pages were written by 18 people: politicians, a soldier, orators, historians and poets so none of them wrote very much. Only two of them: Julius Caesar and Pliny set out to write about Druids, the rest, from Sotion to Ausonius, mentioned them while writing about more general topics.

I only wrote all that to demonstrate how much “history” can be created by generations passing on interpretations of interpretations of original text. I’m in no way criticising anyone. I learned a LOT about Druids that has no basis in history (which doesn’t mean that it is without merit). I learned it from school and many many well respected writers who believed other writers.

There is no Druidic archeology. Celtic - maybe, Druidic - no.

It is SO important to go back to source information as far as possible.

A lot of my fellows believe that we have lost knowledge and skills over time. I do not agree. I see knowledge as growing, changing and developing. With that increase comes division and specialism; no one can know it all any more. Just because it is no longer held in one brain doesn’t mean that it is lost. It’s still there.

I was interested to read that AI is to be used to learn extinct and dying languages. This might give us better and better views of history and avoid some interpretation bias.

By the way the only original reference that we have to the significance of mistletoe is of a Druidic (Celtic?) ritual described by Pliny. It wasn’t all mistletoe but only that growing on oak trees which is very rare.

Edited to add:
Like many Druids I am also a professional Story teller.
In stories a child/children can’t have adventures if their parents are around so many story writers get rid of them.
Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn were orphans. In swallows and amazons the children go to an island where they are safe but out of parental control. In The Giraffe The Pelly and Me; Dhal kills the parents of at the beginning by dropping a hippopotamus on them. The pantomime step parent can allow a situation that would never happen were a loving parent present. It’s a narrative technique but it’s given step parents an undeserved bad press.

Sorry Paul I’ve just realised that I’ve dragged this way off topic but now I’ve written it I’m not deleting it.

Perhaps the thread can be split at @Minotaur above if he agrees.
 
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Paul Moseley

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Jul 28, 2020
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Staffordshire
Is not experimental archaeology already doing this?
I would really recommend Dr Lynne Kelly's thesis which is basically the book Memory Code as it at least will give you a scope for how much knowledge needs reconstructing.


Not so much, the Romans killed the Druids who were more than likely the last keepers of our memory knowledge. All we have left is the bits and pieces from tales and the even smaller amount from archaeology.

For example, I am really curious to know why the Norse had such a thing about Mistletoe?
Or why the fairy tales spent so much time warning against step-parents?
No. Experiential archaeology is trying to recreate/rediscover the physical artefacts and skills. My field, ethnoecology, explores the ontological substrate that produces and emerges through how people perceive and live with the more-than-human.
 

Pattree

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My field, ethnoecology, explores the ontological substrate that produces and emerges through how people perceive and live with the more-than-human.
……. more-than……?
…… other- than….. ?

I’m not being critical at all. You choice of words might indicate your stance.
“Greater-than” might be read as something metaphysical.

We have a thread going right now that might be associated with the genius loci or spirit of place. I haven’t seen either term used here but some descriptions of forest and open country camps and walks as well as cities might be describing such a spirit in the posts of even the most pragmatic and/or agnostic “bushcrafter”.

There seems to be a certain reverence for knives here as well. Blacksmithing and bladesmithing have long held metaphysical and folkloric associations.
 

Paul Moseley

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Jul 28, 2020
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Staffordshire
……. more-than……?
…… other- than….. ?

I’m not being critical at all. You choice of words might indicate your stance.
“Greater-than” might be read as something metaphysical.

We have a thread going right now that might be associated with the genius loci or spirit of place. I haven’t seen either term used here but some descriptions of forest and open country camps and walks as well as cities might be describing such a spirit in the posts of even the most pragmatic and/or agnostic “bushcrafter”.

There seems to be a certain reverence for knives here as well. Blacksmithing and bladesmithing have long held metaphysical and folkloric associations.
"More-than" simply refers to going beyond humans, without using culturally loaded/defined terms such as "nature".
 
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Laurentius

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Aug 13, 2009
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……. more-than……?
…… other- than….. ?

I’m not being critical at all. You choice of words might indicate your stance.
“Greater-than” might be read as something metaphysical.

We have a thread going right now that might be associated with the genius loci or spirit of place. I haven’t seen either term used here but some descriptions of forest and open country camps and walks as well as cities might be describing such a spirit in the posts of even the most pragmatic and/or agnostic “bushcrafter”.

There seems to be a certain reverence for knives here as well. Blacksmithing and bladesmithing have long held metaphysical and folkloric associations.
I like the cut of your jib. I am a big fan of Ronald Hutton, in my youth I was persuaded to read Robert Graves "White Godess" and more or less took it for history. I am wiser now and realise Graves was a poet and not an archeologist but none of the magic is lost on me. There is huge amount of folklore surrounding blacksmiths, and it is not surprising when you consider it, certain things have not changed since the smelting of iron was first discovered. Likewise woods are always mysterious and marginal places. Today I am crafting a mask for my latest axe/adze combination. I did not forge it but I grew wood for and shaped the handle using a knife the handle of which I also grew and shaped. It is what we do.
 
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Pattree

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I am on holiday in Dorset and picked up a copy of the White Goddess in Bridport yesterday but I put it down again.

This really does need to be a different thread!
 

Tengu

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I think it is wonderful but I dont understand the philosophy stuff which I will need to do my own Phd.
 

SaraR

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I think it is wonderful but I dont understand the philosophy stuff which I will need to do my own Phd.
You only need that if you’re aiming to do one in the same field. I’ve got a PhD and I don’t understand half of what was said above! :)
 

Minotaur

Native
Apr 27, 2005
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Birmingham
By the way the only original reference that we have to the significance of mistletoe is of a Druidic (Celtic?) ritual described by Pliny. It wasn’t all mistletoe but only that growing on oak trees which is very rare.
Fine by me.
Also I was going Norse with the Loki story were he kills Balder.
 

Broch

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Not so much, the Romans killed the Druids who were more than likely the last keepers of our memory knowledge. All we have left is the bits and pieces from tales and the even smaller amount from archaeology.

It is likely the Druids only held a fraction of the knowledge that had gone before and they kept it to themselves. The change of culture (and people don't forget - the Beaker farmers replaced the Neolithic and the Neolithic replaced the Mesolithic) when Britain started farming meant a great deal of the connection with other-than-man was lost. But we have no history for the period so it's all conjecture.
 

Laurentius

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Aug 13, 2009
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Knowhere
It is likely the Druids only held a fraction of the knowledge that had gone before and they kept it to themselves. The change of culture (and people don't forget - the Beaker farmers replaced the Neolithic and the Neolithic replaced the Mesolithic) when Britain started farming meant a great deal of the connection with other-than-man was lost. But we have no history for the period so it's all conjecture.
Who knows what they knew? The ancient Greeks could calculate the circumference of the Earth, and Pythagoras is said to have got his information from Egypt. Maybe the Druids knew a lot about geometry too
 

Pattree

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If Druids ever existed :)

If Julius Caesar had used the word “priest” instead of “Druid” it is doubtful that those who had read him before writing their own commentaries or comments would have used the word.

More importantly without history or archeology we cannot know what they knew. Pomponius Mela says that they knew the size of the Earth and the movement of the stars but we don’t know who told him that or what it meant.

As stated previously; it is my belief that learning survives. As new leaning emerges new contexts develop and the old skills or knowledges are re-applied. They may well be renamed, absorbed or even proven ineffective but they were the stepping stones to where we are now.
Phrenology and chiromancy are unlikely to be useful in terms of their specific information but psychology and psychiatry have emerged, in small part, from those practices.
I once talked to a stone mason who was working on Worcester cathedral and commented on the old skills. He acknowledged his history but said “we’re better than the old guys. We know more about the stone and have better equipment.”
Learning isn’t lost, it just changes.
 
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