"... THE EYES ARE NO LONGER WILD. YOU HAVE TAKEN THE KUDU INTO YOUR MIND": THE SUPEREROGATORY ASPECT OF SAN HUNTING.

Drawing on historical/Xam and recent Kalahari San (Bushmen) sources, the paper exam ines an aspect of San hunting that is underreported in the ethnography on these hunter-gatherers (ns opposed to other such peoples elsewhere in the world, specifically in the context of the New Animism paradigm): its relational and mystical -- i.e. myth-, spirit- and ritual-informed -- aspect. I show how myth and ritual express the animistic theme of human-animal identity blurring that is at the core of San cosmology, in different, mutually reinforcing ways, so that it becomes both an integrated, salient feature of San worldview -- something of a philosophical postulate -- and integral to and constitutive of experience. The latter includes the practice of hunting, the focus of this paper. Also examined are the reasons why in San studies the supererogatory aspect can be, and has been, overlooked by anthropologists and archaeologists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]