Thicker Than Water: The Origins of Blood as Ritual and Symbol 041593530X, 9780415935302

Table of contents :
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1 Introduction The Human Inclination to Symbolize and Ritualize Blood
Chapter 2 Women's Blood and Men's Blood at the Dawn of Human Culture
Chapter 3 The Blood of Conception, Pregnancy, and Childbirth
Chapter 4 Initiation Rites The Role of Blood in Attaining Adult or Group Status
Chapter 5 Menstruation The Fundamental Foundation
Chapter 6 Sacrifice "Birth Done Better"
Chapter 7 Conclusion The Patterned Heterogeneity of Blood Symbols and Rituals
Notes
Index

Citation preview

THICKER THAN WATER The Origins of Blood as Symbol and Ritual

Melissa L. Meyer

ROUTlEDGE NEW YORK AND LONDON

Published in Grea t Britain by Rou tledge Taylor & Franc is Group 2 Park Sq uare Milton Park. Abin gdon Oxon OX 14 4R N

Publi shed in 200 5 by Routledge Taylor & Francis Gro up 270 Mad ison Avenue New York . NY 100 16

© 2005 by Tay lor & Francis Gro up, LLC Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Fra ncis Group

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I International Standard Book Number- IO: 0-4 15-93529-6 (Hardcover) 0-4 15-9353 0- X (Softcover) Internation al Standard Book Number- I3: 978-0-4 15-93529-6 (Hardcover) 978-0-415 -93530 -X (Softco ver) Library of Co ngress Card Number 2004024560 No part of this boo k may be reprinted, reprod uced , transmitted. or utili zed in any form by any e lec tronic. mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter inven ted , including photocopying. micro film ing. and recording. or in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the puhlishers. Tradem ark Notice : Product o r co rporate names may he tradem arks or reg istered trad em ar ks. and arc used only for identification and ex planation without intent to infrin ge.

Library of Cong ress Ca ta loging-in-Pu bliea tion Datu Meyer. Mel issa L. (Melissa Lee ) Thi cker than water : the origins of blood as symbol and ritual ! by Meli ssa L. Meyer. p. em. Incl udes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-4 15-93529 -6 (hardback : alk. paper) - ISBN 0-4 15-93530-X (pbk. : alk. paper) I. Blood - Social as pects. 2. Blood - Symbolic aspects. I. Till e. GT498,B55 M482004 306.4-de22 2004024560

_informal Taylor & Fra ncis G ro up is th e Aeude m ie Dlvislun ofT&F Informa pic .

Visit th e Ta ylo r & F ra nc is Web site a t http://www.lu ylorandfrancis.eom and th e Routled ge Web site a l hl lp :/Iwww .routled ge-n y.eolll

For Tanis, who told me that bulls are color-blind, and Zane, who thinks leeches are cool.

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Contents

Acknowledgments

vii

Chapter 1 Introduction Th e Human Inclination to Symbolize and Ritualize Blood

Chapter 2

Women's Blood and Men's Blood at the Dawn of Human Culture

17

Chapter 3

Th e Blood of Conception, Pregnancy, and Childbirth

47

Chapter 4

Initiation Rites

83

Th e Role ofBlood in Attaining Adult or Group Status

Chapter 5

Men struation

123

Th e Fundamental Foundation

Chapter 6

Sacrifice

163

"Birth Don e Better"

Chapter 7

Conclusion

205

The Patterned Heterogeneity ofBlood Symbols and Ritu als

Notes

209

Ind ex

261

v

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Acknowledgments

I never planned to write this book. In the course of researching American Indian tribal enrollment and blood quantum requirements, I paused to ask why people use so many blood metaphors. I could not let this question go. Thicker Than Water is my answer. Librarians at the UCLA Charles Young Research Library dredged up old ethnographic materials that had not been touched in decades and acquired arcane publications through interlibrary loan . A University of California President's Research Fellowship in the Humanities gave me time. Research grants from the UCLA Institute of American Cultures and Academic Senate also supported this work. Some wondered why I took such a major detour, but they gave supportive advice at important junctures. I thank Tom Biolsi, Jennifer Brown, Gregory Dowd, Dave Edmunds, Ray Fogelson, Mike Green, Ariella Gross, Brian Hosmer, Albert Hurtado, Uli Linke, John Moore, Theda Perdue, Matt Snipp, and Richard White. Kate Norberg helped me learn about Venus figurines and claims about Mother Goddesses. David Myers pointed me toward relevant works on Jewish blood rituals. Unlike my family, some listened to me talk endlessly about blood without ever telling me to shut up. Thanks to Ruth Bloch, John Bowes, Samantha Holtkamp Gervase, Kelly Lytle Hernandez, Kerwin Klein, Valerie Matsumoto, Muriel McClendon, Rebecca Mead, Jan Reiff, Nick Rosenthal, Jesse Schreier, Sharon Traweek, Mary Yeager, and Ken Wade. I posted several queries to the H-Amindian Listserv where generous scholars helped me find direction. Finally, thanks to Karen Wolny who enthusiastically picked up this project and shepherded it through the Routledge review process . Russ Thornton endured more blood trivia than he ever wished for. My children, Zane and Tanis, are very glad the book is finished. No more after-school programs for them. They think this is the end, but it is really the beginning.

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CHAPTER

1

Introduction The Human Inclination to Symbolize and Ritualize Blood

Beliefs about blood are among the oldest surviving ideas from the earliest days of humankind. I Blood symbols and rituals have been so widely distributed among various cultural societies across time as to be nearly universal. Blood metaphors have a primal quality; those who use them, even today, assume their meaning is understood. Now they imply a genetic element, but this was not always so. Though patterned, the meanings attributed to blood varied and did not remain static. The origins of blood hearken back to the dawn oflife on Earth. Evolutionary biologists and geneticists believe that the chemical composition of blood serum (whole blood minus proteins and amino acids) is identical to the primordial sea. Earliest one -celled organisms surrounded seawater with a membrane as they came to encompass their own bodily fluids. The redness of blood helps explain its power as a symbol and focus for ritual. The fields of neurobiology and cognitive psychology demonstrate that the human brain is "hardwired" to perceive and learn in certain ways. There is a general consensus about the universality of color perception, which stems directly from the rod and cone structure of the eye. Symbolic anthropologists revealed universals in linguistic color codes . According to linguists, all languages use color terms that conform to the same evolutionary sequence: (I) black and white, (2) plus red, (3) plus green or yellow, (4) plus green and yellow, and (5) plus blue. Infants recognize colors in precisely the same sequence. The neurobiological basis for the universality of color perception and classification is the most important primary epigenetic rule for explaining the origins of blood metaphors .'

1

2 • Thicker Than Water

Red is an emotionally charged color : it is bright and striking. But the color of blood alone does not explain its salience for human beings . Early symbolic anthropologists thought that blood ought to draw ritualistic attention. Presaging Michel Foucault, Mary Douglas argued that "the powers and dangers credited to social structures" were transposed onto the body, as a symbol of society. Cognitive psychologists showed how bodily orifices tend to be perceived as vulnerable, marginal zones that symbolize the boundaries between internal purity and external danger. Humans invested substances that transgressed these boundaries, such as blood, semen, saliva, tears, urine, and feces, with powerful properties. Rituals marked and mediated th ese borders. ' Humans have extensively symboli zed and ritualized blood as one of the most powerfully meaningful and multivocal bodily substances. The physiology of circulation makes it appear that blood is central to life and death. Early gatherer-hunter-fishers depended on astute observation to survive. They saw that extensive blood loss led to death. They also noticed that blood stopped flowing at death. Cave paintings in the Pyrenees demonstrate that these early hunters understood that piercing the heart was fatal. Blood spurting from a wounded animal with a still throbbing heart graphically illustrated this . In some parts of the body, a wound gushed pulsating bursts of bright red blood, while darker blood flowed from wounds elsewhere. These hunters surmised that head wounds could be fatal and that spinal injuries brought paralysis or death. Because they regularly skinned and eviscerated game, they observed that the stomach contained undigested bits of the last meal. They saw that the liver held large amounts of blood. Blood naturally appeared to be associated with life and death. Early humans easily made these direct observations. Many have made the connection.'

Blood and the Reproductive Life Cycle Natural and ritual bloodshed accompanies important junctures of the life cycle. Menarche signals a girl's newborn fertility. Menstrual blood simultaneously signifies the potential for life and death, as in "not a baby:' Many have noted the association between menarche and circumcision. The disappearance of menstruation indicates pregnancy. People nearly everywhere associated vanished menstrual blood with a growing fetus and breast milk. Circumcision and initiation bloodletting were sacrifices performed by men to claim responsibility for birthing. These acts rid boys of the influence of their mother's blood. Men culturally grew boys into men in a rebirth. Other forms of sacrifice have widely been the province almost exclusively of men to perpetuate patrilineages as "birth done better" than women. Thus the biological and cultural bases for humans to signify blood are strong and nearly universal. These hallmarks of

Introduction • 3 the life cycle involving blood, both naturally and culturally, form the central organizing principle of this book. Viewing ritual as "a symbolic code communicating certain aspects of ideology and social structure," anthropologists have attempted to make sense of a vast array of reproductive rituals since the early years of comparative ethnography and ethnology. Pervasive androcentrism made most theoretical debate "penis driven" and focused on cultural resolutions of Freud's oedipal dilemma believed to be universally central to male psychodynamics. More scholarship has been devoted to circumcision, an unnecessary, symbolic ritual, than to childbirth or menstruation, which happen naturally. For most of the twentieth century, men carried out fieldwork, producing laundry lists of food taboos and rituals rather than considering childbirth in its own right. Most theoretical interpretations have fallen into one of four dominant discourses: (1) psychoanalytic theory, (2) transition-rite theory, (3) structural functionalism, and (4) feminist critiques of the political dimensions of reproductive rituals. 6 Because this book focuses on the human obsession with symbolizing and ritualizing blood, these discourses do not contribute much . My central purpose is to illuminate the far-flung yet patterned ways in which human cultures have symbolized and ritualized blood. Doing so is inherently human. Studies that focus on discrete reproductive rituals are inherently flawed. They cannot capture the holistic cultural cosmologies that integrate and give meaning to gendered, reproductive rituals throughout the life course . Stripped of their cultural context, reproductive rituals seem eccentric and worth passing note only. Maureen Trudelle Schwarz charged, "Previous studies did not fully explore the complex rules defining who or what can affect what or whom under particular circumstances, or what these effects might tell us about the cultural construction of the human body and personhood in the societies under investigation:' Until quite recently, scholars had left the centrality of the body "assumed and unproblematized, or .. .largely ignored." This is particularly true for the "pollution approach" to female emissions. Ethnocentric disapproval of restricting or sequestering women in the throes of childbirth or during menstruation has relegated countless cultural systems to a quaint antiquarian heap. " Anthropologists have noted that women's blood was used in sorcery.9 Researchers have not scrutinized enough the fact that female blood usually had the power to interfere with other productive activities. Some bodily effluvia were thought to have positive effects, which has been even less examined. Since the 1970s, scholars have situated Western science in its own cultural context. Biomedical constructions of the body, well-being, and ill health have been deconstructed with the aid of Foucault, who has shown how "the clinical

4 • Thicker Than Water

gaze is a cultural gaze:' So we are prepared to be open to cross-cultural systems of logic far different from those of the West.10 Rather than being distinct, each rite of passage is linked by a particular culturallogic to a larger symbolic context. Yet very few studies attempt anything like this . The underdeveloped status of the field has hampered my exploration. Efforts to understand the perspectives of those who left few written records are frustrated by the same difficulties that beset "ethnohistorians" over the past several decades, but more so. Childb irth, puberty, sexuality, intercourse, and reproduction are extremely intimate areas. They are decidedly gendered. I am centrally interested in how blood figures into these cultural systems of logic. Reconstructions of complex cosmologies with multiple layers of understanding are rare findings . Blood is salient for humans and has been treated as much more than just a red fluid. Three metaphorical constructions-(l) homology, (2) complementarity, and (3) synecdoche-can help illuminate cultural constructions of bodies and selves. The principle of homology is that portions of a whole share an analogous design . Often, a menstruating woman had to be entirely contained, body and behavior, not just her blood. Complementarity is the metaphorical principle that wholes are composed of paired, blended elements . The most fundamental social pairing was men and women. They were widely held to be oppositional, yet interrelated. The synecdoche principle suggests that "every part is equivalent to the whole, so anything done to, or by means of, a part is held to take effect upon, or to have the effect of, the whole:' This is the basic principle of ritual: a discrete action here will have an effect there . These meta phorical constructs help clarify the reproductive rituals surveyed herein.I I However, the reproductive life cycle is anchored in physiology.F The physicality of unaltered human bodies is not socially constructed. Cultural meanings must adhere, in part, to these realities. Women give birth. Differential roles might be assigned to semen, menstrual blood, eggs, or divine spirits, but that biological fact remains. Cultural beliefs might gender parts of women's bodies male, but babies still emerge through the birth canal. The interplay between cultural beliefs and physical realities creates the matrices of bodily symbols. Between the neurophysiological basis for the universality of color perception and the widespread association of blood with the life cycle, humans have many inherent reasons to signify blood. Humans are drawn to blood's redness. Its close affiliation with the life cycle and with slaying animals adds more dimensions for human interpretation. However, the universality of color perception alone cannot explain the immense range of blood symbols, rituals, and metaphors. The hybrid field of gene-culture coevolution or dual inheritance theory, which draws on the scientific fields of neurophysiology and cognitive psychology, provides greater insights.

Introduction • 5 Specialists in the field of gene-culture coevolution explain that human culture will be most elaborate where the neurophysiological bases most favor it. The range ofblood symbols, rituals, and metaphors attending the reproductive life cycle has been extremely elaborate for millennia. Indeed, I believe that this accounts for the many varied blood rituals according special treatment to the individuals, the life cycle stages, and even the blood itself. It also accounts for the diverse rituals that draw blood, often in imitation of natural processes. Humans have imposed more symbolic and metaphorical meanings on blood in more ritualized contexts than any other substance. Blood symbolizes life most extensively, death secondarily. All other connotations pale in comparison to these two dominant metaphors. These dual meanings are ambiguous at best, antithetical at worst. Victor Turner would have labeled them "multivocal," with meanings that are multifaceted and patterned at once.

Fertility and Life The most widespread metaphorical trope attributes life-giving qualities to blood, both in terms of procreation and agricultural fertility. For the Dogon of Mali, the "central aspect. .. of female fertility ... [was] blood.?" Ancient and contemporary Mayans have associated blood literally and symbolically with life forces . The gods used their own blood to consciously create humans. Humans, then, sacrificed blood to propitiate the gods and connect with them. Bloodletting ensured that the sun would rise, or be reborn from the evening's death. The Bimin-Kuskusmin of Papua New Guinea buried bamboo tubes full of menstrual blood to ritually fertilize women's crops." Blood's life-giving capacity could be transferred to the soil. In ancient Mesopotamia, Sumerian texts told how gods grew weary of working and empowered the Birth Goddess (who had many names, including Mami , the oldest) to create humans to do the work for them. In two central myths, a goddess m ixed a slain god's blood with clay from the primordial ocean to create human beings. This theme recurred through many Sumerian stories, after which humans proliferated by sexual procreation. IS Visible observations of blood's role in reproduction caused many to believe it was central in forming a fetus. From ancient Greeks to Cherokees, this was the most common belief about blood. Believing that menstrual blood formed fetuses is the foundation for most other blood beliefs and rituals. I examine this association in greater detail in chapter 3. Today's major world religions share the notion that the spirit of the animal or person resided in its blood. This was a widespread cultural motif among native peoples of the Eastern Woodlands culture area of North America. In a Cherokee story, hunters killed a bear, taking its skin and meat and covering

6 • Thicker Than Water

its blood with leaves. The bear then reconstituted itself from the blood left behind. Each animal had a certain amount of time to live. If hunters followed the proper rituals, killing an animal did not result in its permanent death. If the animal allowed itself to be taken by properly behaving hunters, it would simply rise again from the blood spilled to live the rest of its life. James Adair, a trader closely affiliated with numerous southeastern native groups, reiterated the native belief that an animal's blood "contains th e life, and spirit of the beast':" Many others shared this belief that blood held the spirit . In late-twentiethcentury Zaire, people objected to blood transfusions because it meant "putting your spirit into another spirit:,1 7 Ifblood held the life force, drinking it, applying it to the body, or commingling it with one's own blood might convey the special qualities of that being . In this way one might acquire the strength of a mammoth, the ferocity of a tiger, or the courage and wisdom of an esteemed individual. Novice Scythian warriors drank the blood of the first man they killed to bolster their prowess. Roman gladiators consumed their vanquished competitors' blood. Seventeenth-century German physician Christian Friedrich Garmann described how a young girl acquired feline characteristics by drinking a eat's blood. The Masai gain a lion's strength by quaffing its blood. Beliefs in vampirism can be traced to this notion. Religious followers ritual ize the symbolic consumption of their god's blood . Ancient Greeks substituted wine for Dionysus's blood, god of the vine. Christians consume wine and wafers as the blood and body of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist ritual. 18 Blood figured in medicinal remedies. To restore themselves, Ancient Egyptians bathed in blood they believed was the carrier of the life-giving spirit. Wealthy Romans tried to relieve epilepsy with gladiators' blood. Paracelsus, a medieval physician, recommended menstrual blood to cure gout. Viking doctors used "Wotan's finger" (Wotan being the primary god of healing) to touch ailing body parts with a sacrificial animal's blood. The Talmud advised that blood from a wild rooster killed with a silver coin might cure a headache when poured over the victim's head . The first English midwife's manual recommended that to remedy a difficult delivery, the parturient lie on a sheepskin and "to lay a hareskin rubd over with hare's blood newly prepared, to her belly:' The Swiss and Danes treated tuberculosis, hydrophobia, and epilepsy with blood collected from beheaded criminals. In Zaire, "blood was as important as crocodile in local medicines:' A Congolese medical practitioner allowed "a good and a bad blood to mingle" because "there are many things which people give and receive. . . through blood:' He carried the commingled bloods in his horn. Lauje medicine men offered "red medicine;' composed of chicken blood and rice, to counter the maleficent "vicious red umpute spirits:' Early efforts at transfusion stemmed from the belief that blood could promote

Introduction • 7 healing. However, without an understanding of blood groups and Rh factors, some beneficiaries were doomed to grisly deaths. 19 Bearing the life force made blood vulnerable to invasion by malevolent forces. Some worried that those who drank blood risked being possessed by the animal's offended spirit. For some, consuming blood was taboo for precisely this reason. Russian Nanai women knew not to ingest "the heart oflarge slain beasts" or their own heart would not "withstand childbirth:' The Old Testament admonished the children of Israel to "pour out the blood thereof" of any prey they might eat, "For the life... is in the blood thereof:' Orthodox Jews still observe this taboo by removing the blood from meat to make it kosher. Jehovah's Witnesses refuse transfusions based on the same logic. Both Christian and Islamic texts incorporated the Mosaic taboo against consuming blood. The New Testament relates how a council of elders and apostles decided that "ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication :' In the Al Koran Mohammed similarly warned, "He has made forbidden to you only carrion, blood, swine's flesh and that which has been offered to any other than Allah:,20 Fear that blood was a vulnerable conduit for malevolence prompted taboos against spilling it on the ground. When Marco Polo visited ancient Beijing, criminals were carefully beaten to avoid bloodshed. Blood that carried an individual's or kin group's spirit was a nexus for invasion outside the body. In West Africa, any stray drop had to be buried or eradicated. People of West Sussex believed that any field upon which blood had fallen would remain forever barren. The Betsileo of Madagascar protected leaders with a slave called a ramanaga , who stayed close to the leader quickly to lick up any errant blood. Among some Austronesian groups, boys undergoing circumcision were held aloft so that the blood fell on the bodies of fellow men instead of the ground. In all these examples the cultural reasoning was parallel." Some imagined magical, pernicious uses for blood. In the late 1400s, the Pope authorized publication of a book with a chapter titled, "How WitchMidwives Commit Most Horrid Crime s When They Either Kill Children or Offer Them to Devils in Most Accursed Wise [sic] :' It instigated a craze in which "Christians suspected witches, and Jews,of using the blood of newborn babies in their rituals:' Haitians guarded the bloody cloths of childbirth so they could not be used for "evil magic:' Congolese people of Zaire suspected that stolen human blood obtained from hospitals was used in powerfully effective European me dici icmes. 22 The Lauje ofIndonesia feared black umpute spirits who resided in a "bloody liminal netherworld" and visited illness upon misbehaving humans. Scofflaws contributed their blood to the "blood pond:' This murky blood pond brimmed with the blood of mothers who aborted, aborted infants, women who

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miscarried, people who died violently, people who failed to provision or care for their families, and men who masturbated and wasted semen. " People have widely associated blood with lineage, even in today's world. Attributing to blood the ability to transmit or reflect the essence of the family, clan, lineage, people, nation, race, or ethnic group stemmed logically from the widespread association of blood with life and fertility. Examining these blood metaphors is a fruitful direction to take. However, this book will focus on real, red, fluid blood as the foundation for further metaphoric expressions. Ancient Germanic beliefs about the vital power of real blood undergirded their notion that clan members shared mystical capabilities through their common blood-quite literally.They traced descent bilaterally. Individual s became members of a kin group by birth or marriage. New members increased clan power by infusing new blood . Uli Linke argued, "This unity of relatives, un derstood as a merging of power, was symbolized through organic metaphors, that is, the single human body, and the actual mingling of blood :' In German folk speech, blood metaphors cemented social agreements. Figurative blood was a sticky adhesive that sealed social contracts, figured in love magic, and secured pacts with demons. Blood was social glue. Together with blood metaphors, soil allegories communicated intimate relationships within fraternities of men . Shedding and commingling blood accompanied initiation into male sodalities, called "blood brothers" or "companions in blood" in Old Norse. Mythic references to men mixing blood in each other's footprints illustrated this connection between blood and soil. Northern European folk stories expressed fertility and childbirth through the tree motif, uniting blood and soil metaphors with lineage. People conceived of clans as "descendants of a single tree-trunk:' The clan was "an organic, earth-bound community (whose members shared the same blood):' Underneath these "people trees" the earth had "turned into blood, the blood into sap:' By 1700, genealogical trees recorded blood lineage to guard the gates to nobility. Conjoined metaphors of blood, earth, and tree prefigured mod ern anthropology's taxonomic classification of genealogical lineages and the northern European, specifically German, "aesthetic of race;' which emerged in the nineteenth century and flourished in the twentieth."

The Redness of Blood Red has always connoted blood in all its ambiguous, multivocal meanings. Red commonly demarcated things considered taboo . The Polynesian term tabu or tapu was derived from ta, "to mark;' and pu, which stressed intensity, and was closely affiliated with the word tupua, meaning "menstruation:' However, it connoted reverence and awe, not filth and pollut ion. The Dakotan word wakan, the equivalent of tabu, means "spiritual, consecrated; wonderful,

Introduction • 9 incomprehensible; and also of women at the menstrual period:' Briffault argued that menstrual blood's sacredness transposed onto all things considered taboo, saying, "the 'sign of blood' is the . .. symbol and mark of a tabu . The tabu state is signified by marking a person or an object with blood ... ; red paint serves equally well, for . . . blood is not the cause of the tabu, but the mark of it:' The color red signified blood, which identified many things considered taboo.25 Sacred, taboo objects stood out when colored red . Indians bloodied or reddened sacred statuettes and stones. Sacred trees in Madagascar and Estonia were painted with blood. Greeks tinged Dionysian statues red . Romans touched up Jupiter's face with red colorants prior to festivals. In the Congo and West Africa, some native groups marked the new moon by applying fresh red pigment to sacred statues. The Chukchi daubed sacred tent poles and charms with blood.26 Nothing evinced women's fertility more than the color red. Across cultures, many believed that menstrual blood retained in the womb formed a fetus. Thi s most powerful substance was of particular concern when it had obviously not gone to create a child. The Zaramo of Tanzania extensively ritualized mkole tree sap, which turned from white to red, powerfully symbolizing female fertility cues. Fathers gave Nepalese girls red clothing at menarche. Unmarried girls wore red beaded necklaces. Pubescent Navajo girls wore red sashes during their puberty ritual, the kinaalda. Menstruating women often protected their communities by marking themselves red . Women of the Brazilian Tapuya, African Gold Coast, and Kaffir painted their bodies red. Among Victoria tribes, menstruating women were painted red from the waist up. Menstruating Australian Dieri women wore red pigment around their mouths. In India, menstruating women wore blood-stained scarves around their necks." Red menstrual symbolism carried over into folk speech . Early modern Europeans frequently referred to menstruation as "monthly red flowers:' "The blood-red soils of the Rouergue district" led the southwest French to say that a woman did not" 'have her monthlies: she 'went to Rodez ,' " Many assoc iated "the purple-red of blackberries" with menstrual blood that left the "oven heat of the woman's body" In the hamlet of Minot-en-Chatillonais people crudely remarked that a menstruating woman "had a blackberry bum:' Red flower and plant metaphors connoted women's cyclical fertility. Buds and blossoms suggested an adolescent girl's blooming fecundity and a mature woman's ability to bring forth life. Sap rising and falling with the season s similarly mimicked the ebb and flow of women's monthly menstrual cycles. Withering petals called forth menopausal analogies. Flowers and women's fertility were perfectly suited to be widely distributed cross-cultural tropes. Like many others, early Germanic tribes equated blooming red flowers with blood. The word "blodi meant blossom, blooming flower, and blood. Red

10 • Thicker Than Water

flowers were thought to stem the flow of blood, alleviate menstrual woes, and arrest blood loss during childbirth. A Northern European mythical trope attributed red plant matter to the blood of fallen gods. A plant that oozed scarlet sap was termed johannesblut, or "blood of John:' The same plant was named Christie Blut, or "blood of Christ;' in another region. In Norway, "Baldur's blood" referred to a flower with roots dotted red. Red roses were believed to have sprung from the blood of Adonis, Venus, and Amor. In folklore, these red plants had divine origins . For early Germanic tribes, an androgynous, blossoming flower connoted women's cyclical reproductivity and men's production of seed. Flowers and vegetation suggested vitality, vigor, and the youthful force of life. The blooming red flower was conjoined with blood, rendering it "a vehicle of immense potency and magical potential:' German folk speech likened menstrual cyclicity to a budding, then wilting flower. A girl's sexual initiation was defloration. "The flower was ... a poetic circumlocution for hymen . Since German folk belief associated the onset of the menarche with breaking the hymen, these correspondences between blossom, menstruation, and virginity persisted in literary narratives.f" Red marked brides as taboo to all but their husbands. Throughout India, brides were distinguished with "sindur,' the part in their hair covered with vermilion, and the bottoms of their feet and hands painted with henna. Nepalese brides were swathed from head to toe in red wedding garments and received red necklaces from their grooms. Vermilion powdered their hair parts . "Weddings, resplendent with deep and bright hues of red [were] dramatic stages on which the people of Bhalara [Nepal] extol[led] fertility:' Chinese groups also colored brides red. Yukaghir and Chukchi brides were bloodied. In Koryak and Borneo, brides' stomachs and foreheads were coated with blood. Brides wore red paint in Australia, the Congo , and the Solomon Islands. If, despite objections, a Santal man succeeded in dabbing vermilion on a woman's forehead, she was destined to become his bride . Carib men achieved this by marking a pregnant woman's stomach with red, speaking for his future bride before she was even born." Since antiquity many peoples have believed that gemstones held magical properties. Jews coveted red stones, especially rubies, as fertility charms. High priests wore breastplates encrusted with twelve precious stones, representing the twelve tribes of Israel. Reuben's stone was red for helping Rachel to conceive. Medieval Jewish merchants traded and sold red gems with valued properties. Texts from many countries extolled the power of red gemstones to aid in conception. Medieval Jewish women carried carnelians, chalcedony, or rubies, which the Talmud called even t'kuma, or "stones of preservation;' to promote fertility or prevent miscarriage. For the same reason, Jewish women in Syria, Poland, Dagestan, Russia, and the Holy Land carried red stones in the

Introduction •

11

late nineteenth century. In Ismir, Turkey, mothers passed heirloom red gemstone rings to brides in their shared quest for fruitfulness. An early-twentiethcentury red stone housed in a Tbilisi, Georgia, museum is inscribed in Hebrew, "for a woman not to lose the fruit of her womb:' The Navajo divided the human body into male and female parts. Red coral or pyrope symbolized the female veins on the right side of the body. Turquoise symbolized the blue, male veins on the left side of the body. This symbolism carried over into other realms of their cosmology.30 Pomegranates, full of deep red, juicy seeds, were the ultimate fertility symbol. In ancient Greece, brides carried a pomegranate to their husbands' houses to symbolize their fecundity. The Santeria religion, an African import to Latin America, used pomegranates in fertility rituals . They placed paper with a woman's name on it between two pomegranate halves. Yemaya, the "Yoruba moon goddess;' was invoked to make the woman fruitful like "the pomegranate is rich in health and seeds:' Romans also held pomegranates to be lush fertility symbols." Birthing was resplendent with red. Navajo parturients pulled on red sashes tied to the rafters . In Libya, red scarves hung by the doorway where Sephardic Jewish women gave birth. In the Congo, congealed palm oil, a red ointment and "symbolic medicinal blood ;' was smeared on boys during the ir initiation into manhood, parturient women's stomachs, and anyone who witnessed childbirth blood to neutralize its ill effects. The Congolese valued a red stone, believed to be "the coagulated blood of their dead ancestors petrified in the earth:' Pregnant Rabha women of West Bengal kept a piece of iron as a prophylactic charm. Iicarilla Apache ceremonialism surrounding birth and baby naming featured specular iron ore and red ochre . During the naming ceremony, the shaman painted the newborn's face and guests' faces with ochre and then specular iron ore to promote longevity. Tlingit mothers painted infants' noses red to avert evil influences and promote a long healthy life. Medieval Jewish midwives pierced newborn girls' ears with red thread and tied red string on their wrists to avert wicked spirlt s" Before embarking on a dangerous mission , men often protected themselves with red pigment. Ethiopian nobles, Libyans, and Arabs painted themselves this way. Egyptians and triumphant Roman warriors daubed themselves with red ochre and vermilion.33 Australian groups drenched the ir sacred poles and stones with red ochre and coated their "churingas" with red pigment, signifying menstrual blood. At the end of intichiuma rites, they dyed their bodies red. They attributed deposits of red ochre to women's menstrual blood . Bushmen and Hottentots associated their ritual red paint with menstrual blood as well.34 People thought redness could heal or ward off malevolent forces. In early Egypt, dabbing blood on the body transformed into using cosmetic red nail

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polish and body pastes. Red coverlets were used to treat smallpox in early England. Strips of red fabric served as palliatives for scarlet fever in nineteenthcentury London. For the Congolese people of Zaire, red palm oil was crucial in "diet, healing, ritual, and med icines:' By the 1920s, palm oil was a major forest product for plantation companies. People as widely varied as the ancient Chinese and twentieth -century Maoris and Europeans used red charms to ward off evil. People of Bengal, ancient Peru, and West Africa ; the Dayaks of Borneo; and Jews painted their house doorposts red for protection." Red ochre and other red minerals have had salience for widely diverse cultures. Hominids in Africa evidently brought red ochre to their habitation site at Olduvai Gorge . With the arrival of fully modern humans in Europe, ochre customs proliferated. In the Paleolithic, Acheulian bands intentionally procured and prepared ochre. Ochrelike substances have been sprinkled on body parts and corpses; painted on animal bones, tools, ornaments, and cave walls; and put in bowls and buried with individuals. Many Venus figurines from the late Pleistocene had been smeared with red ochre. From South Africa, to the Mediterranean island of Malta, to the Russian steppes, ochre was found in Paleolithic burials. In North America, Paleo indians and Late Archaic peoples in the Great Lakes area made extensive use of ochre in burials. Ochre use by these ancient people likely symbolized human efforts to have some efficacy in matters of life, death, and rebirth (see chapter 2). Ochre remained attractive to humans. The Lulusa, an African Nilo -Hamitic people, extensively traded an ochreous product made of ground biotite gneiss . Preindustrial societies undertook long expeditions for ochre. Groups today, such as the New Guinea Yafar, believe that red ochre was the first female deities' blood, and the y continue to use it as a symbolic blood substitute. Wreschner saw this as "evidenc e of a social action ... stimulated by . . . color categorization.":" Red pipestone minerals, widely used in North America, also connoted blood. Pipe bowls symbolized warfare that was averted as potential combatants allied and smoked together inst ead . Southeastern North American platform pipes evolved into Hopewellian flat-stemmed pipes, which mimicked atlatls or spear-throwers from South America. Round-stemmed elbow pipes of the Great Lakes, Plains, and later the Southeast were arrow analogues, hunt and war weapons. Pipestone quarries in the western Great Lakes region where catlinite was mined were of great significance for native people. True catlinite, named for the nineteenth-century explorer and artist George Catlin, derived from outcroppings at what is now Pipestone National Monument in southwestern Minnesota. This mineral was most highly valued of all. Pipe bowls were not always fashioned from red pipestone; sometimes black, marblelike stone or white stone was used. However, in the most ritualized

Introduction • 13 contexts, red pipestone was preferred and widely distributed throughout eastern North America and the Plains culture areas. The red hue of the malleable pipestone minerals was greatly salient for native North Americans. The red blood imagery extended further. Arrows were carved from red dogwood or red willow. Shavings from the same trees were used as kinnickinnick (an Algonquian term for "mixture") to cut the highly toxic strain of tobacco (Nicotiana rustica) smoked in the Southeast. The calumet ritual involving highly ornamented pipe stems, sometimes with pipe bowls, evolved into a welcoming ritual designed to avert conflict and cement alliances to facilitate trade. The highly polished red pipestone bowls symbolized blood not shed in warfare, as the ritual created networks of reciprocity. The calumet ceremony diffused from the Great Lakes area westward and southward to the lower Mississippi River region by the seventeenth century. In the I600s, European colonization, Iroquoian invasions, and native migrations created a chaotic maelstrom in the lower Mississippi River area. Native people fleeing the Great Lakes area, where the calumet ceremony coincidentally originated, brought it with them and put it to good use . It was adopted by the French, who needed such a welcoming ritual for their own protection. The diffusion of the red pipestone minerals and their acceptance by more and more groups, including the French, further demonstrates the salience of red minerals.Y

Blood Rituals and Coevolution Although few have done so, studies of the literary and popular symbolism connecting metaphorical blood with all sorts of cultural beliefs ought to be possible. Our contemporary day-to-day discourse is chock full of blood metaphors that have nothing at all to do with red fluidity. Studies of blood symbolism and metaphors could spawn a cottage industry." The chapters that follow will demonstrate how rampant symbols, rituals, and metaphors involving blood have run throughout the course of human history. The universality of color perception and the centrality of blood to the reproductive life cycle draw humans to ascribe multivocal meanings to blood. Science can help account for the very human propensity to symbolize and ritualize blood. However, the complex meanings given to these physiological processes were cultural. Science alone cannot account for the incredible diversity of cultural forms, but it does help explain why so many human symbols and rituals revolved around blood. The immense variety of blood symbols and rituals amply illustrates how humans elaborate cultural forms where the neurophysiological bases are most favorable. Gene-culture coevolution or dual inheritance theory suggests that

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culture influences gene selection. "Epigenetic rules" are any regularities in the processes of interaction between genes and the environment that channel the development of an anatomical, physiological, cognitive, or behavioral trait in a particular direction. This interplay, in turn, shapes the trajectories of cultural evolution . Habitat and economic strategies constrain rather than direct individuals' choices. A tabula rasa (blank slate) state is highly unlikely in any species that attains the advanced form of culture found in humans. Instead, epigenetic rules direct gene-culture coevolution. Primary epigenetic rules powerfully govern how the mind operates, resulting in parallel or convergent evolution across widely diverse cultures. As a primary epigenetic rule, the universality of color perception channels human cultural elaboration. Among primates, only human females menstruate. This basic physiological fact is a product of gene selection as hominids evolved. Why this developed has been a matter of debate, as discussed in chapter 2. Most cultural elabora tions regarding blood likely proceeded from this evolutionary oddity. Cultural meanings assigned to women's menstrual bleeding have been omnipresent, even as the ritual forms have varied. The most common cross-cultural assumption about the reproductive life cycle stemmed from the observation that pregnant women stopped menstruating. What happened to the blood? It went to form the baby. Since women who practiced total lactation did not menstruate again for several years, if at all, breast milk must also derive from menstrual blood . So women's blood was fertile, life-giving, and nurturing (see chapter 3). Menarche universally signified an adolescent girl's budding fertility. Some rituals marking it were public. Others were private. It almost never went unnoticed (see chapter 4) . Menstruation, more than any other manifestation of blood, was constructed ambiguously. Kept within the body, it signified the potential for life. Outside the body, it often connoted death, as in "not a baby" Most pollution constructs began here. However, interpretations of menstruation have also evolved in tandem with women's status within their culture. Within matrilineal cultures, women and men alike tended to respect menstrual blood as powerful. Social restrictions most often aimed to safely contain that power. Pollution constructions of women's blood thrived within patriarchal societies . The extensiveness of patriarchy, including today's major world religions, has naturalized pollution constructions of women's blood; they seem to have been omnipresent, but this was not so (see chapter 6). The vast majority of male rituals involving blood relate directly to the perceived life-producing capacity of women's blood. It was not accidental that most boys' initiation rites (see chapter 3) and male blood sacrifice (see chapter 6) explicitly opposed women's blood. Men sought to co-opt the life-giving

Introduction • 15 power of women's blood and rid boys of the influence of their mothers' blood. Genetic evolution and cultural constructions of women's blood went hand in hand (see chapter 2). The tension between constructions of women's blood and men's blood is a recurrent theme throughout this book. Human consciousness tends to create binary oppositions, such as life and death, men and women, adults and children, upper world and lower world, sacred and secular, "we' and "others;' and purity and pollution. Humans employ ritual and taboo to mark and distinguish the boundaries between dualisms . It is highly suggestive, though as yet unproved, that some sort of epigenetic rules govern this tendency to perceive dualisms. This was probably at work as human beings created and employed blood symbols, rituals , and metaphors that widely characterized women's blood and men's blood as separate but interrelated. I must emphasize here that no one, certainly not me, is arguing for biological determinism. Culture, in all its multifaceted forms , is alive and well in this scientific literature. However, humans must perceive and act by means of their physical bodies, which poses constraints. I believe that historians could generate new understandings by considering the many insights revealed by specialists in gene-culture coevolution or dual inheritance theory. Scholars have long believed human behavior to be more complex and intractable than anything in the natural sciences. However, this complexity is probably governed by some knowable rules that create patterns. While Homo sapiens is the most complex species ever, it is probably less complicated and unfathomable than contemporary social theory allows. If sociobiologists have erred in favor of genetic determinism, then cultural anthropologists have erred in favor of cultural determinism. There are recurrent themes that can be explained by the structures of the brain and processes of cognition. They need explanation, rather than being assumed to be selfevident. The failure to describe the acquisition and representation of ideas stems from (1) an exaggerated belief in cultural variability, despite much empirical evidence of recurrent ideas and practices, and (2) ignorance of the human mind, from which things cultural generate. Insights drawn from cognitive and developmental psychology, neurobiology, and genetics can help reformulate many standard problems to generate new hypotheses about the acquisition and transmission of cultural representations. This goal of finding overarching sets of rules resembles the goals of comparative ethnologists or even Marxists. However, coevolutionists anchor their argument firmly in the genetic composition and development of the human mind, beginning at the molecular level. They do not begin with thick ethnographic description and seek to find patterns but begin with neurobiological development common to all Homo sapiens. From this perspective, genes and culture interact and shape each other, guided by epigenetic rules .

16 • 'Thicker Than Water

Causal explanations between biology and the social sciences are few. Coevolutionists applaud social scientists who succeeded in developing unifying postulational-deductive theories. Doing so has profitably allowed them to relate climatic change, geography, and population growth to the rise of agriculture and the origins of the state. Historians recognize this in the fields of historical demography and economics. Even so, they all fail to consider the development of individual motivation and cannot bridge psychology and biology. This lacuna lies at the heart of gene-culture coevolution. Dual inheritance theorists most often use examples drawn from studies of neonatal infants-those least affected by culture. However, their examples at times seem like quite a stretch of logic. They attempt to link territoriality with stranger anxiety among six- to eighteen-month-old infants, but stranger anxiety fades. Why not turn to the vast ethnographic record and explore what people, as opposed to infants, actually did and do?39 Blood symbols, rituals, and metaphors were and are omnipresent. Indeed, the stories told and spiritual beliefs held by widely dispersed people underscore the association they make between blood and their constructions of the reproductive life cycle. Yet no one has attempted to account for the widespread use of blood symbols and rituals . Some case studies elaborate on a particular culture's metaphoric use of blood, but they are rarely holistic or cross-cultural. It is also impossible to fully contextualize every example of blood symbolism and ritual. I make full use of studies that do this, but I cannot fill in the blanks if they do not. It was tempting, but impossible, to formulate a testable hypothesis about the universality of blood symbols and rituals. The absence of blood symbolism in a study usually meant that the scholar overlooked it. The plethora of illustrations presented herein disguise how difficult it was to unearth them. Blood discourse is so naturalized that we pay symbols and metaphors no heed. My venture has not been exhaustive, but I have cast my net as broadly as manageable to deconstruct blood symbols and rituals to discern their multifaceted meanings. The reproductive life cycle integrates them and gives them meaning. This book reviews the major themes in this far-flung literature to make the case that it is an inherently human characteristic to assign meaning to blood.

CHAPTER

2

Women's Blood and Men's Blood at the Dawn of Human Culture

The blood symbols and rituals surveyed in this book are unmistakably patterned' even though they vary tremendously. A tension between women's blood, associated with fertility and creating and bringing forth new life, and men's blood, associated with the hunt and sacrifice, has reverberated cross-culturally across time . These dualisms arose in the most ancient days of the evolution of human cultures, to be elaborated on and transmuted ever since. They permeate and integrate such things as menstrual taboos, intercourse taboos , hunting protocol, and distinctions between raw and cooked meat, kinship structures, childbirth rituals, gender roles, initiation rituals, and blood sacrifice. An ideology of blood that some see lying at the core of the emergence of human culture has resounded through time to make its presence palpable in the historical and ethnographic record, and remains apparent in today's highly racialized world. The chapters that follow will make greater sense if we start at the beginning.

Sex for Meat Primatologists and evolutionary and cultural anthropologists have attempted to unravel the transition from the instinctual, social behavior of primate groups to the cultural behavior of Homo sapiens. It is a difficult assignment. Although we share 98.5 percent of our genetic makeup with our closest relatives, chim panzees, the gulf between us in cultural capabilities is enormous. We have little more evidence than bits of bones and tools from our evolutionary relatives. Before the past twenty years or so, primatology focused on men and ignored women and child care needs. Scholars did not consider strong relationships between mothers and infants. Feminist scientists are helping to correct this omission .I

17

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The most holistic theory that integrates blood rituals while explaining the origins of human culture has been dubbed the "sex strike theory:' Its most enthusiastic proponent, Chris Knight, chose the label purposefully to reflect his Marxist orientation. Although his book Blood Relations : Menstruation and the Origins of Culture is an avowedly Marxist interpretation, it also takes recent feminist scholarship into account. Knight weaves together and logically accounts for many elements of "traditional" cultures that have stumped social anthropologists who preceded him. Even though Claude Levi-Strauss in his massive four-volume Mythologiques assembled many of the components Knight interprets, he failed to make sense of them. Given that blood and blood symbolism are central to Knight's account, it is worth examining this theory in depth. Researchers have debated the question of human origins within the context of Darwinian evolution . They saw it as a biological event that occurred once the brain had achieved a certain size, and jaws and teeth aligned . Even language and social patterns were linked to changes in areas of the brain. As captives of their loins, men dominated women, amassing harems. Marx and Engels noted that Darwin reproduced in scientific thinking the very society from which he hailed. Marshall Sahlins termed this the "origin myth of Western capitalism.f By the late 1960s chinks appeared in the armor of biological Darwinian evolution as an explanation for the origins of human culture. Primatologists newly observed that wild primates not only ate meat but also greatly coveted it. Many supposed that gatherer-hunter-fisher food sharing followed from primate (and presumably hominid) behavior. Further observation of chimpanzees and baboons disproved this supposition. Primates immediately attempted to eat the meat they killed, sometimes even before the catch had died. On occasion, another ate some of the kill, but not as intentional exchange . This was more accurately "tolerated scrounging" or "tolerated theft:' If an animal carried off any of the kill, it was not to share but to escape up a tree and maintain exclusive possession. Males and females did not exchange what they foraged; they were self-sufficient. A division of labor did not exist. Large adult males dominated meat eating as a highly competitive activity. However, female chimpanzees acquired meat from males by making sexual offerings . They presented their rumps, hoping that the allure would yield them a share of meat. Jane Goodall recorded, "When a female in estrus is begging meat from a male at Gombe, it is not ... unusual to see the male, carcass clutched in one hand, pause ... to mate her-after which she is . . . allowed to share his prey.... Females, during copulation, reach back and take food from the ... male:' Female chimpanzees prolonged their estrous swellings precisely to enhance their bargaining power. Baboons displayed similar sex-for-meat bargaining strategies. Females stared at carcasses while submitting to copulation, often snaring a share after-

Women's Blood and Men's Blood at the Dawnof Human Culture. 19 ward . Males also gazed at carcasses, but always chose sex first. Males found it difficult to maintain exclusive access to receptive females. Females mated with any male if they had a chance to acquire meat.' Chris Knight made ample use of these observations. Knight argued that emphasizing male dominance, cooperation between the sexes, and the centrality of the nuclear family to the development of human culture was wrong." Instead, gender solidarity first gave impetus to cultural behavior. Specifically, women, acting in concert, generated culture by pioneering a way to force men to supply meat in exchange for sex. The sex strike theory contends that ancient Homo sapiens females were materially most productive but reproductively most burdened. Bearing increasingly large-brained babies meant a prolonged period of infant dependency and maturation. Women were saddled with child care and greater nutritional needs because of extended lactation. They needed men to assume more responsibility. Many agree that human culture originated when men turned from being preoccupied with their own nutritional and sexual needs and contributed more to women's and children's sustenance. Just how this occurred is a matter of debate . Establishing a "home base" undergirded the evolution of human culture . Virtually all gatherer-hunter-fishers follow a pattern where men leave for distant hunting journeys, while women, children, and older people remain in one location, leaving periodically in groups to gather resources, returning to the same home base. Monkeys and apes do not behave this way; they eat and sleep as they go, and remain in one place only as long as there are available resources . The home base was "the primary spatial arena of social activity:' People allocated food, raised and protected children, slept, manufactured tools, and exchanged produce, stories, and information. A gendered division oflabor characterized social relations as men and women exchanged meat and produce, and had sex. Most political power rested at the home base. Most important, females no longer followed males. The home base spared females and their offspring the physical and nutritional demands of a life continually on the go. Female groupings maintained their own space, including camp and hearth. Women's status varied greatly among gatherer-hunterfishers, but all followed such a pattern. Establishing the home base was not easily achieved, and did not arise early on the timeline of human evolution. It was an extraordinarily difficult accomplishment that did not simply evolve. Even large-brained, tool-making Homo erectus did not achieve the breakthrough necessary for human culture to evolve. For more than two million years after the first stone tools were chipped, hominids remained in stasis. As Knight noted, "It required not just bipedalism, tool-making, basket-making technology, larger brains or goodnaturedness, but a massive social and sexual revolution culminating in the

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firm establishme nt of collectively agree d moral regulation s and symbo lic culture in something like the form in which it governs th e lives of huntergatherers to th is day'" Accounting for th e tran sition to th e hom e base lies at th e heart of th e sex strike th eory. Fema les stoo d to gain immensely from th is. What would promp t mal es to defer th eir prim ate-derived urge to co nsume th eir kills at once to bring meat to th e hom e base to share with women and child ren? Knight argued that female s, acting in solida rity to harn ess th e politi cal and socia l power of th eir menstrual cycles, brou ght males aro und. The human m enstrual cycle has pu zzled many biologists. Scho lars have describ ed wome n as "quite different" from other pr imates and charac terized menstruation as "extraordinary evolution :' Human fema les do not display estrous like most prim ates: human ovulatio n is visually concealed. They can always be sexually receptive. They can also refuse sex at any tim e, unlike th eir prima te relatives who have "gadfly ma dness" as th eir estro us sexual swellings rise. The human pattern is the inverse of th e primate pattern , not simply dissim ilar. Knight noted, "Whe reas th e basic primate pattern is to deliver a periodic 'yes' signal against a background of continuo us sexual 'no: hu m ans emit a peri odic 'no' signal against a backg round of conti nuo us 'yes:" A profound sexua l revolution was necessar y to becoming human because, "The modern physiology of woma nkind- which cannot have cha nged mu ch over th e past few tens of m illennia-should tell us some thing abo ut th e ma ting system on th e basis of wh ich she evolved." Ov ulation becam e concealed, but a profuse external display of blood accentu ated menstruation. Women lose con siderable blood du ring menstruation, far more th an th e m inu scule amounts othe r primates shed. Estro us swellings are th eir mos t d ram atic event. Wh y did th is happen? Knight argued that wom en increased th e amoun t of men strual discharge and prolon ged its duration for polit ical and socia l reaso ns. Th e external display of blood evolved as the lon g per iod of nonrecept ivity was lost. Menstruation poses no obstacle to sexual interco urse, but many cultures have int erpreted th e externa l display of blood as signaling "no :' Mam ma ls tend to breed seasonally. A flush of vegetation adver tises th e season of reso ur ce abunda nce. Humans can rep roduce seasonally, but less so th an othe r pr im ates." The effect th at human female s can have on each other's ovulatory cycles is key to th e sex strike th eory. Only since th e 1970s has medical science recognized th at wome n who live am icably in close proxim ity tend to synchro nize th eir menstrual cycles. Groupings can range from exte nded famil y hou sehold s, to dormitori es of young wome n, to fema le lifeguard s. In all of th ese cases , ovu1ation synchronized, and men struation followed two weeks later. Pheromon es caused th is. We can only speculate how th is may have affecte d past gro upings of wom en .

Women's Bloodand Men's Bloodat the Dawn of Human Culture. 21 Richard Kiltie believed that menstrual synchrony was "an evolutionary vestige" of a significant adaptation at an earlier time. It might have originated when hominids reproduced more seasonally, like other mammals. Like the tendency of men's hormonal levels and basal body temperatures to synchronize with their wives' menstrual cycles, menstrual synchrony could have been an ancillary effect of some other physiological process. Kiltie argued that menstrual synchrony should have been strong among closely affiliated adolescent girls but became weaker as women spent most of their lives either pregnant or experiencing lactational amenorrhea.' Human males provisioned women and children far more than other primates did . Paul Turke assumed that females must have influenced this development, and he wondered how they brought about this behavioral revolution. He tried to explain why women have concealed ovulation, unremitting but selective sexual receptivity, and the possibility for menstrual synchrony. He presumed that the earliest protohominids lived in groups much like chimpanzees. Females exhibited estrous swellings, had multiple sex partners, and were dominated by alpha males . As was typical of primate behavior, males contributed little beyond their own needs. As grasslands increasingly encroached on their forest habitat, they adapted. Predators threatened their safety, so they congregated in larger groupings, which intensified competition. Foraging strategies became more complex." Larger-brained infants who were dependent for years especially burdened females. They both made easy prey. Larger groups gave them more protection, and also created the right conditions for females' menstrual cycles to begin to synchronize. Only slight genetic variation was necessary to dampen the display of a few females' estrous signals. Their sisters' more gaudy displays would have attracted the dominant males . Lower-ranking males would have inclined toward females with repressed signals for sheer sexual opportunity and then would have stayed with them longer. Menstrual synchrony would have begun after just one cycle, and been achieved after four. Over time, as synchrony spread through the proximate group, females would have increasingly received the attentions of lowerranking males who did not defer to alpha males. Newly valued for their provisioning aid and contribution to child welfare, they would have been drawn into the social order, instead of being excluded. Alpha male dominance would have been overthrown. 10 Hamadryas baboons illustrate this logic. Females' cycles synchronize within residential locales. Their cooperation prevents males from having more than two females in a harem. This controls alpha males in that they do not philander. Local groups are small and stable, with males caring more for their mates and offspring than males do in other primate groups. These baboons repeated

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the first steps that female protohominids had to have taken on the road to becoming human. I 1 Lovejoy and Turke both envisioned a movement toward more limited pairbonding. Lovejoy thought males wanted monogamy and nuclear families to ensure correct paternity. Tur ke, however, saw females, acting together, controlling their reproductive cyclicity and redirecting male concerns more to the welfare of thei r mates and offspring . Female cooperation is central to account for the origins of human culture. 12 Knight acknowledged that the hominid fossil record did not support his tale of female synchrony and solidarity. Sexual dimorphism and large canines point to the primate model of dominance and sexual conflict. The environ- . ment constrained hominids' spatial distribution. Most agree that the y could not have been savanna dwellers. "Only symbolic culture bearing, anatomically modern humans" eventually broke through these constraints. 13 Contemporary versions of how hominids moved out of Africa as they evolved into modern humans can accommodate the widespread ethnographic association of the moon with menstruation. Most agree that the Great Rift Valley, a "riverine, lake-ribboned and estuarine geological zone;' was ideal habitat for early, water-dependent hominids. They were flexible creatures with a more upright stance due to a heritage of brachiating through trees for millennia, and they could swim. They needed to forage and scavenge. Fossil evidence shows they used marine creatures, from crabs and turtles to crocodiles . Details might be in dispute , but between the Miocene and "the Last Interglacial, the Rift Valley retained its unique position as the evolutionary cradle of largebrained, gracile hominids," Only here did a series of bipeds with increasingly neotenous features and larger brains migrate south and north to replace those who came before them . In the northern Rift Valley, "pre-cultural or protocultural hominid females" were able "to sustain ovarian synchrony more consistently than ... elsewhere:' Those hom inids that became human evolved in a tidal, marine environment. 14 Women attempting to synchronize their menstrual cycles used external cues to remind and guide them . Awayfrom tidal areas, the moon was the dominant cue. "The human .. . menstrual cycle-virtually alone among primate cycles -is a body-clock with precisely the correct average phase-length to enable lunar /t idal synchrony to be maintained:' Both the length of the menstrual cycle and menstrual synchrony could have been a result oflunar and tidal effects. Biological clock expert J.L. Cloudsley- Thompson thought that the human menstrual cycle could be a vestigial manifestation of what was once a "true circalunadian rhythm:' Exposure to light establishes such physical rhythms. Contemporary indoor lifestyles with plenty of artificial lighting hinder women from synchronizing, so that any correspondence between exposure to light and synchrony likely broke down long ago.

Women's Blood and Men's Blood at the Dawn of Human Culture. 23

Knight found no clear evidence oflunar-linked menstrual synchrony; he assumed synchrony once existed.I S Using a wide range of archaeological and ethnographic information, he showed that some intriguing vestiges of an earlier way of life at the dawn of human culture could have survived. After all, we were unaware of menstrual synchrony until the past three decades. Fully anatomical humans appeared in Africa and the Near East about 100,000 years ago. Sixty thousand years passed before they left any evidence of symbolic culture. Then they expanded quickly across Asia, reaching Australia 40,000 years ago. Between 38,000 and 42,000 years ago, they slowly dribbled into Europe over 3,000 years, displacing Neanderthals. Their more variegated tool kit, including an assortment constructed from bone and antler, replaced the crude, Neanderthal hand-ax tradition. In the Levant, modern hum ans actually predated the arrival of Neanderthals by 30,000 to 40,000 years. Neanderthals entered the area only 60,000 years ago. Neanderthals and modern humans were not related, but entirely different species that did not interbreed. This interpretation shattered the vision of "Regional Continuity" Marshack thought Neanderthals had the unrealized capacity for symbolic culture. In France, fossil Neanderthals in a cave had tools they copied from humans. Localized Neanderthal groups created symbols, but never disseminated them broadly to achieve the transmission of memes so central to the evolution of human culture. Only anatomically modern humans who displaced Neanderthals in the early Upper Paleolithic had "the capacity for a universalistic collective pooling and hence indefinite cumulative evolution of cultural knowe I dge.,,1 6 Paleogenetics helped reconstruct the transformation to human culture . "Racial" differences are superficial. Instead, all humans descended from one woman-the African Eve. DNA analysis showed that the "mitochondrial inheritance" of Africa's Evehad "become immortalised in every . . . member of the human species:' Different "races" did not descend from hominid variants; all humans descended from a group that migrated north from the Rift Valley.l ? Although global sea levels rose, some late Pleistocene habitations suggest that protohuman hominids favored seashore environments. Mediterranean Sea shore sites featured hearths, young animal remains , shellfish and marine creatures, vegetative matter, and evidence of repeated use. Their stone toolmaking techniques compared well with the Upper Paleolithic, when symbolic cultural expression truly burst forth . Anatomically modern humans inhabited these sites. The Klasies River Mouth site, preserved amidst resilient Paleozoic rocks along Africa's south shore, contained some of the most ancient human fossil remains. They are presumed to be among Eve's descendants. The rich marine environment would have allowed females to remain in close proximity, enhancing the chances that menstrual synchrony would have developed. The revolution toward human culture was underway.

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These expanding populations favored the greater resource diversity of coastal, riverine, and lacustrine environments. The Nile Valleywas a major conduit toward Europe and the Near East. Ocean crossings occurred. Colonization of Australia, which took place 40,000 years ago, required a ninety-kilometer ocean voyage. Melanesia was probably settled by coastal dwellers with inshore watercraft , who were periodically swept away, to make landfall sometime later. Humans likely colonized the Americas in the same way; people who adapted to coastal economies did not need a land bridge . People would not have had the incentive to venture into the interior until the "coasts and major river courses were settled to capacity:' Population pressure could instigate such a change. So, too, could the onset of Ice Age cold and the desiccation of some regions. 18

The Symbolic Revolution It seems counterintuitive that continental glaciation could prompt humans to create the elaborate symbolic culture that exploded in the Upper Paleolithic. How would women , burdened with dependent offspring, profit by the expansion of intensive foraging into new areas? They met the challenge of environmental stress and maintained menstrual synchrony in novel ways to command more provisioning from their mates. In Africa and Europe, deepening cold prompted technological innovation, migration, and "revolutionary new cultural forms:' The cultural logic coupled menstrual blood with game animals' blood. I examine it in greater detail as the foundation for an understanding of blood symbolism and rituals at the dawn of human culture. The migration inland from the shores challenged women to maintain menstrual synchrony. Selection pressures increased menstrual bleeding, enabling women to keep track of each other's periods and effectively signal "no:' Blood became a more central cultural symbol. The most attractive resources in this frigid environment were large, now extinct, Pleistocene mammals. Men had to be absent longer to hunt them. However, they would have been rewarded with ample sexual opportunities when they returned with meat. The blood of women and game animals became linked in a "blood-centred symbolic system which linked game animals and the female body into a tightly integrated web of meanings" reflected in Early Upper Paleolithic art. This involved "periodic notation systems . . . , the use of ochre as a blood substitute . . . ,the recurrent association of vulva engravings with those of animals . . . , figurines" that emphasize "female reproductive organs .. . and, more generally ... the art's suggestively lunar/menstrual as well as seasonal or 'time-factored' internal logic"!" Knight argued that women successfully equated all blood with menstrual blood , so that even that of game animals in death corresponded to menstrual blood . I can easily see how women's blood and bodies became linked with game animals . However, I am not

Women's Blood and Men's Blood at the Dawn of Human Culture • 25 convinced that all blood, including that of game, was equated with menstrual blood. In fact, distinguishing women's blood as that shared by kin became a hallmark of elementary kinship structures. Knight's own logic later bears this out. Achieving synchrony beyond the local group would have been difficult. Knight recognized this, but thought it was necessary. His hypothesis is speculative. Nonetheless, it is worth reviewing its salient features because blood is central both literally and symbolically. Transcending primate dominance, competition; and conflict would have allowed culture to flouresce. Cooperative relationships would have given rise to language, shared symbolic logic, and ritual. Sexual life would have been enhanced by seductive teasing and playas ritualized coupling and uncoupling became normative and uncontested. Cultural forms would have flowered not by happenstance; their pattern would have accorded with the symbolic blood logic of menstrual synchrony and the sex strike. Knight's hypothesis can do what no other has. Simply, and rather elegantly, it can account for incest taboos , the development of elementary kinship structures, exogamy, and early matriliny. Everything flows from the central premise that women withheld sex from males who did not bring meat. This included immature boys (sons and brothers) who stayed with them at base camp when men hunted. The sexual prohibition extended through adulthood because they were integral allies within women's support groups. I add that those who originated from within a mother's body were likely thought to share her blood . My later cross-cultural survey makes abundantly clear that the most widespread idea about conception was that fetuses formed from menstrual blood, which ceased to flow with pregnancy. Sexual relations between those who shared blood was typically taboo. Even though fathers and daughters would not have shared blood, such conjugal relations would not have yielded additional resources for the kin group, and would have been frowned upon. Thus, the nearly universal incest taboo is explained much more simply than any other theorist has managed. This led directly to the establishment of lineages and exogamous mating preferences. Two lineages would have formed within the local group, those who shared a mother's blood and those who did not. The important determinant was originating within a woman's body, literally taking form from her blood and being physically engulfed in it at once. Mating and marriage was acceptable only between those who did not share blood. Mating and marital partners knew to bring meat, which accorded them sexual rights. Once boys matured, they turned outside their mothers' kin group for sexual relations. The only available partners were those within the categories of "mother's brother's daughters" or "father's sister's daughters;' for they fell outside his own kin group. This type of dual kinship structure, where communities consisted

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of two exogamous clans that interma rr ied, as Rob er t Lowie no ted, was "certainl y the sim plest that can be conceived:' Malinows ki describ ed th is as "the indispe nsable basis of reciprocal obligation s:' Dua l orga nization coincides with Levi-Strauss's The Eleme ntary Structures of Kinship . This du al kinship stru cture would have to have been matrilineal. In fact, matrili ny, with its "space-embracing, non -territ or ial, gender-segregating, coalition-forming cha racteristics;' would have been a natura l outgrowth of wome n's efforts. Since wome n's strategies targeted men's marrying into th e matrilineage, men's ties to their wives and biologi cal children would have rem ained weak. Matr iliny undercut spo usal ties and nucl ear families by ensuring the loyalties of mothers and sons, and sisters and brothers, across space . The logic next explains classificator y kin ship , where siblings are situatio nally equivalent: they share th e same position s in the kinship system. RadcliffeBrown explained, "A man is always classed with his brother and woma n with her sister I call my father's brother by the same term that I apply to my father, and I call my mother's sister 'mo ther: ... The children of any man I call 'father ' or of any woman I call 'mo the r' are my 'brothers' and 'sisters: The childre n of any man I call 'brother' . . . call me 'father: and I call th em 'son' an d 'daughter: " Ch ildren called their moth er and all her sisters "mo the r;' and all of their children were siblings. Th e most pivot al male parent al figure was "mother's brother;' not biological fath ers. Classificatory kinship cha racterized most gathe rer-hunter-fisher societies, and logically followed from the sibling solidarity predicted by the sex strike mod el. This took prece dence over spo usal bonds. Many have failed to comprehend th e true natu re of classificator y kin ship systems. Placing indiv idual s or conjugal units at center obscured th e broad coalition-based logic that subordinated self-interest. Indi vidu als mattered less than the stat us they share d with oth ers. The sororate and levirate illustrate thi s perfectly. Upo n an individual's death, a sibling welcomed th e surviving spouse as his or her own spo use. In terms of classificatory kin ship , they had already been married. At its mo st elaborate expression, classifica tory kin ship completely separated spo uses socially. Thi s was widesprea d in Africa, Oceani a, and South Ame rica. Spouses refrained even from eating togeth er. Meal sharing symbolized kinship ; husband and wife were not kin . Many well-kn own custom s atte nded du al kinship organization, "me nstrua l avoida nces, menstrual huts, post-partum taboos, in-law taboos and 'men's house' institution s frequ entl y help ensure th at gender distinction s are not blurred, incestuo us confusion is gua rded against- and spouses are effectively kept apa rt for mu ch of the tim e:' In contrast to scho lars who believe th e nucl ear family to be uni versally primar y, "it is the disjun ction of spo uses, not their conjunction, which is the mos t stro ngly emphas ised ritual and struc tura l norm." Classificatory kin ship, characterize d by coalitions of women and their ma trilineal kin and men

Women's Blood and Men's Blood at the Dawn of Human Culture. 27 with their matrilineal kin, is predicted and reflected by the sex strike theory. Subsequent patriliny altered this, but the basic contours have survived in the ethnographic record ." This "revolution" in human culture occurred in Africa and the Near East anywhere from 40,000 to 60,000 years ago. These people pursued base camp foraging, a gendered division of labor, and logistical big game hunting. They expanded into southeastern and central Europe and developed characteristic lithic techniques 37,000 years ago. The transition took place 30,000 to 32,000 years ago in western Europe, when humans abruptly displaced resident Neanderthals." In contrast to the intruding humans, Neanderthals remained in restricted territories close to seashores and river valleys. They showed no evidence of interaction with others over large distances . Any goods deposited in graves were highly localized.f Human interlopers followed migrating herds of megafauna expansively. The prevalence of marine shells far inland indicates broad social networks involving trade. Spiral shells often signified tidal rhythms and might indicate their interest in "preserving coastal links even when hunting and gatheringfar inland:' Aboriginal Australians carried a similar spiral pattern far into the desert interior. This could point to using tidal and lunar cues to maintain menstrual synchrony. It also corresponded with the transition to the Upper Paleolithic." A shift from the radiating settlement patterns of the Middle Paleolithic to the circulating patterns of the Upper Paleolithic also characterized this transition . The circulating pattern indicated the emergence of true base camps. Moving camp every few days created the earlier radiating pattern. Once men felt secure in their sexual rights to women, they worried less about journeying farther away from the base camp to hunt. Lithic assemblages reflected this transition as well. The blade tools that characterized the Upper Paleolithic increased in frequency throughout the Middle Paleolithic in North Africa and the Levant. About 60,000 years ago, flint cores also appeared, indicating that knappers carried the cores with them to produce numerous blades from the cores at a distance from the quarry. As hunting grew more reliable, men abandoned the older pattern of scavenging. There is evidence of game drives requiring group planning, cooperation, and specialized technologies . Most Upper Paleolithic settlement sites in Europe were located in river valleys where herds of animals forded shallower water. Slow-moving mammals such as mammoths supplied ample meat that could have been dried and preserved in refrigerated pits dug into the frozen ground. By the Upper Paleolithic, all habitation sites exhibited a home base pattern , a gendered division of labor, and the domestic use of fire. Caves and rock shelters were found in central and eastern Europe . Ukraine river valleys,

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close to the ice sheets, were vast grasslands without caves or rock overhangs. There humans lined excavated pits with mammoth bones and covered them with hides. Some were small, but others were complex structures that housed extended family groupings. Living spaces appear to have been gendered with hearths dotting the center interior" In these habitations, people heavily used red ochre and kept figurines depicting voluptuous, full-bodied women. Some items indicated tracking time by lunar phases. These tangible remains only hint at the cosmological and cultural context of ritual. Women who lived in such dwellings had achieved a greater degree of comfort and security than their Early and Middle Paleolithic forebears . They did not follow foraging men. They remained at the home base, as the locus to which game and resources were transported. This enhanced their children's chances for survival by affording them greater nurturance. Within these living spaces, women's menstrual cycles surely synchronized. Modern human hunting groups such as these exploded across the globe. Their need to follow game herds obviated territorial impulses. Modern humans arrived in Australia at least 35,000 years ago, thousands of years before their counterparts displaced European Neanderthals." Knight expected his sex strike scenario to have operated among groups such as these. The moon was pivotal. Lunar phases were the clock women used to maintain menstrual synchrony. Hunters also used moonlight to maximize their likelihood of success. Lunar symbolism is scant in the archaeological record, but the ethnographic record abounds with it. Cross-culturally, menstruation, which means "moon change;' has been widely regarded as a "lunar phenomenon:' People assumed this was because the duration of both is twenty-eight days, but that is only an average for menstrual cycles. The waxing and waning of the moon, and its periodic eclipses, more strongly connoted the life cycle than any other celestial feature. Most anthropologists have gone no further than this, though the sheer magnitude of cultural associations begs for greater explication. For ancient Greeks, "The Moon was not only . . . the cause of conception and generation, but ... the regulator of the periodic function of women, the controller of menstruation and the guardian of the embryo and the placenta:' Ancient Indian texts portrayed the moon as girls' guardian, who had sex with them when they reached puberty. Mayans called menstruation la luna, or "the moon:' Off the northern coast of Australia, the people of Saibai and Yam believed that the moon transformed into a seducer of adolescent girls and prompted menarche. The Maori also thought the moon brought on menstruation and was every woman's real husband. In the East Africa Kavirondo district, the ]uluo believed menstruation began in the new moon, which was when conception could occur. As a convenient and reliable marker of time's passage, many menstrual rituals were

Women's Blood and Men's Blood at the Dawn of Human Culture • 29

keyed to successive moons. Robert Briffault in The Mothers recorded mani fold examples of this. Rural Germans called menstruation "the moon;' and in the French countryside it was Ie moment de Ia Iune. In the Torres Straits, the same word conveyed "menstrual blood" and "moon:' Congolese people refer to menstruation as ngonde, or "the moon:' Over and over, in cosmologies, myths , art, literature, discourse, and everyday language, people have associated the moon with menstruation. Darwin believed that the marine origins of all life accounted for this , since many sea creatures' cycles are synchronized with lunar phases. Knight argued that this was more than the coincidence of cycle length; women's menstrual cycles evolved in tandem with lunar cycles due to ancient selection pressures involving exposure to light and the establishment of ovulatory synchrony." Hunters probably employed moonlight in the hunt. Many ungulates were active nocturnally. A lengthened day made tracking a wounded animal easier, especially in northern latitudes during the winter when daylight hours were fewest. Most hunters understood that beginning an expedition at the new moon would give them the benefit of a longer string of moonlit nights . Hunting by moonlight is common in the ethnographic record . Hunting folklore and mythology reinforce these parallels, though paleoanthropologists have not used them much ." A hunter's kill was governed by rules of "ownership" and distribution. The kill was construed as a form of property; the rules determined who owned it. "Own kill" rules were widely distributed among gatherer-hunter-fisher peoples of North America," South America," Africa," Australia," Papua-New Guinea. " and beyond. "Own kill" rules prohibited hunters from consuming game that they killed. They delivered it to the base camp where women parceled it out. In places, hunters dared not even touch the game; their com panions transported it. Sometimes, they had to leave it outside the village for women to carry to the butchering site. In other cases, hunters received the least desirable parts after the bulk had been distributed. Hunters might obviate the "own kill" rule. Transgressions might be forgiven with apologies and propitiation. Hunters needed to explain deviation, or expect retribution. People reasoned that animals were offended when hunters consumed them. They avenged themselves by causing bad hunting luck, illness, or death. Some thought the hunter injected his blood into the animal when he killed it. The hunter's eating the animal would be consuming his own blood or kin." This logic underlaid totemic kinship systems. Each clan recognized an ancestral animal. Hunters often refused to kill their clan emblem, but a hunter from another clan could kill it and give it to them . Clansmen traded tabooed animals. This exchange principle paralleled elementary kinship exogamous lineages: men exchanged sisters and tabooed animals .

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Kin commonly refer to each other as "my own flesh:' often "by blood:' In Arabic and Hebrew, "clan" and "flesh" were equivalent terms. Kinship signified "participation in a common mass of flesh, blood and bones :' Trobriand Island matrilineages shared an "identity of flesh:' When a sister gave birth, "The kinsmen rejoice, for their bodies become stronger when one of their sisters or nieces has plenty of children:' The Sharanahua of Peru refer to "my kin, my flesh:' Speaking of "my own flesh and blood" is a common expression in the United States. In one sense, "totemic food avoidances are ... avoidances of the self:' Refusing to eat one's "blood" or "flesh" symbolically expressed that one's essence or spirit also resided in one's kin group and in the products of one's labor. Hunters' produce was game. In fact, "totem ism" is a Euroamerican construct. As conceived of by social anthropologists, totemism does not exist in the ethnographic record. Native languages refer to what anthropologists have labeled "totems" as "flesh:' "meat:' or "blood:' They usually refer to the collective kin group. The word totem derives from the Anishinabe (Ojibwa or Chippewa) language and other Algonquian languages and means simply "matrilineal kin" or "family mark:' The family mark, which represents an ancestral clan animal, is what anthropologists fastened on and emphasized. Hewitt wrote in Hodge's Handbook of American Indians North ofMexico that totem "derived from ... ototeman of the Chippewa and other cognate Algonquian dialects;' and meant, "his brother-sister kin;' signifying "the consanguine kinship existing between uterine brothers and sisters:' The real emphasis was blood relations through mothers, not animals."

Gendered Blood I believe that Knight is correct that exogamous incest taboos and totemic food avoidances express the same cultural logic. I also want to emphasize the symbolic centrality of blood in both. However, I do not agree with Knight's insistence that women successfully equated all forms of blood with menstrual blood. He argued that men dared not consume their own kills in the bush because it would spatter them with blood and make it appear that they had illicit sex with menstruating women, thereby violating their pact with their own women at the home base. This argument is simply not necessary, and it is not supported by any ethnographic evidence. Instead, I propose that women's blood and men's blood were perceived in a sort of tension. Women's blood was the blood of life. Men's blood was the blood of death. They needed to be kept apart lest the power of one interfere with the potency of the other. I elaborate further on this tense opposition in this chapter. Indeed, we will see throughout the chapters of this book how it permeated cross-cultural life cycle rituals .

Women's Blood and Men's Bloodat the Dawn of Human Culture . 31 Upper Paleolithic artistic motifs associated game anim als with vulvas. An alterna tive explanation for this still supports his sex strike hypoth esis without equating menstrual blood and the blood of the hunt. Ovulatory synch rony tim ed with th e full moon meant that hunters could anticipate sexual revelry up on th eir return. What better reason to associate vulvas with bagging game ? Hunters did not care about ensuring their paternity: th ey want ed to achieve orgasm. I do not believe that guaranteeing fertil e sex motivated either wom en or men, unl ess the y desired children. Childbirth posed a grave risk, perh aps to be avoided. Here again , I deviate from Knight. With most of the ingredients in place, I now summa rize succinctly tho se elements of Knight's sex strike model that I find mo st compelling. At the full moon , wom en synchronously ovulated, then they menstruated during th e dark phase. The "no" signal of menstrual bleeding was emblema tic of th e sex strike. Thi s correlated with the absence of meat and was th e cue for men to comme nce hunting. Without meat, cooking fires were not lit. Cultural proscriptions abo ut the proper time for cooking were also widely distributed in parallel ways. The dark phase of th e moon was associated with menstru al blood, no fire, and no sex. The sex strike model requires all women to have acted in uni son , even if they were not menstruating. Women who were pregnant , lactatin g, ameno rrh eic, menopausal, or having irregular menstrual cycles had to parti cipate as associates. Knight imagined that the se women used the menstrual blood of other wom en, ochre, or some other red pigm ent to signal "no" along with their menstruating female coalition members. Ochre use symbolized blood and prob ably rebirth. Did nonmenstruating wom en sme ar th emselves with red substances to imit ate menstruation? Knight th ought so. Eventually, many cultures established long postpartum and lactation al int ercourse taboos. They might have evolved from this same logic. Widely distributed Venus figurines have a place in Knight's model. Carved from stone, bon e, ivory, and coal, more than a hundred little carved representations of wom en's bodie s have been found all across Euro pe anywhere from 23,000 to 25,000 years ago. They have striking stylistic similarities across this large area. The most intact have "the sam e treatm ent of th e head, th e same small arms folded over the breast or pointing towards the belly, the same low breasts dr opping like sacks to far below th e waist, and the same legs ending in minuscule or non -existent feet," Th e figur ines emphasize th e reproductive features of wom en's bodi es-their breasts, stomachs, and vulvas. Their faces had no features or expressions and their feet were minuscule. Th ey were frequ ently smea red with ochre or otherwise painted red. The Venus figurines are part of a longer artistic traditi on since the Aur ignacia n period depicting human vulvas. Vulvas portrayed alon e were both ovular and triangular. They sometimes app eared grouped with animal

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parts. They were also emphasized on whole human bodies. These images culminated in the Venus figurines, but persisted beyond them. The late Upper Paleolithic featured female buttocks along with animal parts. By the end of this period, the buttocks became more abstract. Some think Neolithic female figurines continued this tradition. Scholars have interpreted these figurines in a variety of ways. Were they erotic male fetishes? Did they represent some primordial Mother Goddess? Were they ornamental? Some had holes drilled in the top as if they were pendants. Were they children's toys? Were they sex toys? Their provenience within archaeological sites probably meant that women used them. Most were found within dwellings, near the hearth, with tool assemblages associated with women, and often in storage pits. In the cross-cultural ethnographic record, these were unmistakably women's domains. Sometimes they were covered with stone slabs, as if to protect them. This positioning suggests sanctuaries or places of high regard . Knight interpreted the figurines as tools that women used to instruct about and emblemize menstrual synchrony. Not merely art objects, they were intended to convey information. They were manufactured during an extremely cold period. Their far-flung distribution evidenced intimate connections among people, perhaps "marital alliances" and "mating networks:' Microscopic analysis showed evidence of repeated use. Knight suggested that the bulbous bellies and sharply defined triangular vulvas, when heavily ochred, would have strongly emphasized those concerns most important to Paleolithic womentheir menstrual synchrony. Gamble imagined "chains of connection" between Paleolithic people similar to those among indigenous peoples of Australia . Initiation rituals for girls and boys most dramatically maintained those connections. Both menstrual blood and "ancestral" blood were central to those rituals . Australians met at regular intervals , brought out their sacred bullroarers and ochred them in preparation for the rituals. I discuss initiation rituals in greater detail in chapter 4. Knight speculated that Paleolithic women, too, brought out the sacred figurines intended for "their menstrual or gynaecological rites-their moonscheduled periods of togetherness and segregation from male company:' Women re-ochred the figurines and celebrated on these occasions. Then they were carefully put away in protected places until the following month." During the sex strike, female solidarity overrode male-female pair-bonding. Women expressed their matrilineal kinship coalition most overtly at this time. Blood literally and figuratively symbolized this. Men were denied access to their wives and biological offspring . No male would be granted sexual access until after a successful hunt. Male cooperation would achieve this mutually beneficial goal. So men became allies instead of sexual rivals. Male alliances could have helped perpetuate the entire system.

Women's Blood and Men's Blood at the Dawn of Human Culture • 33

Preparations for the hunt could be made in the context of gender solidarity. Cross-culturally, preparing for and ensuring successful hunting expeditions involved many rituals. Gender solidarity and gender opposition were two sides of the same coin. There were only a few days to complete a successful hunt. Results could be optimum when the setting sun was followed by moonlight. The timing would have coincided with women's ovulation near the full moon. The full moon announced a sort of deadline for meat to be brought to base camp. Before long, nights would be darker. When meat arrived, fires would have been lit for cooking. As savory cooked meat replaced bloody raw flesh, the sex strike lifted. Feasting, dancing, merriment, and sex would have followed. The ethnographic record is replete with examples of this type of frivolity timed with the full moon. Men and women dissolved in lovemaking as gender solidarity faded for the time being . Semen flowed instead of blood, and men were united with their wives and children. Many celebrations of life involved dancing, feasting, and sex timed to coincide with the full moon. Moonlight brought people across the world out of their homes and into convivial relations with one another. San groups celebrated the full moon with dances that lasted three nights . !Kung medicine dances coincided with the full moon. The all-night Cherokee harvest festival occurred at the full moon closest to the maturation of the maize crop. Sexuality was often a dominant theme in these lunar celebrations. Nyaturu men planned to have sex with their wives during the full moon. Nootka chiefs had intercourse only during the full moon. The moon was the most important celestial body to Trobriand Islanders . Instead of remaining indoors, moonlight made it "pleasant to walk or play, or to indulge in ... outdoor exercise. .. . In all festivities, all enterprises, and on all ceremonial occasions, the climax is reached at the full moon:' There was "a periodic increase in play and pleasure-seeking at full moon:' The magnitude of cross-cultural associations linking life celebrations and sexual relations with the full moon is staggering; it is surprising that so little has been made of it.36 Knight has an uncanny ability to put correlations such as this into a strikingly different , thought-provoking perspective. Scholars have long sought to explain the sudden appearance of so much symbolic, cultural expression in the Upper Paleolithic, without any morphological changes in the species. Knight explained this burst of artistic display-the cave paintings and creation of items of personal adornment-as a manifestation of the evolving cultural logic of the sex strike . Red colorants, commonly termed "ochre:' are important in this interpretive framework. Most pigments were biodegradable plant extracts that did not survive in the archaeological record. Minerals were also widely used. "Ochre" includes many different clays and rocks that usually contain iron and a have a reddish hue, which varies from a light orange to a darker brown . Most favored were charcoal, manganese dioxide , colored clay, true ochre , and hematite.

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Use of ochreous substances began as long as 250,000 years ago. Claims that

Homo erectus used ochre have been debunked, but Neanderthals may have started to use ochre in rituals and burials 70,000 years ago. Human use of ochre was part of a long tradition. Ernst Wreschner drew on the universality of color perception to explain the presence of red ochre and minerals in widely distributed burials . Ochrelike substances have been sprinkled on corpses, body parts, animal bones, tools, and ornaments and buried in bowls with individuals. Mary Leakey found the earliest red ochre lumps at a hominid habitation site at Olduvai in Africa. After 500,000 years, more advanced Acheulian bands "left clear evidence of intentional ochre collection and preparation:' Late Pleistocene people smeared Venus figurines with red ochre . From early Mousterian times (70,000 years ago) on, people regularly collected ochre . When Homo sapiens sapiens appeared in eastern, central, and western Europe, ochre customs spread rapidly. South Africans, pastoralists of the Russian steppes, and people on the island of Malta all buried their dead with ochre to some extent. In North America, Paleoindians and Late Archaic peoples in the Great Lakes area made extensive use of ochre in burials . Ochre use spiraled 30,000 to 35,000 years ago in the Upper Paleolithic . As humans spread across Europe during the Aurignacian period, the intensity of their use of ochre escalated. It was common "to find a layer of the cave floor impregnated with a purplish red to a depth of eight inches:' The red coloring was so vivid that "all the loose ground seems to consist of ocher:' Leroi-Gourhan imagined that "the Aurignacians regularly painted their bodies red, dyed their animal skins, coated their weapons, and sprinkled the ground of their dwellings, and that a paste of ocher was used for decorative purposes in every other phase of their domestic life. We must assume no less, if we are to account for the veritable mines of ocher on which some of them lived:' Graves contained intensive ochre deposits, and cave walls were coated with it. A lengthy fissure in the wall of the French cave of Niaux was highlighted with red pigment on either side, connoting the open labia of a welcoming vulva. The isolated caves filled with images of game an imals painted in red, yellow, and charcoal "might have represented some symbolic womb out of which the herds would suddenly flow, as they appeared to do in reality when they suddenly came in sight around the head of the valley, on the annual migration that the hunters relied on intercepting:' Painting caves crimson suggested "the magic making of life deep in the earth, as though in the menstruous womb of a woman:' The same pattern held in Russia and Siberia. People deposited ochre in graves and a mammoth bone dwelling at Mezin in Ukraine. They painted ochre lines and angular patterns on the bones . Ochre-traced animal silhouettes are at Kapova Cave. Bone burnishers used to dress hides bore traces of ochre, suggesting that people dyed animal skins. Large, multifamily dwellings

Women's Blood and Men's Blood at the Dawnof Human Culture • 35 of Kostenki-Borshevo contained female figurines buried in the floor and great quantities of ochre. Ochre derived its symbolic significance from its reddish color. Bolton explained, "The neurophysiological basis of color vision renders red markedly salient for humans;' and deciphers the attraction of ochre. He argued , "It is not because blood is red that red is a powerful symbol but . . . it is the redness of blood that makes blood a powerful substance symbolically:' Would humans' reactions be the same if blood or ochre were gray? We can only infer what the ochre that people placed in burials meant, but the metamorphosis from life to death, and preparation for the afterlife seem inescapable. Just as the color red connoted life, fertility, death, and ritual efficacy, so did ochre. Upper Paleolithic symbolism seemed "to revolve around fertility and procreation, death-life and the cycle of the seasons:' Mothers, reproduction , blood, life, and death were all associated with ochre's redness . The transformation of ochre from yellow to red when fired may have been the most powerful symbol of life, used to ensure passage to the next world. Conversely, the change from "bright (oxygenated) red blood to the earthy brown of coagulated blood is naturally associated with danger and death:' Bolton observed that "red connotes potency more than any other colour:' Red colorants in mortuary rituals may have expressed a "defiance of death :' The association between blood, mothers, and ochre, Wreschner argued, "is signified by the Greek haema/haima (as in haematite), which means 'blood: " This stems from the Indo-European root MA, meaning "mother:' In Ndembu rites, red clay signified mothers. Wreschner explained that "the womb is in many cultures equated with the tomb and both associated with the earth, the source of fruits . ... [0] res grow inside the earth like an embryo in the womb: ' On Malta, corpses bore heavy residues of ochre and bowls of ochre offerings placed by their sides. Humans clearly found the red minerals to be salient. " If menstrual blood was ever inadequate for the group to signal "no" effectively,ochreous pigments could easily have substituted. If malnourished women did not cycle, blood proxies could have helped feign the maintenance of synchrony. Menstrual blood turns nearly black and flakes after several hours. Ochreous pastes might have worked better than the real thing. Scarcity could have magnified the power of the slightest amount of menstrual blood. People might have warned about the magical substance. Such admonitions were widespread. Many myths featured women and mothers who conceived the rest of creation. Some tell of women's lodges, similar to menstrual huts. Women had original power in these stories. They underpin Knight's version of how human culture was born. He also thought they were political myths that revealed how men assumed control and subordinated women's menstrual power.

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Sex strike theorists argue that synchrony broke down either under extreme environmental stress that forced congregated people to disseminate or through male appropriation of women's power through bloodletting or sacrifice. Men had to co-opt and invert these strong taboos. They used myths such as the Australian woman-eating rainbow snake, fire-breathing dragons who kidnapped maidens, and male bloodletting to overturn women's control. Those familiar with even a small part of the ethnographic record will recognize the widely distributed tropes that Knight integrated and interpreted. With blood still the dominant symbol, Knight also drew into his model "domesticity, extended and formalised kinship, fire, division of labour, menstrual taboos, hunting and meat cooking:' In their heyday, comparative ethnologists could not account for these patterns of culture, beyond diffusion . By imagining women as central to the origins of human culture, Knight made sense of many cultural traits formerly portrayed as quaint and arcane. There are weaknesses, but any other synthetic attempt will have to engage with Knight's "sexual-symbolic equations:' 38

A Critique of the Sex Strike Theory The sex strike theory has its enthusiasts, but it makes many spurious assumptions and mistakes. It assumes that ovulation is concealed in Homo sapiens, but physical twinges and a change in vaginal discharge accompany ovulation. Besides, plenty of sexual activity occurs outside of estrus among primates. It assumes that women were reproductively burdened because concealed ovulation prevented birth control. However, gatherer-hunter-fishers spaced children in roughly five-year intervals and bore only four to five children. Early population growth of Homo sapiens depended on intensive care of young children , not bearing large numbers of them . The sex strike theory assumes that sex organized prehuman societies and that culture subsequently organized sex. Men are portrayed as being interested only in fertile sex while women were disinterested prostitutes, exchanging sex for meat. It assumes that a sex strike would have worked-that men would have complied rather than turning to postmenopausal women or to each other for sex. It assumes that men had no regard for their children and had to be coerced to provide for them . In primate societies males can show considerable affection for juveniles. They also kill them, a trait shared by humans. Knight all but dismissed the fact that menstrual cycling would be mature women's least frequent reproductive state. Most would have been either pregnant or experiencing lactational amenorrhea for three to four years. With a very high age at menarche and a very low life expectancy, many might never have cycled at all. They might have had to use substitute pigments for the sex strike to have worked at all.

Women's Blood and Men's Blood at the Dawnof Human Culture • 37 Knight ignored some elements that would have complicated his interpretation. He emphasized women's need to acquire meat and devalued th e vital role that they played in provisioning. For Knight, women produced children, instead of three-quarters of food resources characteristic of gatherer-hunterfisher societies. He knew that women were provisioners, but he dismissed th eir efforts for not being represented symbolically. Humans painted animals, not plants, on cave walls and in artistic motifs. However, a diet of meat alone would mak e humans nutritionally deficient and ill. He assumed th at women's extended, maternal kin network was incapable of suppl ying extra provisions needed mo stly by pregnant and nursing women, or of aiding in child care. In fact, these were and are primary functions of extended female networks." However Knight's sex strike theory weathers the test of time , Paleolithic hu man s' fixation on blood symbolism will not likely be diminished. The hypothesis can be tweaked to enhance its explanatory power, but blood will continue to remain a key symbol at the dawn of human culture. Unlike Knight , I do not argu e that all blood was equivalent to men strual blood. Women's blood and men's blood were seen in a dichotomous yet compl ementary tension. Early hum ans could easily observe that blood was shed at major jun cture s of the female reproductive cycle. Menarche, men struation, the interruption of men strual cycling by pregnancy and lactational amenorrhea, and childbirth all involved eith er con spicuous bleeding or not bleeding. So people had man y reasons to symbolically construe women's blood as life blood. Men's blood flowed from the hunt. Men drew blood from anim als. Rituals might involve bloodletting, but it was not a natural component of the male reproductive cycle. Juxtap osing women's blood with men's blood was a widely distributed crosscultural trope. Almo st everywhere, thi s created a tension th at people used symbol and ritual to mediate. Men who plann ed to hunt sequestered themselves from wom en's blood, believing that its power would fru str ate their efforts. Women took part in this joint venture. Th ey understood their power to interfere with productive functions and kept them selves under the control cautioned by their cultures. Although men strual blood was fearsome because it signaled "not a baby;' women's blood more powerfully connoted life. Men's blood intimated death. Knight interpreted the voluptuous, swollen-bellied Venus figurin es as effigies women used to emblemize their menstrual synchrony and to instruct girls in its political and social value. Others believed they were icons of a Eur asian Paleolithic and Neolithic religion that worship ed a Mother Goddess, which was more far-flung than any of today's major world religions. I use some blood imagery to which they refer, but I agree with critics that much of this godd ess worship repr esents femini st yearnings for a matriarch al golden age that never existed."

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Venus figurines do nothing. Some are corpulent and others thin, but their passive stance unites them. If the figurines were meant to celebrate female fertility, they bear no obvious indication of this. True, they are bare-breasted, with decided vulval triangles. However, none of them give birth or suckle an infant, the latter of which was a prominent, maternal artistic motif. Women's Blood and Men's Blood Symbolically Evolved In one Algerian Paleolithic drawing, a well-endowed goddess with arms outstretched stands above a hunter. He points arrows at an antelope, an ostrich, and a leopard. His exaggerated penis conjoins them. The image intimated that the hunter drew his strength from the goddess. The hunter wore horns. Gradually he evolved to symbolize game animal husbandry, especially those upon which he and his clanspeople relied for meat, hide, bones, hooves, horns, and sinew. Images of anthropomorphic beasts with horns of the most valued game animal-deer, elk, and bison-were prevalent throughout the Paleolithic. The figures wore the skins of animals critical to their subsistence, and those of fierce predators-lions, tigers, and bears. Horned hunting gods rivaled Venus figurines in number, from Saharan San paintings, to Celtic Cernunnos, to the "two horned one;' the Arab term for Alexander the Great. The Paleolithic cave pictures were the earliest representations of horned hunting gods. Imagine the figures in the cave art as dancers bedecked in imitative attire enacting rituals calling on the game to be plentiful. The ceremony ended when the horned god and Mother Goddess copulated, the ultimate sympathetic fertility ritual. Human fertility features blood . Earliest humans knew that women had to bleed to be fertile and they shed blood at childbirth. Game animals died in pools of blood . Repaying these blood debts was extensively ritualized, often in sacrificial form. Sacrificial victims were sacred offerings to ensure the sources of life-female deities reminiscent of earth's fertility and game animals . The bacchic chase, in which transfixed participants chased after animals and humans to tear them to bits and consume parts of corpses in holy sacrament, enacted this logic. In The Bacchae, Euripides wrote of how Pentheuss mother sacrificed him in like fashion . As Paleolithic gatherer-hunter-fisher patterns were gradually supplanted by the early domestication of crops and animals, female deities gained more attributes. They took many names: "Britomartis and Dictynna , Cybele and Ma, Dindymene and Hecate, Pheraia and Artemis, Baubo and Aphaia, Orthia and Nemesis, Demeter, Persephone, and Selene, Medusa and Eleuthera, Tacit and Leto, Aphrodite and Bendis. And Hathor and Isis, and all other Great Goddesses who appear in animal form, are in reality the Lady of the Beasts:' All beings, game and domestic, fish and fowl, serpent and scorpion, real and

Women's Blood and Men's Blood at the Dawn of Human Culture • 39

imaginary, came under their purview. As agriculture prevailed, wheat, rice, and eventually all harvests also fell under their domain. The divine lovers now signified the fertility of the soil, the fields, and the earth. Female deities even thrived within oppressive patriarchy. Venus-like figurines surfaced in the first Near Eastern cultures before the fourth millennium BC. A seal from Harappa, in the Indus valley in the third millennium BC, depicted a female deity with plants sprouting from her womb. Tantrism celebrated female deities. Although the invading Aryas brought patriarchal norms to India, most villages retained their goddesses. Prominent among the imagery and rituals of worship were the blood of fertility and repayment of the blood debt. Many terrifying goddesses demanded bloody sacrifices. "Four-armed Triputa-Phairavi" wore "a garland of human heads" above her breasts "bathed with blood :' Vajraprastarini sat on a lotus, "in a bloody boat that floats on an ocean of blood:' Blood coated her head, arms , and legs. [yeshtha , a black goddess with "breasts that droop over a huge belly;' reveled in blood. An Ugaritic text from Canaan in 1400 BC described the gore-loving goddess Anat as being "filled with joy as she plunges her knees in the blood of heroes:' Kinship and social systems might change, but mother deities and women in general would never escape their association with blood. Whether they reflected past realities or justified male domination, many myths portray primordial times when women had considerable control. Also, in most gatherer-hunter-fisher cultures, people, especially men, avoided menstruating women: hunters abstained from sexual relations to ensure a successful hunt; sexual abstinence was linked with menstrual avoidance; stories connected menstrual blood and the blood of game animals ; and raw meat and cooked meat were sharply distinguished. Totemic systems that identified various animals with self and kin within a kinship network linked menstrual blood with the blood of the hunt. Indeed, Testart argued that "central to culture's initial situation was an 'ideology of blood' linking menstruation recurrently with hunting blood:' Th is connection was widespread and striking." Vii Linke established blood as a "focal metaphor" for proto-Indo-European people. Language uniquely bifurcated dominant blood metaphors with separate terms for men's "inside blood" and women's "outside blood:' The nomadic invaders who supplanted the gatherer-hunters of central Europe left the earliest linguistic records, so Linke's study bears closer scrutiny. Linke did not agree that "a patriarchal warrior culture of horse- riding nomads .. . swept into east-central Europe from the steppes of southern Russia in a wave of conquest, superimposing themselves . . .on indigenous farming communities:' However, she accepted archaeologists' judgments that interlopers displaced egalitarian, matrifocal people, who suddenly disappeared from the archaeological record . Their burial customs changed to resemble those of southern Russia. They interred privileged men with symbols of military

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prowess and scepters with horse heads atop. Sometimes a woman had been sacrificed , which was assumed to indicate patriarchy. Motifs depicting sun worship and aggressive celestial deities indicated a new religious cosmology. Alpine stone stelae bore inscriptions of weaponry, sunbursts, horses, and wagons. Other archaeologists have argued against warlike invasion to center on the gradual expansion of farming by 6500 BC. Increased food production led to population growth and the colonization of new farmlands. This success fostered the widespread adoption of the Indo-European language; the farmers had succeeded economically and demographically, forcing those reliant on older technologies to the margins of Europe . Radiocarbon dating of grains indicated the extension of farming techniques into the Balkans and Greece after 7000 BC. Thus , the origin of proto-Indo-Europeans has shifted to Anatolia in the Near East. Sites located on the Russian steppes indicated a secondary migration from Anatolian origins. Landscape and lifeways can be reconstructed through language terms. ProtoIndo-Europeans spoke of mountains, plains, rivers, and lakes. Deciduous forests, providing habitat for a variety of game animal s, predators, and birds, adjoined shoreline villages composed of extended families or clan members. Their subsistence economy was based on raising livestock and limited farm ing. Language terms for rustling show the importance of cattle. Cows, sheep, and goats supplied cheese and butter. Oxen pulled plows and wagons. They thought of horses, pigs, and dogs as movable property. They used bronze and copper and probably knew of silver. They used weapons for hunting, raiding, and warfare. Bows and arrows were common, but there were also words for swords and daggers. The term for stone ax is related to words for sky and ham mer, typically associated with Indo-European deities symbolized by thunder and lightning bolts." Proto- Indo- European society was probably patriarchal and androcentric. "To lead" signified the male act of marrying. Marital residence was patrilocal. Birth conveyed membership in the father's lineage and clan, which organized society. Men behaved as stern patriarchs in a hierarchy based largely on age. Linguistic terms for "blood revenge" and "blood payment" suggest that men's sodalities carried out military action . Mythology revealed a tripartite social organization of priests, warriors, and pastoralists who raised livestock and farmed. Linke argued , "Indo-European concepts of manhood in the domain of warfare, kinship, and ritual were conveyed through idioms of blood:' Blood signified patrilineal descent and clan membership. Men expropriated the quintessential female bodily fluid, rendering women powerless. Proto-IndoEuropean men also assumed sole responsibility for procreation.

Women's Blood and Men's Blood at the Dawn of Human Culture • 41 Proto -Indo- Europeans' unique, dualistic conception of blood used separate linguistic terms. They juxtaposed blood loss with blood containment. People apprehensively thought of women's bodies as "fragmented, open, and bleeding:' By contrast, they saw men's bodies as "whole, closed, bounded, and blood retaining:' Women were ideologically "stripped of their procreative power;' whereas men were "embodied and imbued with generative potential:' The blood that epitomized male power, called *es-r (inside blood) , resided within the male body. Blood that conspicuously left the body signified diminishing power and was termed *kre>f (outside blood). This oppo sition of blood inside and outside the body was laden with connotations of "life and death, nurturance and danger, procreation and annihilation:' Linke found the association of outside blood with violence and death and inside blood with life in a variety of Indo-European languages, including Armenian, Avestan, Breton, Cornish, Cymric , Old English, Old High German, Greek, Hittite, Old Iranian, Old Irish, Middle Irish, Old Latin, Latin, Latvian, Lithuanian, Old Norse, Norwegian, Middle Persian, Old Prussian, Russian, Sanskrit, Sogdian, Tocharian, Tocharian A, and Vedic. These associations held over a large area of Europe. Proto- Indo-Europeans negatively viewed outside blood. Bleeding implied violent injury to the body and impending death. Outside blood or menstrual blood connoted "a state of rawness (naturalization of the body), the loss of fluid (death), and coldness and solidity (corpse):' Blood loss desiccated the body, so death rituals replenished it. Ancient proto-Indo-European burials contained red liquids or pastes. By 3500 Be, pits in Indo-European burials held sacrificial blood. Blood offerings remained important in funerary rites through classical antiquity. Greeks and Romans poured blood into graves. They smeared corpses with real or symbolic blood. Red ochre and other red minerals often substituted for blood. Blood was also associated with demons and the underworld. Devils craved blood for malevolent intent. Vedic and Greek texts linked blood with sinister forces. In Hittite mythology, those who dwelled in the underworld loved to drink blood . Violence, warfare, wounding, and malevolence characterized outside blood. Coagulating blood was also associated with dying. Death solidified a body into a corpse . Metaphors of winter and the cyclical absence of life described the blood's cooling in death . Proto- Indo-European beliefs also linked seasonal transformations with women's role in procreation. They imagined that menstrual blood intermittently coagulated in the uterus to allow babies to take form . The same language of cold winters that buried life descr ibed menstrual cycles. "Birth givers were perceived as death givers. . . . This .. . served to annihilate or negate the creative power of womanhood and to devalue female sexuality:' Blood loss, the most explicit sign of femininity, was evaluated negatively as signifying death.

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In contrast, blood inside the body manifested life. Proto-Indo-Europeans thought of the living bod y as moist, as opposed to death's dr yness. So flowing blood was life itself. Inside blood was a good, warm liquid associated with spring and summer. In ancient Iran , the term for inside blood translated literally as "good stuff' This early "cosmology of blood" was the basis for the later classical Greek discourse of the four humors, articulated between the fourth and fifth centuries Be. This was the foundation of medicine until the late Middle Ages." Metaphors for male reproductive power involved liquidity, particularly emitting fluids. The lyrical word for male in several Indo- European languages translated as "fluids emitted:' Fluids contained seed that housed male procreative potency. The proto-Indo- European concept of patrilineality held that men were responsible for conception. In fact, the proto- Indo- European term for son stemmed from the word meaning "to give birth:' because that is what sons were eventually expected to do. Semen, the sole reproductive force, derived from blood." In many legends, men's bodily fluids begat trees and enabled trees to generate life. Trees were metaphors for male procreative power. Trees sprang from the dead bodies of men and gods who were full of seed. Like men, the tree was "self-generative and self-perpetuating:' and was "an unambiguous metaphor for masculinity:' Trees grew from male seed and produced semen, "thereby giving plastic expression to men's procreative power:' As surrogate wombs with male and female reproductive capacities, trees were androgynous metaphors connoting masculinity. Though trees grew from seed and reproduced seed, sap was blood. In mytholog y, trees commonly bled when injured. Ovid lamented the desecration of the grove of Ceres when Erysichthon "bade his slaves to cut down the sacred oak:' When they cut its trunk, "The oak of Deo (Ceres) trembled and gave forth a groan ... its leaves and acorns grew pale .. . blood came streaming forth :' Blood from dying men became seed for trees, which then produced their own blood, bequeathing immortality to men. Metaphorically associating blood, male bodies, and trees, "'naturalized' assumptions of the procreative power of manhood.... Male unilateral creation" became "a fact of nature ... 'ultimately . .. a natural part of the celestial order: " Proto- Indo- Europeans situated the source of semen and the liquid within joints within men's skulls and backbones, near white brain matter and spinal marrow. It left these locations to spurt from the penis and generate life. The spinal column resembled a tree and men's generative fluids flowed vertically from the head , to the trunk, to the branches. Male models of procreation generally followed linear patterns, whereas female models tended to be cyclical, reflective of menstrual cycling, fetal development, and childbirth."

Women's Blood and Men's Blood at the Dawn of Human Culture. 43 Proto- Indo- European kinship conceptions prominently featured blood metaphors. Kinship terms for women revolved around blood . Not all IndoEuropeanists agreed, but Linke thought the term for sister, *swesor, derived from the root for "own" coupled with the root for blood . The term therefore translated as "of one's own blood" or "connected by blood :' Linke reiterated that the term *Js- r was not a generic term for blood but denoted "inside blood:' The term for sister would, then, be more correctly rendered as "owninside-blood-woman:' Linke maintained that menarche removed girls from the "own-inside-blood" category. The onset of menstruation shifted pubescent girls into the category of erotic beings destined to leave their birth homes to marry outside men . This characterized patrilocal exogamy. Once women married into a new patrilineage they became affinal relatives of the outside blood, a "swekru. The proto-indo-European semantic field insinuated that a woman did not personally undertake marriage; a man took her away. Language terms were steeped in violence and aggression. Bride capture accompanied peasant weddings of the Indian warrior caste, Slavs, and Caucasus inhabitants. Men who had considered her to be an inside blood relative rejected her because menstruation transformed her into an outside blood woman . A new husband expropriated from a virgin's body "the remaining blood-sperm of her father's line of descent:' However, neither marriage nor defloration conveyed membership in her husband's patrilineage. Only when her husband's blood-semen encased menstrual blood within her womb at pregnancy was the bride incorporated into her husband's patrilineage as wife, "uksor. The root of the word "ewk translated as "to become used to through use, learn:' Wives were women of the outside blood to whom husbands became accustomed. Intercourse and childbirth made a woman a marginal member of her husband's patrilineage. Galen and Vedic text authors believed semen derived from blood and was the sole generative substance. Women were little more than receptacles. Only repeated insemination maintained their positions within patrilineages . When her husband died, a woman remained marginal for the rest of her life. Throughout their lives, proto-indo-European women were defined by their blood status in relation to men. Premenstrual girls were sisters and daughters of the inside blood. At menarche, newly menstruating girls became erotic future wives to be taken by aggression. Brides were liminal members of their husbands' patrilineages. They menstruated dangerously and had not yet given birth. Upon conception, wiveswere seen as productively full of their husbands' blood-semen, especially if they produced a son. Then they could finally be incorporated as women to whom husbands had become accustomed through sexual familiarity and childbirth."

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Conclusion Evidence from the Paleolithic period to address the origins of human culture is far more fragmentary than anyone wishes. There are virtually no written documents. Everyone who ventures into this area must grapple with archaeological evidence, primatology, iconography, and ethnographic analogy. The results are necessarily less than satisfying . If sex strike theorists are right about the centrality of menstrual blood in the revolutionary cultural regulation of sexuality, and that is a big if, then we have surely found the origins of blood symbols, rituals, and metaphors. If women managed to corral men into providing more resources for themselves and their children by synchronizing their menstrual cycles and exchanging sex for meat, then assigning meaning to blood and blood substitutes lies at the very heart of the human condition. In my quest to learn why so many people from such diverse cultural backgrounds engaged in so much blood verbiage, I never imagined that we would arrive at the dawn of human culture with something constructive to say. The sheer ambition of Chris Knight , the sex strike's most prominent proponent, to integrate so many recurrent cultural themes makes it highly unlikely that it is correct as it stands. Bythe same token, some elements of this vast, synthetic theory must be right. Others not vested in the sex strike theory nonetheless believe that an ideology of blood linking women's menstrual blood with game animals is discern able from the bits and pieces of the Paleolithic past. Clearly, early humans associated menstrual blood and game animals. But I tinker with Knight's theory. People widely construed menstrual blood to have life-giving properties when retained in the womb. Flowing forth during menstruation meant that a child had not been formed. Menstrual cycling was much less frequent than today, as I explore in chapter 5, giving all the more reason for people to be apprehensive. This and childbirth lochia were women's blood. Men forced game animals to give their blood in death. Another cross-cultural regularity held that intimate association with women's blood might interfere with hunters' ability to carry out their blood responsibilities. Hunting protocol widely involved intercourse taboos (blood was inside women's wombs) and menstrual avoidances. Menstruating women shunned men's hunting paraphernalia and refrained from cooking, especially for men. Knight argued that Paleolithic women had to establish that all blood was equivalent to menstrual blood. For people who had to hunt, kill, eviscerate, prepare, and cook all their own meat, this seems like an extremely naive supposition. Instead, the ethnographic record supports the alternative explanation that women's blood and men's blood existed in a polar tension. Symbols, rituals, and metaphors were marshaled in the effort to mediate this tension between women's life blood and men's death blood. Even if we accept the premise

Women's Blood and Men's Blood at the Dawn of Human Culture. 45

of a sex strike, I believe that the promise of sex alone was enough incentive to persuade men to bring meat back to their communities. The delayed gratification of sexual revelry, not even fertile sex, was enough for men to associate game animals with vulva in their artistic depictions. Cross-cultural opposition of women's blood and men's blood has been extensive. Anyone familiar with a fraction of the ethnographic record will be conversant with elements of this association. Mythic references are innumerable, underscoring the fact that most human groups made this connection. We even have some well-developed, more contemporary examples of this related by late-twentieth-century ethnographers. In short, understanding this foundation is essential for comprehending the survey of reproductive rituals that lies ahead.

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CHAPTER3

The Blood of Conception, Pregnancy, and Childbirth

Before the advent of powerful microscopic tools, most people surmised that menstrual blood played some role in creating a baby. Since menstrual blood vanished when a fetus started growing, the association seemed obvious. Furthermore, mothers who practiced total breast-feeding, as most did during the course of human history, staved off the appearance of menstrual blood for three to four more years. Another pregnancy during the interim could have held it at bay for even longer. Menstrual blood seemed linked to conception, pregnancy, and lactation. The mystery surrounding conception surely drew the attention of every cultural group in human history. This affords a perfect example of how cultural forms became most elaborate where the epigenetic rules most favored it. Humans inferred that blood was central to conception and childbirth. Human action of some sort mediated childbirth. Knowledgeable, hygienic intervention could enhance both mother's and child's chances for survival. Conversely, abandoning the laboring mother to push the baby out onto the bare ground and struggle to care for it herself created risks. Here culture clearly played a role in which genes were selected for better or worse. The centrality of red blood added extra impetus for humans to impute meaning to this miraculous event. A holistic cultural perspective regarding "how babies are made" can help clarify rituals that occur at childbirth, puberty, and death. Conception, pregnancy, and childbirth brought forth cosmological interpretations. People interpreted the physiological processes that they experienced or witnessed. Understandings usually deviated from contemporary explanations involving eggs, sperm, and combinations of parental DNA. The variety of beliefs is fascinating and affords unparalleled windows into people's ideas about the nature and functioning of

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the human body. For a long time , Western science arrogantly dismissed indigenous ideas about physiology, but their recovery is now a priority for many scholars. Accounting for where babies came from is pivotal to understanding the origins of blood symbols, rituals, and metaphors, especially in constructions of women's blood. It is also fundamental for understanding initiation rituals and menstruation. Expectant and delivering mothers received extensive ritual treatment. The danger of childbirth for both mother and infant was so intense that prescriptions for proper behavior at all stages of pregnancy and delivery abounded. Most viewed parturient women as being in a liminal position, poised between life and death. Their open bodies made them more vulnerable than at any other time of life. Childbirth was typically a time of physical and spiritual crisis. All the birth products, the baby, birth fluids, umbilical cord, and placenta usually received careful ritual treatment. Everything was covered with blood, heightening the need to follow careful prescriptions. Because the newborn was in real danger of dying, adhering to appropriate customs was paramount. Those in close proximity to the bloody products of birth were also thought to be at serious risk, and they had their own precautions to follow. Menstruating women, menstrual blood, parturient mothers, and the blood of childbirth often received similar treatment. Designated places for menstruating were usually the proper places for birthing as well. Women's blood, with its ambiguous capacity to give life and to signal the death of a potential child, integrated these disparate customs.

The Anthropology of Childbirth Pregnancy and childbirth afford remarkable windows into people's beliefs about conception and the development of babies, if approached with careful cross-cultural sensitivity. This can lead to the very heart of kinship, peoplehood, and culture, since babies were rarely viewed merely as biological beings . Unfortunately, only within the past two decades has serious scholarly research occurred for the reason s mentioned previously. For most of the twentieth century, men carried out fieldwork, trying to correlate laundry lists of food taboos and rituals rather than considering childbirth in its own right. When we shift the lens, the central role of blood comes into focus. Most acknowledge the groundbreaking role of Brigitte Jordan's Birth in Four Cultures for directing attention to the "biosocial approach" of holistically considering the relationship between biology and culture. She has been hailed as the "midwife to the anthropology of childbirth." Many shared Jordan's concern that the Western technological approach to childbirth had upset and eclipsed indigenous systems. She sought to show how "a struggle over the micropolitics of birth practices reveals hegemonic claims and resistance." Removing women

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from the context of family and community elevated the authority of hospital personnel who were dismissive of folk traditions, including blood rituals. This eroded the symbolic power of women and their control over the birth process. Sheila Kitzinger in Women as Mothers: How They See Themselves in Different Cultures furthered anthropologists' awareness of how birth practices can vary. Wenda Trevathan analyzed in Human Birth: An Evolutionary Perspective primate birth practices through the archaeological record to the written record of midwifery. These scholars spotlighted childbirth at the center of their analyses, but they concentrated more on thick, ethnographic description from an outsider's (etic) perspective than on the participants' (emic) beliefs about how babies came about or the relation of blood (or anything else) to procreation.' Currently, it is not possible to reconstruct people's beliefs about the role of blood in childbirth the world over; notions about conception and childbirth are much more developed in some regions of the world than others. I cannot remedy the lacunae, but patterns that emerge from this study certainly suggest directions for inquiry. I have drawn on the literature that does exist to review a range of ideas. I have noted beliefs specific to culture areas and assumptions shared by surprisingly disparate cultures. Early modern European folk had much in common with band or village people across the world .

The Miracle of Conception Cultural beliefs about the most fertile time for conception to occur usually stemmed from associations people observed between the cessation of menstruation and beginning of pregnancy. Many people knew that intercourse would be most fruitful right after a woman's menstrual period: the Baiga, Lepcha, and Maria Gond of India; the Masai and Dogon in Africa; the Pukapukans and people of the Marquesas Islands of the South Pacific; the [ivaro and Tarahumara of South America; the Hopi and Crow of North America; and the Maori of New Zealand. Then fresh menstrual blood, which they believed "playjed] a functional part in the formation of a new human being:' had a chance of being retained in the womb. Others recognized that the cervix was still open in the week following menstruation. Some noted that Jewish laws of niddah "seemed almost tailor-made to promote procreation" by extending the menstrual taboo to a full two weeks, so that the peak of fertility would coincide with resumed sexual intercourse. The Hopi believed that the interval just before the menstrual period was infertile." These observations are borne out by modern science. Sexual preferences of people as disparate as the Araucanians of Chile, the Gusii of Kenya, and Mexican Tarahumarans foil claims by some that menstrual pollution beliefs were universal. Not only had they no proscriptions about intercourse during menstruation, they believed it was most fertile. Hippocrates

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and Aristotle did not have qualms abo ut intercourse duri ng menstruation , and they urge d men not to be squeamish." Early modern Euro pea ns deem ed conce ption du ring men struation to be inausp icious, resulting in freckles, birthmarks, and worse. Crimso n locks were a telltale sign that pa rent s lacked self-contro l during th is taboo period . Thos e with red hair were judged to have undesirable qu alities and evil inclin ation s, and were made the butt of jokes. In Alsace, people warned, "Never trust a red head:' Judas was portrayed as having red hair and a red beard. Menstruatin g redhea ds drew parti cular suspicion. They were depicted as sensua l, sexually eager crea tures whose "bad breath" prevent ed wounds from scabbing and gave puerperal fever to postpartum mothers.6 Early mod ern Euro pean intellectuals maintained Grecian humoral th eories. Hu moral theor ies identified four primar y physical substances-blood, phl egm , yellow bile, and black bile-and four physical qu alities-heat, cold, mois ture, and dryness. Love was associated with blood; seed was a distillation of blood . Because blood was constantly being distilled into seed, intercourse drew off th e dan gerou s sur plus. But too mu ch sex risked imp otence. Humoral imb alance, especially varyi ng blood levels dur ing th e menstrual cycle, acco unted for sterility. Infertil e couples were advised to have sex at certain times. Rem edies included "ho t" diets to war m th e blood, bleedings, and purges to balan ce the blood . The Jewish intellectu al Maimo nides, the most esteemed medieval physician , recom me nded recipes to war m blood and mo isturize th e body for men an d women alike. Some warned that cutting the veins behind th e ears would drain "the blood from th e brain needed to pro duce seed. " Early mod ern Euro pea ns equated blood metaph ors with fert ility and symbolically supe rimposed th em up on th e natural world. Trees, rivers, and "active forces" like night , snow, and light, all natural symbo ls of fert ility, were almos t always represented by the feminine gender in Latin and Ger ma n. Fertility rites illuminate early mod ern Eur opea ns' sense of having spru ng from and bein g one with the ear th. Th e Catholic Church "did its utm ost to plunge such rit es into oblivion;' making th em difficult to recover. "Antiquaries from th e turn of the nineteenth century and folklori sts" established th is associa tio n. Co nnec tio ns with "primord ial eleme nts like stones, trees, water and windth e bon es, muscles, blood and slow breath ing of th e Eart h Mother" were th e reco urse for infertility. Wh en con fronted with bar renn ess, people qu ipp ed that "natur e has been unkind to our blood :' Water, the life blood of Moth er Earth, was restorative, as were tr ees with roo ts extendi ng deep into th e Ear th's womb; sliding sto nes and rubbing stones th at conferred fertility directly to the genitals; an d herb s such as mandragora, pennyroyal, and savin, which relieved ameno rrhea . Wom en turned to "spri ngs where the iron in the water

The Blood of Conception, Pregnancy, and Childbirth • 51

turned it red, like diluted blood springing from the womb of earth:' Such "rust fountains" were termed "founts of life:' Children were often said to have come from womb-like springs and wells. "Alsace was dotted with Kinderbrunnen (child springs) where mothers used to say they had found their children:' Reception and conception were viewed as a two-stage process . A woman visited "the blessed spring, the sacred stone or the holy tree" to "capture the essence, the principal of the child, the human seed which dwelt in the womb of nature:' Then the woman received the child "from the womb of earth into her own womb:' Through intercourse, the father merely attributed family resemblance." These early modern European folk beliefs differed markedly from the physiological musings of elite intellectuals. All easily observed that menstrual cycling ceased with pregnancy, long before most other physical signs. Even some who accorded intercourse no role in conception, such as the Wik-Munkan of northeastern Australia, connected pregnancy with the lack of menstrual blood. Many maintained that menstrual blood was literally transformed into the baby, especially matrilineal people . The Akan of Ghana shared this notion. The Kurtachi, Lesu of New Ireland Island off the coast of Papua New Guinea, and Trobriand Islanders said that the child was of the same blood as the mother. A Navajo woman explained, "When you miss your period, it's because the blood is being made into the baby" The embryo carried by Congolese women in the first trimester, composed only of menstrual blood and water, was termed a fisofe. The Tanala of Madagascar were sure that every missed menstrual cycle provided a clot that contributed to fetal growth. Many modern Americans still believe that the mother's blood circulates through the fetus." Among some groups, the woman was held solely responsible for the creation of new life. Trobriand Islanders "denied any relation between a 'father' and child:' In Chinese Taiwan, a man merely activated the woman. At birth, the child was associated with the mother and her relatives through food, clothes , and wealth . The father could assume possession and make the child part of his patrilineage only later, after a long process of appropriate food consumption. 10 The Kei of Indonesia believed that both parents contributed blood, but emphasized the importance of women's blood far more. The term beb far translated as "placenta blood" and "acknowledgejd] the transmission of blood in the successive generations through the mothers' wombs :' The term beb nakso explained that "the placenta goes the straight way:' from one patrilineal house to another through the blood of affinal women throughout the generations. When a woman married, she joined her husband's house, but the blood carried to her children was that of her own ancestors, whose essence resided in the home of her parents. Rituals conducted during pregnancy and childbirth were directed toward these maternal ancestors.

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South Pacific Pukapukans also attributed blood to their maternal inheritance. Mother's blood bequeathed their very lives and strength. Consuming the right kind of food, principally taro, maintained their blood." Some accorded both parents' blood primary roles in conception. In IudaeoChristian tradition, the Wisdom of Solomon and John reflected Aristotle's haematogenic embryological theory that "male semen is coagulated blood and the woman feeds the embryo with her menstrual blood:' The Tarong of Southeast Asia believed that for conception to occur, "the bloods of the couple ... agree or blend:' Both man and woman must desire coitus and climax simultaneously so the "bloods rush to meet:' The Tanala of Madagascar also considered semen to be a very rich distillation of blood, and they described the child as being of the blood of both parents. 12 The Bimin-Kuskusmin, among other groups in Papua New Guinea, distinguished two different kinds of blood. Women conveyed menstrual blood, construed as black, to the fetus. Men transmitted agnatic blood, colored red, which bequeathed membership in kin groups. Finiik spirits contained in semen were closely linked with agnatic blood. Shared finiik spirits determined initiation age groups, moieties, and patricIans. Agnatic blood was enduring, whereas women's blood died after three short generations. For the Abelam of Papua New Guinea, blood transmitted the spiritual dimension of conception. Men conveyed one spirit located in bones, while women endowed another in blood.13 Many African peoples, such as the Zaramo of Tanzania, the Bemba of Zambia, the !Kung of Botswana, the Barolong boo Ratshidi (Tshidi) of the South African-Botswana borderland, and Indian South Africans, connected intercourse with conception and believed that menstrual blood mixed with semen to create new life. The Tshidi signified this creative potential by the color red. Each Ashanti received their spirit from semen (ntoro means both spirit and semen) and their blood from their mother. The Tanala of Madagascar held that male semen, a blood distillate, coagulated the mother's first menstrual blood following intercourse. Then the blood of subsequent missed periods enlarged the cIot. The Aowin of southwest Ghana also spotlighted fathers' roles, attributing infertility to heavy menstrual blood that could not mix with sernen.l" For the Lepcha of Sikkim in West Bengal, semen conveyed bone and mother's blood contributed fleshy parts. Before them, Vedic writers from 500 Be also associated the color red with the blood of life. Indian religious illustrations are suffused with red signifiers of fertility. I S Pukapukans of the South Pacific considered the balance of semen and menstrual blood. Boys were conceived by greater amounts of semen. More menstrual blood created girls. 16

The Blood of Conception, Pregnancy, and Childbirth • 53

The Melpa of Highland New Guinea maintained, "It is from blood of the mother's womb and the father's semen that the child is formed:' The Kabana of Papua New Guinea, hoped that women's blood had the strength to encase male semen, which had descended to the penis from the brain and contained the child 's seed. Otherwise, her next menstrual cycle would wash the child and sperm away. Success meant that the seed then soaked in a mixture of her blood until the beginning of the fourth month when it received a soul and "spark of life." Throughout Papua New Guinea, people commonly attributed conception to the melding of menstrual blood and semen through intercourse, even if semen was viewed as a distillation of blood. This linked conception with intercourse and accorded fathers a role, which was not always the case. I ? Throughout Papua New Guinea, women contained more blood than men, and it was most fundamental. The Sambia advised, "Menstrual blood is for giving babies.... The blood is the mother [i.e., provider) of women. That blood keeps women healthy.. . .Women can produce new blood for themselves . . . . Women give us [as a fetus) half their blood, while half stays inside them:' The Baruya put it more simply, "Le sang est la force et la vie:' (The blood is the force of the life.) Men's blood, indeed all blood, derived directly from mothers. IS Across cultures, many believed that only multiple sex acts guaranteed successful pregnancy. In his survey of the Human Relations Area Files, Clellan Stearns Ford found this belief among the Ainu of Japan, the Hopi of the American southwest, the Iivaro of Amazonia, the Kwoma of Papua New Guinea, the Sema of the Tibeto-Burman border area, the Tikopia of the Solomon Islands, and the Venda of South Africa. Groups throughout Papua New Guinea, both matrilineal and patrilineal from lowland to highland, shared this idea. "Conception is seen as the process of firming up or congealing the menstrual blood;' through successive intercourse. For the Kabana, successive sex acts built the child until the fourth month when the child was felt to move. After that semen would taint breast milk, which by then was thought to be nourishing the fetus. Margaret Mead and Niles Newton reported that the Arapesh found begetting children to be exhausting "because of the requirement that, once menstruation ceases, the couple must copulate assiduously to build the fetus from semen and blood.?" Papua New Guineans had elaborate ideas about conception. The BiminKuskusmin imagined that a white mass of fertile fluids formed in the womb. Menstrual blood then surrounded it like a skin. Conception occurred when semen enveloped it. The Palela believed that semen structured menstrual blood by wrapping around it many times, transforming "unbound blood into bound blood:' Amorphous blood contributed soft flesh and blood. Semen contributed hard bones, teeth, nails, and vital organs-the heart, liver, and k I'dneys. 20

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Other groups were also certain that successful pregnancy required serial intercourse. The Zaramo of Tanzania thought it "good for the couple to continue sexual relations well into the pregnancy:' The Congolese believed that proteinrich semen nourished the fetus. Tribes of western Arnhem Land in Australia described menstrual blood contributing to an egg created in part by five to six successive ejaculations. Early modern Europeans felt that the father "helped to fix the seed and went on to 'fashion' it by continuing to 'know' his wife during her pregnancy;' accounting for family resemblances. The weary Waipei of the South Pacific had to ensure that the womb was continuously and totally filled with semen to prevent abnormalities." The Foi of New Guinea had elaborate ideas about the interaction between repeated ejaculations of semen (amena kau au or "men's fat juice"), menstrual blood (hamage dafaa or "dirty blood") , and other vaginal secretions (kanemo kau au or "women's fat juice"). During intercourse, "women's fat juice" created a "small 'bowl' in the area just above the vagina" and enveloped some semen to form a capsule. Then ten to thirty successive ejaculations were necessary to prevent any further discharge of menstrual blood . If menstruation stopped, enough semen had accumulated. Next, the obstructed menstrual blood punctured the capsule. Menstrual blood surrounded a core of "men's fat juice" and "women's fat juice" and was then enclosed by more "women's fat juice:' Despite the interplay of fluids, Foi men acknowledged that women were primary in creating and bearing life. "Men . . . consider it a fundamental paradox of nature that they should 'work so hard' to promote conception and yet contribute so little to the substantive formation of the human embryo:' So disadvantaged were Foi men in the generation of new life that rituals symbolically bestowed such powers upon them through their cultivation and pro duction of oil from karao trees . Karao oil was a trade staple that predated and outlasted European missionization. Creation stories told how two women created karao trees wherever their menstrual blood fell on the earth. Maintaining a regular schedule of transporting kama oil to trading partners was a symbol of high adult male status. Production of the oil was directly linked to conception . A mythic woman made a hole in the trunk of a mature kama tree into which some of her menstrual blood fell. "When this happened the tree started to 'menstruate' too and oil gushed from the hole:' Men carefully made holes to tap the oil. Several years later, they returned to stimulate the flow of oil inside the hole, repeatedly collecting it until a thin white substance, called ka'u ("fat, grease, semen"), coagulated the flow. The analogy between kama production and human conception and gestation is quite overt, for as kama collects in the tree cavity to be encased by whitish congealed sap, so does blood, encapsulated by men's

The Blood of Conception, Pregnancy, and Childbirth • 55 and women's fat, collect in the uterus during conception. Even more explicitly, men make reference to menstruation and copulation in the magic spells they recite during the karao tapping procedure. Metaphors made the connection between menstrual blood, conception, and karao oil explicit. Men accrued status commensurate with women's power to conceive by producing karao oil.22 In "Old Babylonian legal terminology;' birth was termed "water and blood;' referring to the amniotic fluids and blood lost during delivery. If an infant was adopted when "in his water and blood;' the adoptive parents literally replaced the biological ones. To dispel doubts about Jesus's physicality, the apostle John wrote, "This is he who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ, not with the water only but with the water and the blood:' Contemporary texts accorded semen the central role in conception, but metaphorically represented the dramatic bursting of the amniotic sac and blood of childbirth as essential for being truly human." For the Navajo, conception occurred during sexual intercourse when reproductive fluids, "herbs and waters of various kinds;' mixed. The type of fluid sperm (iigqsh) encountered, determined the sex of the child. If sperm contacted to al'tahnaschlin, or "all different kinds of waters come together;' the child would be male and lodge on the left side of the uterus. Contacting tobiyazh, or "child of water;' produced a female child that attached to the right side of the uterus. Midwives felt for positioning to determine the fetus's sex. The Navajo differentiated conception from fetal maturation. After inception, blood that would have become menstrual blood nourished the fetus. Both to al'tahnaschiin and tobiyazli fostered "the development of contrasting aspects of the person-male/female, warrior/peaceful" The traditional Navajo marriage ceremony called their entire cosmic structure into action. Summoned into performance were Mother Earth, Father Sky, the four sacred mountains, and the paired deities associated with cardinal directions-Early Dawn Boy and Girl from the East, Blue Daylight Boy and Girl from the South, Yellow Evening Twilight Boy and Girl from the West, and Folding Darkness Boy and Girl from the North. Then personal heritage came into play. "To us the clan system is the foundation of our generations;' said Navajo Avery Denny. The Navajo spoke of being "born of" their mother's clan and "born for" their father's clan. Their paternal grandfather's clan and maternal grandfather's clan also figured their clan connections. Navajo individuals had "four types of blood" in their system. This "blood" was literal, red fluid. Each type of blood had a unique function. Mothers' clan blood, which flowed through the digestive system, trained the child to think and be aware. Even if the mother had died, her clan blood taught her child "how to love and

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then through that you learn [ed] how to love yourself.. . and then you love to take care of Mother Earth:' Fathers' clan blood, which circulated through the skeletal system, taught a child how to "put things in the right places, in the right order:' The child learned the proper ordination of the cardinal directions and pathway for the rising sun, and gained the ability to plan and organize through fathers' clan blood. The maternal grandfather's clan blood, which swirled through the nervous system, taught children their history and how to live in the proper Navajo way. Children learned spirituality and attained peace of mind and confidence through their paternal grandfather's clan blood, which coursed through their respiratory system. Avery Denny explained that the paternal grandfather's blood would teach children to pray, "May I walk in beauty, beauty before me, beauty behind me, below me, above me, all around me:' Clan blood had the power to fulfill these functions on its own.i" Young's study of Western Pueblo (Zuni and Hopi) women, reproduction, and religion contrasts with Schwarz's lush treatment of the Navajo, and shows just how easy it has been to overlook blood that must have been important. Women were central to Hopi and Zuni religions, though public ceremonies often excluded them. Pueblo religions focused on life; female reproduction and male crop production were dominant spiritual motifs . When asked who was more important in their religion, women replied, "We are, because we are the mothers:' Men gave life to maize, but maize, which was given to the people by the Corn Maidens, sprang from Mother Earth's womb. Using steel plows in the spring during Mother Earth's pregnancy was unthinkable. Men performed rituals that imitated women's reproductive powers to increase children, crops, longevity, or jewelry sales. They sometimes depicted sex acts. Many rituals took place in kivas, circular, underground shrines that symbolized Mother Earth's womb . The sipapu, a cavity at the center of the kiva, symbolized the cervical opening through which people passed from Mother Earth's uterus to the surface of the earth. Women did not reenact these rituals, but only they could grind the sacred cornmeal that men sprinkled on kachina masks. Pregnant women, with their inordinate power, could not attend rituals involving the "Mother of the Gods:' who dominated rituals that inducted boys into kachina societies . Given this reproductive, uterine symbolism, women's blood surely had a place.25 In the culture areas of New Guinea and Australia, people such as the Walbiri held that fetuses were spirit children of the ancestors or guruwari. Intercourse was not involved. "Guruwari [were] impersonal, homogeneous entities, the course of whose incarnations through the ages cannot be traced:' Men and women "grew up" the children, but did not create them. Even though they were spirit beings, blood was still pivotal. Trobriand Islanders knew the spirit entered the mother's head and descended to the womb on a "tide of blood.?"

The Blood of Conception, Pregnancy, and Childbirth • 57 Australian cultures believed that ancestral spirits conveyed spirit beings into women's wombs, though menstrual blood was also important. The Yirrkala of northern Australia told how "when a woman ceases to menstruate her blood goes into the sky and is there changed into a spirit child, jurtu" Later, when the jurtu desired an earthly mother, it created a storm and a rainbow and traveled to earth on raindrops. The Micronesians of Yap believed this toO. 27 Others also saw babies as reincarnations. People as diverse as the Hopi of the American Southwest, Andaman Islanders off the coast of India, and Chukchi of the Russian far east believed that babies who died in infancy became fetuses. Conception awaited a spirit child sent by ancestral spirits . Infants came to the Amazonian [ivaro and Indian Maria Gond as reincarnations of ancestors from the clouds . Some early modern Europeans believed that newborn babies brought back ancestral souls. For the African Ashanti, each newborn was a ghost child sent from the sky by a spirit mother who might try to reclaim it after birth." Buddhist Tibetans believed in reincarnation but maintained that menstrual blood and semen incubated the child . Conception required three conditions: (1) the woman had to be healthy for the three days after menstruation "when the winds open the door of a woman's womb;' (2) a soul yearning for reincarnation had to be near, and (3) the couple had to desire intercourse. The soul spirit died, to be reborn through visions of light. Eventually, "in the center of the semen and blood mixture-which has descended from the 72,000 spiritual channels-it connects to its new 'birth-state: " The Ambrosia Heart Tantra likened mother's blood "to flint and the father's sperm to iron" in producing fire. In Tibetan thought, as the child formed, semen conferred "bone, brains, spinal cord, and the marrow-like substance running from the brain to the base of the spinal cord;' while the mother bestowed "flesh, blood, stomach, intestines, bile, gall bladder, the seminal vesicle, and the five vital organs: the heart, lung, liver, spleen, and kidney" "Earth, water, fire, space, and wind" also helped form the fetus. Without the water element, which created all bodily fluids, the fetus could not be formed from the blood and semen . Various disorders caused by wind, bile, phlegm, and blood could impair the blood and semen mixture, resulting in malformations.i" Connecting intercourse, semen, and menstrual blood with conception led many to reason that fathers supplied "white" elements, while mothers contributed "red" elements. The Talmud explained that the father provided the "semen of the white substance;' which conveyed the child's "bones, sinews, nails, the brain in his head and the white in his eye:' The mother's "semen of the red substance" supplied the "skin, flesh, hair, blood and the black of his eye:'

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These beliefs were widespread in Papua New Guinea. Foi fathers bequeathed the hard, white parts of the body, while mothers imparted the fleshy, red parts. The Dairibi believed that semen (kawa) created the skin, muscles, and external body parts and was literally contained in the lymphatic system (agwa bono). Maternal blood (pagekamine) created bones, blood vessels, and internal organs and flowed through the blood vessels (kigibidi). In like fashion, the Waipei of the South Pacific attributed blood to the mother's family. Bones came from the father 's family. To belong to his mother's clan, a young man had to "buy" the blood his mother gave him at conception and also the "blood" of her care during childhood. The Venda of South Africa shared similar beliefs. First, menstrual blood created the fetus. Mothers supplied the red elements of flesh and blood. Then fathers contributed the white elements of skin, bones, and senses . Clearly, people all over the world accounted for how human babies came to be and linked blood to their inception." Hindu Nepalese families shared blood, bones, organs, milk, and clan through fathers only. A woman joined her husband's clan at marriage, relinquishing that of her father. This social transformation of married women took place gradually. Maintaining close contact with their husbands through sexual relations, work, and eating in common altered affinal women's physicality to that of their husbands' family and clan. This proximity literally recast wives' blood and bones. "Finally, the birth of a child establishe[d] her and her child's full rights to clan membership:' Mothers contributed transubstantiated blood to the ir children, not that of her natal home. "Mother's milk [was] the medium through which other 'substances' of the family mixed with the child, gradually incorporating the child:' Conversion of the woman's biological substance was so complete that the family into which she had been incorporated carried out her funeral rights, not her natal relatives" Very few groups, among them the Lakher of India, denied women's role in procreation altogether. The Dogon of Mali agreed . Although menstrual blood and blood lost during childbirth were the essence of female fertility, men supplied life; women merely sheltered and nourished the fetus. At conception, the child was a member of the father's patrilineage, providing he had supplied adequate bride price . But the father dared not arrive until the baby had been thoroughly cleansed of the blood of childbirth to start claiming fatherhood. The Tikopia of the Solomon Islands and Bisayan Filipino also shared the belief that fathers provided seed to passive women. Malays believed conception occurred in the father's brain . The seed implanted therein took on "intelligence and logic;' which men were thought to possess in greater abundance. After forty days, the seed began its journey through the father's body, to be expelled into the mother. The Maenge of East New Britain were fairly unique among

The Blood of Conception, Pregnancy, and Childbirth • 59 matrilineal societies to believe that semen produced blood. The inner soul of humans also resided in paternal blood." European intellectuals spoke a great deal about "seed;' which they believed derived from blood, in human reproduction. Elite Europeans looked to ancient Greeks for insight into how individuals came into being . Until the medical experimentation of the sixteenth century and even long after, discussions were very speculative. Angus McLaren examined reproductive rituals in England from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century to challenge assumptions of natural fertility that undergirded demographic transition theory. Until the nineteenth century, not only were both sexes thought to be instrumental to procreation but also women had to experience "pleasure:' Early modern European intellectuals explored the writings of Aristotle, Hippocrates, and Galen. Aristotle held that both men and women produced "sperrna' from their blood. Assuming male superiority, he argued that as rennet activated milk to produce cheese, so semen activated passive menstrual fluid. Women were mere incubators. Semen tried to produce males as the highest form of life. When it failed, females were leftover residue. Hippocrates' more egalitarian model of "sernence" or the "two seed theory" remained popular longer. He argued that because of the "intensity of the pleasure involved;' fluids were distilled from all parts of both spouses' bodies . This explained how a child could bear traits of either parent. Hippocrates insisted that the sexes were complementary and contributed equally. Women were more than incubators: ovaries were necessary for conception. Even physiology was equivalent: the counterparts of the penis and testicles were the clitoris and the ovaries. " Thomas Laqueur argued that ancient Greeks actually conceived of one single sex. Women were simply a lesser version of men, with no marked distinctions between what we think of as "the sexes:' "Instead, a physiology of fungible fluids and corporeal flux" composed the Greek four humors model, not a preoccupation with the arrangement of genitalia. All bodily fluids were distilled from blood. Both sexes produced semen. Male sperm was refined from blood, journeyed to the brain, and then flowed downward through the spinal column, the kidneys, and testicles before being ejaculated. Female semen was more like menstrual blood. Heat was transformative . Men had enough heat to refine blood into semen and then on to the supreme form , sperm. Women were too cool to approximate the supreme seed, producing instead a diluted facsimile. In every sex act, two versions of semen competed to stamp their influence on the fetus; the stronger prevailed. The balance of bodily fluids could be upset and deteriorate their quality. Any emission of fluid tipped the balance. Women were cooler, built up more nutriment, and diffused it through menstruation. Pregnant women

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transformed food into fuel for the fetus and had none left to menstruate. After birth, blood diverted to their breasts instead of becoming menstrual discharge. Lactation suppressed menstruation. Vigorous exercise made men sweat instead of menstruating, but also more susceptible to hemorrhoidal bleeding and nosebleeds . If women perspired or had nosebleeds , their menstrual flow was diminished. Nosebleeds were interpreted as vicarious menstruation in men, a sign that a fever was breaking, or a cure for amenorrhea. Loss of fluids in relation to the balance was more important than their sources or what form genitalia took . Blood was most critical as the source of all fluids. Conceptions of sexual organs in the one sex body paralleled the imagined relationship between bodily fluids. "Male and female semen, more and less refined fluids, thus stand in the same relationship to blood that penis and vagina stand to genital anatomy, extruded and still-in side organs:' In fact, ancient Greeks had no word for the vagina. It was simply an inverted penis. Ovaries were testicles, the uterus was the scrotum, and the vagina was the penis. The human body was male. Women's bodies just did not measure up to male bodies. As Laqueur summarized, "Agreat linguist ic cloud thus obscured specific genital or reproductive anatomy and left only the outlines of spaces common to both men and women :' Galen adopted the "two seed" or "one sex" theory in the second century AD, and it dominated Western thought for the next 1,500years. In the seventh century, the noted encyclopedist Isidore muddled through his thoughts on heritability. His notions that "only men have sperma, that only women have sperma, and that both have sperma" appear hopelessly contradictory outside of the framework of the one sex body. Within it, the y help to illustrate the patriarchal cultural construction of the single sex body. Consanguinity, Isidore insisted, was conferred "from one blood , that is from the same semen as the father:' Fathers supplied semen, and thereby blood, to their legitimate offspring . Children born out of wedlock were another matter entirely. Illegitimacy meant that no father could be recognized; such children sprang from their mother's seed exclusively. Finally, Isidore used the imagery of the mother's and father's sperma locked in combat to account for family resemblance, with the stronger influencing the appearance of the child. Even physiological discoveries that should have given medieval physicians pause could not loosen earlier assumptions. Conception did not require orgasm. Dissection should have made it apparent that no circulatory connections existed between the uterus and the breasts. As Laqueur noted, "A novel bit of plumbing paled in the face of clinical and folk wisdom stretching back to Hippocrates and of the whole macro cosmic order of which such wisdom was a part," They elaborated on this received wisdom before they replaced it. German writer Christopher Wirsung described three separate avenues in which menstrual blood flowed during pregnancy, without being able to

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observe a thing. The purest blood nourished the fetus. Mediocre blood became milk. The most wretched blood was spent in childbirth. The wisdom of the ages transcended direct observation of evidence to the contrary and was labeled "common sense:' All of the writers made three points in common: (1) women experienced sexual pleasure, (2) they sought it, and (3) women's sexual pleasure was necessary for conception to occur. Through orgasm, women contributed their seed to the pool. This view prevailed until the seventeenth century, when a new idea, "scientific embryology;' unlinked sexual pleasure and procreation." In the old paradigm, all parts were created simultaneously. A new paradigm emerged with preformation theories, which "budded in the 1670s and blossomed in the first half of the eighteenth century:' Drawing on Plato and Aeschylus, preformationists insisted that a complete miniature embryo existed inside a parent. There were two schools of thought. First, "ovists" thought a tiny being was inside the mother's egg. They drew analogies with hens laying eggs. Semen functioned merely as manure. Second, "animalculists" identified spermatozoa as the tiny beings. Leeuwenhoek's discovery in 1677 of microscopic beings in semen bolstered this version . Animalculists argued either that there was no egg, or that, like a yolk, it nourished the beings contained in sperm. Both version s posited a "monoparental embryo" that enlarged in the mother's womb rather than being created . McLaren criticized the history of science explanation for a shift away from preformation. He saw no clear progression from scholasticism to empiricism between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. Considering social and cultural aspects yielded more nuance and subtlety. All of these thinkers spoke more about seed, but attributed its origin to blood. At the same time as elite thinkers spun their theories, an older folk discourse drew on more ancient ideas about four humors to remedy infertility, restrict fertility, or abort unwanted pregnancies. Discussions of ways to bring on menstruation offer windows into early modern European folk beliefs about the role of blood in fertility. They did not have knowledge of ovulation, but , like ancient Greeks, believed that conception was related to the timing of the menstrual cycle. If a woman became pregnant, menstrual blood was believed to directly nourish the growing fetus. Many efforts centered on manipulating menstrual cycles. Women resorted to sympathetic magic to prevent conception. A "range of potions employed menstrual blood with the presumed intent of aping the monthly cycle and so magically preventing conception:' Medical treatises seemed reluctant to discuss abortion outright. Instead they directed much attention to "how to 'provoke the terms; 'purge the courses ; 'bring down the flowers' and deal with 'menses obstructed.' " These phrases might offer remed ies for amenorrhea, but they more likely alluded to methods of abortion. "In almost every published

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medical herbal one can also find lists of potions to induce menstruationf" Menstrual blood was clearly associated with conception. Etienne van de Walle and Elisha Renne agreed that early modern Europeans and Americans resorted to emmenagogues, but they complicated Mcl.arens emphasis on abortion. To them, the same evidence indicated concern with regulating menstruation. Proper reproductive functioning required routine menstruation. As an abnormality, amenorrhea demanded intervention. Many believed that herbal emmenagogues would not obstruct pregnancy. Bleeding meant that menstruation had been impeded, not that a pregnancy had been aborted." Abortifacients were well-known . Ergot is the common name for the fungus Claviceps purpurea, which was a hard, black growth that adhered to the stalks of grain, especially rye. Because it could be plucked from nearby fields, some said that "every peasant maiden" had access to it. In France, midwives called it "uterus powder;' and in Germany it was sometimes called "infant's death:' However, ergot was only effective in the last months of pregnancy, which was not choice timing for those desirous of aborting. It is the best-known abortifacient today. Rue or Rutagraveolens "may be traced from classical times, through the medieval herbals and the midwives' kits of the seventeenth century, to a solid reputation as an abortive drug in the folklore of traditional Europe;' was known in New Zealand, Hungary, and India. Tansy oil, or Tanacetum vulgare, was the drug of choice in the United States, "even though official pharmacology has maintained that . . . [it] is a deadly poison:' African American women of the slave South kept tansy "commonly cultivated in our gardens:' Groups as diverse as the Maritime Indians, mestizo New Mexicans, and South Asian Indians considered it an effective emmenagogue. Savin (Juniperus sabina), related to juniper, was by far the most powerful abortifacient herbal remedy. Ancient Romans aborted with it, and it was mentioned in Hieronymus Bock's 1565 herbal, "So do the young hussies get hold of powdered savin, or drink some of it. Thus many children fail to survive:' The 1886 Dictionary of Plantnames said its name "derived from its 'being able to save a young woman from shame' : hence it was known in Galloway as a 'Saving-Tree:" Observers associated savin bushes with women who desired abortions and midwives and barbers who helped to abort or induce contractions in a difficult delivery. McLaren highlighted pennyroyal (Mentha pulegium), a member of the mint family, as having been mentioned frequently. A seventeenth-century text recommended pennyroyal for abortion, "to empel 'ye Embrya :" An eighteenthcentury text advised its use to induce menstruation or "to provoketh womens courses:' By the late eighteenth century in the United States, physicians still resorted to familiar medieval language as they sought to remedy "obstructed menses:' Many of the same plants familiar to earlier European medical herbalist authors and desperate women alike were listed in medical references across

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the Atlantic. New England midwife Martha Ballard gathered tansy as part of her personal pharmacopeia." Women ingested derivatives from these plants either as tea prepared from the dried leaves, roots, seeds, or twigs or as an "oil" distilled with steam by a chemist . However, induced menstruation or attempted abortions did not give women power over their reproductive lives. Herbal remedies easily caused fatal poisoning. Determining a proper dosage was impossible because the volatile oils varied annually with soil conditions and rainfall, and differed in concentration from one part of the plant to another. Even though women were often desperate to obtain them, the results were erratic at best." Many people expressed concern about what they thought was accumulated menstrual blood in pregnant women . Every missed monthly flow contributed to the increasing girth of the mother to be. Naturally, worries about menstrual blood's power to interfere with productive activities extended to pregnant women . Medieval and early modern European proscriptions circumscribing the behavior of pregnant women paralleled menstrual taboos. In Finland , expectant women were barred from church, public places, or baptismal feasts. On the Swedish-speaking coastal areas of Finland, a woman with child was said to be "not worth any more than a sow. She should keep as much as possible at home and not mix among others . . . because she would contaminate others with her uncleanliness:' In Hungary, also unclean were "all the women who had come in contact with her during birth:' To a person, they were all admonished not to cook, make dough, or do laundry during that time. Later efforts by pronatalist lords and officials to increase the number of people (laborers and renters) on the land by giving pregnant women special favors were a veneer over these more deeply ingrained attitudes." The solution for too much blood was to drain some away. Phlebotomy was standard practice in academic medicine through the nineteenth century, and was "widely practiced in peasant medicine :' Guillaume de la Motte bled a Normandy noblewoman in 1697 because she demanded it, not because he thought she needed it. She was not alone. De la Motte explained , "The majority of women are so alert to this supposed necessity . .. that they believe they risk a dangerous delivery if. . . not bled at midterm:' Austrian women in St. Polten ordered several bleedings, "otherwise the child would drown in blood at delivery:' A Viennese doctor in 1800 insisted that all women , "without exception;' sought to be bled "at least three times, in the fifth, the seventh, and the last month . . .to avoid a hemorrhage and to prevent the child from growing too large:' As late as 1860, barber shops in Upper Bavaria kept venesection records for pregnant women, showing that "hundredweights of mostly healthy blood are still drawn every year:' Ifbarber-surgeons refused to perform this service, midwives would. In Fischhausen County at the turn of the twentieth century, "the older people are so accustomed to being bled" that midwives obliged so

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those less skilled would not step in. Feminist scholarship has excoriated physicians for bleeding their pregnant patients, but a widely held peasant tradition kept this practice alive." Europeans had company in the belief that draining surplus blood during pregnancy was an important therapeutic measure. The Thonga linked it to miscarriage because of their observation that great blood loss accompanied miscarriage. To ward off this possibility, they made small cuts around women's breasts and legs to drain off the surplus menstrual blood."

Holistic Considerations of Childbirth Anecdotal ethnographic material shows how people situated blood centrally in their efforts to account for the creation of new life. However, ideas about childbirth are part of holistic belief systems uniting puberty, conception, animation, female roles, male roles, spiritual roles, and ultimately death. Yet, very few have studied them in this fashion. Theories about where babies come from are "attempts to establish the identity of a foetus [sic] in terms of a continuous social community:' People are biologically born, but they must also "come into existence" and be made "inhabitants of that symbolic universe which existence is:' Because of its drama, birth rituals are less elaborate than other life course rites. Nonetheless, pregnancy and birth are part of a lengthy preparation to symbolically create, identify, and receive newcomers. The process can continue throughout life.42 Janet Carsten's study of Malaysian childbirth best exemplifies integrated female roles, male roles, and the establishment of kinship . Carsten noted, "The core substance of kinship in local perception is blood:' Marriage, circumcision, and childbirth were all symbolically and ritually associated . Regulated bleeding of women and men ensured proper fertility and reproduced the house, which was the symbolic locus of the family. Food taboos for boys undergoing circumcision mirrored postpartum food taboos. Malay fathers provided seed, which mixed with menstrual blood. Menstrual blood then nourished the seed in the womb, where, "[pjeople say that the blood of the mother becomes the child:' Malaysians regarded menstrual blood as a potential child. The mother was ritually focal. Because blood was regarded as hot, heat baths ensured fertility. Very hot blood was lost during childbirth, leaving the mother overcooled. Cooling foods were to be avoided. Forty-four types of sickness related to losing hot blood could befall the mother in the postpartum period. Breast milk derived from blood. Milk feeding demarcated incest. People said, "If you drink the same milk, you become kin.... You become one blood, one flesh:' Cofeeding, more than any other link, created kinship. An "axis of relatedness [ran] through women" along a continuum of blood, milk, and rice.

The Blood of Conception, Pregnancy, and Childbirth • 65 Only female blood could be shared. Rice produced blood, which produced breast milk, which produced blood. Partaking in rice meals cooked over the same hearth, all quintessential female symbols, created shared substance. After death, a person's soul left the body and all the blood flowed out, leaving "bones and empty blood vessels without flesh or blood:' This was invisible. If death occurred indoors, blood flowed everywhere and mixed with all the food . "Everything [became] soaked in blood:' There was no life or kinship without blood." This description of Malay beliefs surrounding childbirth and kinship is the most comprehensive. Elements recur cross-culturally, but references are sketchy and incomplete. A few other examples also illustrate the benefits of viewing the life cycle in a more holistic fashion. Like the Malays, the Batticaloa Tamils and Moors of Sri Lanka viewed blood "as the immediate source of health and vitality:' but not as a symbol of caste purity as did others in South Asia. Once again, the digestive system converted rice, the essential symbol of food, into vital blood. The word pas (force) connoted the vigor, quantity, and pressure of the blood. Blood's pas promoted growth from infancy to adulthood. In like manner, blood's decreasing pas caused aging and death. "My blood has dwindled away:' said one elder. Many factors could weaken blood's pas. An improper diet of cold foods thinned it. Impurities polluted it. Sri Lankans shared the notion that hot blood could become "overheated." Food created more blood for growing Tamil and Moor children. By puberty, less blood was needed, creating a surplus. Girls produced more blood, making puberty more dramatic. Monthly menstruation drained away the dangerous surplus. A Hindu Ayurvedic practitioner said, "If it were not for her monthly period, five men could not hold one woman down:' Sexual fluids also originated in blood. Before puberty, children were "pure of body and mind" and played special roles in Hindu ritual. Only the surplus of blood at puberty could give rise to sexual feelings. Semen derived from blood, taking forty to sixty drops of blood to create one drop of semen. Masturbation and nocturnal emissions drained blood and weakened men . People worry that condoms will "prevent a necessary exchange of blood:' Breast milk, like semen, was also a product of blood . McGilvray's rendition of Batticaloa Tamils' and Moors' beliefs about human physiology, growth, sexuality, and aging was not as all encompassing as Carsten's account of the Malays, but it conveys that blood was clearly pivotal. Many shared this view." Charlotte Furth treated blood relations between mothers and their infants holistically in her study of pregnancy, childbirth, and infancy during Ch'ing Dynasty China (I 644- I911). Medical texts portrayed blood as the crucial root of vitality and vigor, even as they depicted the blood of menstruation and

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childbirth as powerfully polluting. Blood (hsueh) governed the feminine force in the yin and yang dualism of blood and chi (ch'ii hsueh). Blood conveyed the mother's life-giving capacities to the fetus. In typical dualistic fashion, uterine blood was also a sort of fetal poison sentencing the newborn to a series of childhood illnesses. Repeatedly losing blood through men struation and childbirth made women the "sickly sex:' justifying their domination by the patriarchal, Confucian Ch'ing social and political order. Male authors of medical texts admonished pregnant women in Confucian China to exhibit the same virtues of "passionless calm" that contributed to the smooth functioning of the patriarchal family. The extremes of "resentment and anger, lust and passion, indulgence and immoderate desires" could disrupt the family unit and harm the unborn child. To balance the quality of their blood, pregnant women constantly monitored positive and negative feedback to harmonize their emotions with their environment. Male physicians highlighted the importance of this balancing act with an old proverb : "Miss by one step in the beginning, and in the end you have missed by a thousand miles:' Failure rendered the child incapable of surviving the inevitable bout of childhood illnesses, caused by the "fetal poison" of their mother's blood . Delivery heralded a month of seclusion and a regimen of food and "tonics" to replenish depleted blood. Pregnancy and childbirth were deemed dissipating illnesses, from which mothers needed to recover.The mother had to be successful for the survival of her baby. Mothers contained yin forces. Fetuses and newborns were composed of yang forces, which depleted mothers, hindered their recovery from pregnancy and childbirth, and interfered with their ability to nurture infants in the face of daunting "fetal poison s:' The blight of "fetal poison" gave infants and toddlers a tenuous hold on life. Every malady, including "congenital defects, infantile jaundice and syphilis, and umbilical tetanus:' and later communicable diseases stemmed from having been engulfed by their mothers' blood. Purging rituals, like clearing the infant's mouth and anus, had to be performed immediately after delivery. Medical texts warned against cutting the umbilical cord too short and recommended that it be dusted with ash and protected with cloth. Otherwise newborns could contract "naval wind: ' which was likely umbilical tetanus, a leading cause of infant mortality. Babies were given a variety of remedies, which changed as medical specialists debated and "exotic recipes proliferated:' Among them were licorice, tea, fried ground olive pits, raw sesame, ground walnut meats mixed with saliva, and even "preparations made from ground and roasted umbilical cord:' Ritual "third day baths" and "full month" celebrations add ed to the regimen . Breast-feeding continued the symbiotic relationship between mother and infant, but also added to the inherent dangers. "In the traditional view, breast

The Blood of Conception, Pregnancy, and Childbirth • 67 milk [was] literally transformed yin blood, which manifests itself first as menstrual flow, then as the placental blood nurturing the fetus, and which, after birth, rises through the mother's body in the form of milk:' Lactating mothers had to adhere to the same regimen as when they were pregnant, because breast milk was thought to transmit the moral and corporeal qualities of its producer. It might seem odd that wet-nursing remained commonplace among the Chinese upper classes. The dangerous relationship between mother and infant provided a rationale for shifting the duty of nurs ing to a surrogate. The new mother was roundly criticized, especially by her mother-in-law, for every sniffle that befell her babe, which gave her incentive to abandon breast-feeding. The wet nurse could live in and take the scolding . Pregnancy, childbirth, and infancy were viewed in Ch'ing China as a transition from the "dangerous original condition of pollution" associated with the inescapable influence of mothers' uterine blood. Surviving the inevitable round of childhood diseases marked the rite of passage. The child's emergence into a "social existence [became] a sloughing off of the inheritance of the mother-emerging thereby from nature into culture:' "Only if a mother bore children who lived beyond early childhood, would she prove to the world that ,,45 Sh e was tru Iy a goo d woman.

Blood Rituals for the Perils of Childbirth Rituals before, during, and after childbirth were widespread. Many advised pregnant women how to behave properly to ensure their own well-being and that of the babies they carried. Particularly when maternal and infant mortality was high, such counsel seemed critical. Most commonly, parturient mothers retreated into seclusion because of the extraordinary power associated with the impending birth. Locations for giving birth and menstruating often coincided because lochial blood and menstrual blood had similar connotations. Mothers to be frequently retired to areas within their homes away from men's areas and places where productive functions such as cooking took place. The more powerfully contaminating the blood, the more distant they needed to be. The care and handling of the by-products of childbirth reflected cultural beliefs. Before ethnographers constructed the customs of so many "others:' engravings , religious texts, and other written sources conveyed cursory information about rituals involving birth fluids, the umbilical cord, and the placenta. Most thought the umbilical cord and placenta to be intrinsically connected to the infant. Their influence often carried well into the child's life, making proper treatment essential. The rituals involved culturally specific symbols of fertility, longevity, and appropriate gender roles. However, the actual meaning for participants has not always been made clear.

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Their emphasis on the inordinate power of the bloody products of birth, birth fluids, the baby, the bloody umbilical cord, and placenta to interfere with other productive functions unites the following rituals . As with other blood rituals, their meanings were ambiguous and multivocal. Matrilineal societies tended to stress the life-giving power of women's blood. Special treatment of lochial blood aimed to protect others, including men and boys, women and girls who were not mothers themselves, or sometimes everyone . This proscription metamorphosed into connotations of uncleanness in some areas of the world . Pollution constructions seem to correlate strongly with patriarchy. Pollution constructions of women's blood were especially strong within the related, patriarchal religious complexes of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. More focused on menstruation (see chapter 5), but women giving birth also fell under rigid proscriptions. Only in the contemporary world have these abated. More conservative members adhere to them still. Jewish women were considered unclean during and after childbirth. The Bible warned about the impurity of fluids emanating from the sexual organs, dead bodies, and leprosy. Leviticus outlined the polluted nature of women who had just given birth. With a male baby, the new mother remained unclean for seven initial days and then for an additional thirty-three days. The time doubled if a girl was born. She was unclean for fourteen initial days and then for an extra sixty-six days. After this, new Jewish mothers cleansed themselves with ritual mikveh baths, much as they did after every menstrual period. Women who delivered by cesarean section were exempt. "A whole tractate of Mishnah and Talmud is devoted to this topic, with a chapter that deals explicitly with purification after childbirth:' Reform Jews no longer adhere to these practices . Ethiopian Jews who migrated to Israel gave birth in a special "hut of blood:' delimited by a low wall on the outskirts of town, also reserved for menstruating women. Food was passed over the wall so that no one actually touched the "impure" woman. Mothers stayed here eight days until boys' circumcision, or fourteen days for a girl, then she moved to a "hut of childbed" for the duration. Kurdistani Jews followed a similar pattern into the mid nineteenth century, though they secluded themselves for forty days regardless of the sex of the baby. There were variations on this theme in other Jewish populations. Lilith, "a bloodthirsty demon who preyed on women in childbirth and who sought to strangle newborns:' was especially threatening. Lilith derived from similar female demons mentioned in ancient Mesopotamian myths and cuneiform inscriptions. The Babylonian demon Lamashtu slayed children, and also lustfully seduced sleeping men, to suck their blood and cannibalize their flesh, as did the Greek demon Lamia. The Book of Zohar attributed a more godly role to Lilith, who preyed only on babies who were destined to grow into a life

The Blood of Conception, Pregnancy, and Childbirth • 69 of evil. Amulets protected against Lilith and the Evil Eye, another malevolent spirit hungry for infants. Talmudic sages shared the Greco- Roman view that breast milk derived from menstrual blood that vanished with total lactation. They added that redirected menstrual blood caused women's breasts to swell. Warm drinks were laced with wine or honey to thicken women's blood. Women's dying in childbirth meant they could not complete purification rituals, causing great concern. In some Dutch and Swiss communities near the German border, Jews reserved portions of cemeteries for burying women who had died in childbirth. Some Ashkenazim buried such mothers "unwashed, in a well-sealed coffin, or in a separate part of the graveyard. ?" The Jewish circumcision ceremony, the bris, was a sacrificial initiation ritual near birth involving bloodshed (see chapter 4). Circumcision was performed on the eighth day after birth. This corresponded to the duration of the mother's polluted state. Drawing on ancient Greek notions about the four humors based on the physical properties of heat, cold, moisture, and dryness, Europeans from the early modern period to the nineteenth century believed that blood should remain at a stable hot temperature. European thinkers reasoned that the human body possessed a limited amount of heat and moisture at birth. Heat and moisture diminished with age. Cooling and drying connoted death and decay. Pregnant women were especially susceptible to overheating and were warned to avoid late nights because they "overheat the blood and attack the nervous system:' "Hot and desiccating" food and drink produced "thick and melancholy blood:' Consuming cold nourishment and taking cold baths was also dangerous. Bleedings, purges , and diets corrected imbalances. Women avoided giving birth in their homes because "blood shed during a birth was unlucky:' Sharing this notion with many people across the world, they believed that it was "dangerous to let it flow out in the communal room:' Stables were often preferred. The afterbirth received ritual attention. Midwives in early modern Europe pushed blood toward the baby "to give it new life" before they cut the umbilical cord . As was the case for many other people cross -culturally, they believed that the placenta was so intrinsically linked to the child that, "[w]hat becomes of the afterbirth (and with it the umbilical cord and caul) either influences or determines the whole life-story of the child:' It was "so mystically and inseparably connected with him that its treatment or fate will shape his skills, luck, and fate:' The placenta helped transform menstrual blood into breast milk. The observation that total lactation deterred the onset of menstruation contributed to a Widespread belief that breast milk derived from menstrual blood. The association of milk and blood, of womb and breasts recurred "constantly

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in medical texts from Antiquity to the Middle Ages:' One text advised, "To stop the menstruation of a woman, one should apply a large cupping-glass to her breasts:' Another warned , "If a woman who is neither pregnant nor suckling a baby has milk in her breasts, it is a sign that her periods have ceased:' Henri de Mondeville wrote in the European Middle Ages, "Milk is ... menstrual blood which has turned white and been diverted into the two breasts . .. 'which by their digestive virtue make the red colour turn to white ... the same colour as the breasts, just as the chyle, which gets from the stomach to the liver, turns to red:" Another text warned that intercourse during nursing "could provoke menstruation, poison the milk, cause conception and dry up the breast by directing blood away from the paps to the womb:' This was a widespread , crosscultural association." Christianity inherited biblical proscriptions about bodily sources of impurity. "Churching," a decontamination ritual, prohibited new mothers from entering the sanctuary until they made offerings to the priest at the door, to be "cleansed from the issue of her blood:' Women did this four to six weeks after delivery to gain "perm ission to re-enter society:' These beliefs retained their power two thousand years later. All Christian churches , East and West, practiced churching prior to the Protestant Reformation . Puritans rejected churching, but Anglican and Catholic churches still practiced it well into the twentieth century. People feared the consequences of not churching. In parts of England, "the neighbors will not allow a woman who has recently been confined to enter their houses until she has been churched," People in Liebau, Germany, feared that their house would burn if an unfamiliar new mother entered who had not yet been properly churched. In Hirschberg, people chased off unchurched mothers with a broom. New mothers in lauer could not fetch water from the well "before churching, or else it will become contaminated or dry up:' Community welfare could be sullied by new mothers' behavior during this critical time because of the power of her blood . In Heveser County, Hungary, after mothers were churched and infants baptized two weeks after delivery, "there's a big cleanup. The house [was] freshly whitewashed, thoroughly polished up and spr inkled with holy water:' New mothers in Miinsterland waited at the door for the priest, "his surplice in one hand. The mother grip[ped] the surplice with her left hand, holding a consecrated candle in the right. The pastor beg[an] to pray, and thus [did] both advance to the altar. Here the pastor read from the beginning of the Book of John, after which he let the mother kiss the appropriate page of the Bible:' In Alsace, French Catholics had the new mother "sprinkled with holy water, and handed a lighted candle. After giving thanks to the Virgin, the mother kisserd] the hem of the priest's robe, and let herself be led to the altar, where she deposited an offering:' In late medieval Flanders, "every woman, married or not,

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feverishly rushe [d] toward this rite of 'purification; " which was as essential as baptism. The polluting blood of childbirth restricted where new mothers who died before churching might be buried. The community cemetery would not do. Segregating their graves protected unsuspecting people who might walk over them and suffer harm. Although Martin Luther railed against segregating new mothers' graves in 1525, three years later the Breslau City Council ruled that they not be interred "along the walkway, where people go by or have business to do, but away in a corner or next to the wall where there is little activity:' In 1713, the Breslau Protestant Consistory reviewed the policy of fencing new mothers' graves to protect others from "the contagious matter with which their bodies were full;' and determined to continue it to spare innocent bystanders from their "corrupt emanations:' In Saxony in 1000, peasants drove stakes through unchurched mothers and infants to prevent them from rising to haunt the community. These fears persisted into the sixteenth century. They worried that the poor woman's sins had contributed to her fate." With the first labor contraction, husbands or fathers-in-law of Russian Nanai women built a small shelter with room for a bed and hearth. Children were strictly excluded. Any men present at the onset of labor would hastily vacate "even climbing out the windows. They did this because they feared losing their hunter's luck:' Cross-culturally, many groups counterpoised women's blood with hunters' blood. Usually, the new mother returned to her home on the same day. She retreated to the warmest spot in the house because she "might die if [her] blood was curdled by the cold and turned into a jelly-like

mass-sekseni buldigui" New Nanai mothers had to be purified before they could move freely. Three days after birth, a mother cleansed her undergarments and bathed in warm water infused with bog rosemary. She rolled up her soiled clothes, but did no t wash them. After ten more days, she bathed again, washed her birthing clothes, and saved them for next time. The neighboring Ul'chi and Nivkh followed similar bathing rituals." Mansi women of Siberia retreated to a small birthing hut, accompanied by kinswomen and all girls older than age ten, who were to witness women's tra vails. Once the child emerged, a birth attendant cut the placenta and then "the child's face is smeared with blood so that the child will have red cheeks later on:' The mother underwent purification rituals, by exposing her naked body to hordes of mosquitoes so that they might suck her blood, which mimicked menstrual purification rituals. i" Though information is limited, we can see that many African cultures ritualized blood and the afterbirth. Birth rituals guarded productive aspects of

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life, such as cattle, crops, and commerce. They tended to bury afterbirth near fertility symbols, hearths, mothers' beds, and trees. Deep red palm oil signified blood and served as a prophylactic to protect against the blood of childbirth. Regional variation existed, but so did broad patterns. Studies are limited, but Nancy Hunt did provide detailed ethnographic coverage of late-twentiethcentury Congolese women of Zaire. Marginal states of pollution such as pregnancy required Zulu women to behave in similar fashion. They withdrew from society, refrained from pleasurable activities, and spoke in subdued voices. In a patriarchal society practicing ancestor worship, women's bodily emissions tangibly reminded men that women were hardly powerless and submissive; they possessed considerable reproductive power. No matter how dominating men were, they depended on women to perpetuate their patrilineages. Harriet Sibisi noted, "Women are seen to exercise some power that they should not have, and as such they are dangerous to those who are entitled to that power:' During and immediately following parturition they posed the greatest risks. A Zulu woman about to give birth retreated to a house with only married women as company. She could leave this place during the first ten days after childbirth only if she was completely covered by a blanket. After that, she coated any uncovered parts of her body with red ochre to shield her powers from men, cattle, and crops, all symbols of productive power. Her potency even threatened her newborn; most attributed infant mortality to her power. This threat persisted in diminished form throughout breast -feeding. Pregnant women and lactating mothers often applied red ochre to the bottoms of their feet as a prophylactic measure. Seeing themselves as mediators between their husband's lineage and their own, and between the earthly world and beyond, women saw their ritual actions as benefiting their culture as a whole" After giving birth, Kado women of Nigeria laid on beds arranged over a fire. Many believed that the loss of blood during childbirth seriously overcooled parturient mothers' blood. On the seventh day after the baby was delivered, the day of naming, fathers sacrificed a ram and reserved its head and skin for the midwife" The KelTamasheq of Mali believed that blood out of place, such as blood loss during pregnancy or nosebleeds, was hot. Inadequate blood where it should flow, such as in childbirth, created a cold state. During childbirth and men struation, blood disorders known as tessumde threatened. Although similar to Galenic humoral theory, these beliefs and practices were more closely related to Arab medical theory and the spread of Islam in Africa." A young Kalahari Iuhoansi mother reported, "We call the afterbirth the 'older sister: It is blood, but we call it the older sister of the child:' Mothers collected the stained grass, placenta, and bloody sand and covered them with

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stones or branches, marking the spot with a tuft of grass stuck up in a bush "so that no man will step on or over the place:'54 Zairian birth ritual included a special ceremony, the lilembu, to neutralize the blood of childbirth and purify those who saw it. Female kin mixed saliva with palm oil paste, the dark red color of which connoted blood, and smeared those who witnessed the birth to protect them and their endeavors in the fields, hunting, and commerce. So powerful was this blood that unmarried, childless women were shielded from it because it could "kill eyes:' Missionaries were not privy to these beliefs when they pressured Congolese women to give birth in maternity wards. Missionaries trained young women as birth attendants without realizing that this violated strongly held, gendered, and age-graded beliefs about women's blood and the norms of childbirth. These cultural proscriptions were eventually overcome as people came to accept soap and other medical interventions as "purifying:' "Soap, injections, and medicinal enemas condensed meaning in hospital birth ritual, cleansing the dangerous blood, replacing the need for lilembu to remove the danger of the blood that 'can kill eyes: and reducing the need for scalding hot, postnatal, blood-removing baths:' Once the birthing process concluded, Congolese women attended the "rotting blood of childbirth:' A female relative came to "squeeze the blood out of her in three daily baths:' which involved scalding hot water. The helper soaked a towel in the water, placed it on the woman's stomach, and then pressed with all her might, while the woman screamed. After several forceful thrusts, boiling hot water was splashed at her vulva. One sister commented, "There are wounds there , and many more in her womb. It is necessary to remove all the dirt and sores:' This went on day after day until the umbilical cord fell off. Fathers sacrificed chickens, fertility symbols in many parts of the world, in compensation for childbirth. "Birthing is dying" was a common Congolese expression. Fathers repaid the mother's elder male relatives for lost blood with a childbirth chicken, which represented the effort of childbearing and the blood spent." "The languages of the ancient Near East, Egypt, Greece and Rome, have one word for both the navel and the umbilical cord:' For many people the precise time that the umbilical cord was cut signified infants' separation from their mothers, their first emergence as individuals, and their future fate. Both text and image depicted the custom of tying a thread around the cord and then cutting it at some distance with a sharp reed. Palestinian people believed that "the gate of heaven stands open at birth and again when the cord is cut:' In one Palestinian village, cutting was postponed because "the new-born child [was] so wretched and tired that it shall first 'drink power' from the afterbirth which is also called a comrade or sister:' Throughout the Arab world,

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assistants laid the newborn down still connected to the afterbirth so that it could "drink strengthening blood" while resting after the birth ordeal. 56 Given its common roots with Judaism, Islam, not surprisingly, also prescribed ritualistic treatment of women's blood. Islamic law restricted menstruating women and new mothers from mosques. Parturient Muslim women were to ritually bathe once the Nifass, or blood of childbirth, stopped or after forty days, whichever came first. 57 Greek women remained at home for forty days after birth. Visiting anyone during this time would cause disaster to befall the family because of the power of her blood. Thereafter, a priest blessed the house and the mother and child. 58 Pollution constructions of the blood of childbirth were common throughout South Asia. Most people adhered to periods of ritual seclusion following birth. Ritual treatment of the placenta and umbilical cord associated them with symbols of female fertility." For Hindu Nepalese the blood of childbirth was so powerfully polluting that even midwives kept away from the newborn, the parturient mother, and all they had touched. Exhausted, the new mother had to care for the infant, which lay wriggling alone On the floor "in a dark puddle:' "With the exception of a corpse, there is no greater impurity to the Nepalese than that of the newborn and . . . mother:' Severing the umbilical tether was fraught with pollution, as was the very real threat of death within the next ten days. During that time, the mother, regardless of her high caste, had a status less than an untouchable low-caste woman ." Tibetan midwives pushed blood toward the baby three times "to give it new life"before cutting the umbilical cord. They noted precisely when the cord was cut "so it could later be used in horoscopes:' When the remaining stump fell off, it was wrapped in cloth and pinned to the shoulder of the baby's garb." The Batticaloa Tamils and Moors of Sri Lanka and shared the belief that breast milk derived from blood. For Sri Lankans, breast milk was "a transformation of the blood in the same way that semen" was. This belief was widespread cross-culturally.'" Several patterns emerged from a survey of available childbirth rituals in Southeast Asia. Throughout greater Southeast Asia, seclusion for new mothers was the norm. The duration of seclusion varied . Tagalog mothers of Tanay, Philippines, were "virtual prisoners" within their rooms for thirty days for a girl and forty days for a boy. Rituals intended to ensure the baby's longevity and to establish connections between the infant and his or her future rights as a member of a kin group . As did those in early modern Europe , Africa, and the rest of Micronesia, many in greater Southeast Asia regarded the placenta and even the umbilical cord as the baby's twin . Bamboo slivers were preferred for severing the umbilical cord; metal was forbidden. Coconuts, dominant

The Blood of Conception, Pregnancy, and Childbirth • 75 symbols of fertility, were often used as "cradles" in which the sibling placenta was lovingly placed on the way to its final resting place. Gendered items, such as needles and thread, were put with them. Betel nuts and areca palm trees were also prominent fertility symbols . Fathers often buried the placenta to create a stronger bond with the infant." Mother and child were believed to be especially vulnerable in the immediate postpartum period because of blood-related "disorders:' A supernatural aswang was extremely fond of human flesh and blood, particularly that of newborns and cadavers . The odor or langsi of bleeding associated with pregnancy, parturition, and death especially attracted it. If the aswang stole the langsi, it took the baby's life too. Excessive blood loss made mothers susceptible to buhi buhi, "a syndrome in which ascending gas or air, starting under the lower left rib, supposedly produces rapid beating of the heart, vertigo, partial blindness, and impaired respiration:' Ritual "roasting" was prophylactic. The only remedy once it struck was "certain roots that turn the water red:' Midwives in greater Southeast Asia tried to avert such calamities; before they cut the umbilical cord, they squeezed blood toward the baby to "give it new life:'64 Bisayan Filipinos observed that straightening the legs of the woman during delivery increased the flow of blood. Therefore they slanted the bed "so the blood will not go to the head;' as it would if the parturient mother lay in a prone position. Taking care with the blood of childbirth was a widespread cross-cultural commonality" In the Philippines, many fathers initiated newborns through blood sacrifice. Batanguenos pricked newborns' cheeks "to allow the exit of impure blood:' Maranaws placed chicken entrails in a coconut shell and set it adrift in a boat made of banana stalks and feathers . Subanon people rubbed chicken blood on infants' foreheads and hands at their baptism shortly after birth.66 Bang Chan people of Southeast Asia prepared a special plank bed over the fireplace for curative heating of the parturient. They used ten-inch square protective cloths with magical symbols on them to ward off the fearsome pta krasu spirits that manifested themselves as lights in the dark. Otherwise, the spirits would hone in on the birthing room by the smell of blood and "creep up the housepost and eat [the mother's] blood, intestines, and feces through her anus :,67 Bang Chan midwives were careful with the umbilical cord and placenta. They pressed blood into the baby's umbilicus three times, to enhance the baby's life before they cut the cord . They also meticulously cleansed the placenta of blood to prevent the baby from developing pimples .f Blood literally transmitted lineage and kinship for the Kei of Indonesia and was of central concern during delivery. Thorny leaves and branches of pandanus and lemon trees lined the area of the woman's mother's house, where the blood of childbirth would flow. Thorny things would frighten invisible,

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malevolent beings away from the vulnerable conduit posed by the blood of delivery. The new mother also wore a protective apron of pandanus leaves to reduce blood flow and ward off sickness borne by spirit beings. After seclusion, mother and infant ritually bathed away residual blood in the ocean . Once free to reenter the larger society, the mother's ancestors and those of her husband's mother were entreated to choose a name for the child, charging, "You know your name, your blood, your born child:,69 Parturient Meto women in West Timor, Indonesia, also entered a period of ritual seclusion because of the "heated" state of childbirth. They remained in conical huts on a low bamboo platform for four days, where they were ceremonially "roasted" by smoking embers "to remove the 'dead blood' (nah mateni, also known as the 'white blood ' (nah muti) which would otherwise spread upward throughout the body of the mother causing fever and infection.t" Foods such as fat meats, chili, beans, and fried foods were withheld to hasten this ritual cooling. The Malays in Pulau Langkawi shared the belief that breast milk derived from blood. Menstrual blood produced breast milk, and breast milk, in turn, produced blood." The association between milk and blood, and breast and womb was not simply a Judeo-Christian construction. It stemmed from observations about human reproduction. Blood figured prominently even when men co-opted the placenta and gendered it male, as did the Highland Lauje. They associated the male placenta with the most powerful umpute spirits, and claimed to be more important in childbirth than mothers. Umpute spirits were termed "older siblings"; regarding the placenta as an older sibling is common in Southeast Asia. Older siblings connote nurturing roles. They came first and paved the way for younger sisters and brothers. During gestation , umpute spirits embodied by the male placenta nurtured the fetus. After childbirth, umpute spirits sacrificed themselves to give the child soul and breath so that it might live, creating a mighty debt. Without proper respect and handling, umpute spirits might return to harm or even kill the newborn. Propitiation ensured that umpute spirits would wait for the soul of the child after death to aid the soul in its journey to the afterlife. Without it, the newborn was essentially abandoned and would never be aided by the spiritual power that gave him or her life. Highland Lauje men contrasted the masculine whiteness of the placenta with the foul, feminine "black blood " of pregnancy. This black blood was neither circulatory blood nor menstrual blood but the "fluid that slowly dribbles out of the mother's womb du ring the whole birth process:' which was" 'dirty: 'bad: and 'dangerous:" Male midwives spoke of this black blood, the black blood umpute spirits, and women "in the most pejorative manner possible:' Male midwives stepped in to correct the profound irresponsibility of mothers in labor. Their actions mollified black blood umpute spirits that "worked to

The Blood of Conception, Pregnancy, and Childbirth • 77 separate the human souls from ancestral souls:' Women's failure to care for the black blood of pregnancy offended the black blood umpute spirits, threatening not only the newborn but also the entire community with illness and death. Thoughtless mothers to be simply let the birth fluids trickle from their wombs to fall between the "floorboards onto the ground" where "decayed objects are thrown, where children urinate and defecate, where crazy people .. . are tied . .. where the droppings of chickens, goats, and dogs are left to rot. Where witches enter the house :' Men created rituals to remedy such "carelessness:' positioning themselves as more critical to the birthing process than mothers. During labor, Highland Lauje mothers leaned against the father or the center post of the house , both of which represented building the house and lineage. Cloths placed beneath the mother were to catch the birth fluids, but they did not entirely do so. She clutched a bundle of four shaved twigs from "the original four trees of the world" to tie her to "the forces of the universe and of creation:' Thus, the child was symbolically connected to the ancestors who created the universe , the patrilineage, and the male medical specialists with the knowledge to ease the birth. After delivery, male umpute spirits, in the form of the placenta, gave soul and breath to the baby's first cry. These attributes traveled from the placenta, through the umbilical cord, to the newborn. Its soul was a reincarnation of some patrilineal ancestor. The infant was kept tethered to the placenta by the umbilical cord until the placenta was delivered. The connected mass visually illustrated Highland Lauje cosmological beliefs about coming into being. Male midwives massaged both the baby and placenta in like fashion. Massaging pushed any remaining blood from the placenta into the baby's body. Subsequent ritual involved coconut shells, bamboo, betel nuts, and didil tree leaves; all fertility symbols important in Lauje cosmology. Once the separation was accomplished, the male midwife washed the blood off the placenta and the baby, avoiding three red Hindu blood spots on the baby's forehead and cheeks, and then anointed both with didilleaves dipped in coconut juice called "juu nu niu, or the sperm of the coconut:' Thus the male midwife replaced the black blood of childbirth with symbolic male fluid, ensuring that the placenta would be available for the baby at the close of his or her life. "His efforts to bond himself with the child supersede[d] the mother-child bond because the father's bonds include[d] those to the umpute spirit:' The final ritual responsibilities of the father included burying, in the courtyard, the betel nut on which the umbilical cord had been cut. There it grew into an areca palm , which symbolized the link between "the child's blood and the placental blood:' In his final act of co-optation, he was required to procure sweetened coffee or tea to start the mother's milk and to obtain the first food that the infant would eat. Throughout these rituals, women were negatively

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associated with spirits and humans, and men were ritually, physically, and morally elevated above them. Jennifer Nourse pointed out that these beliefs are specific to the Highland, not the Lowland Lauje, and even then were ambiguous. Although a core of beliefs and symbols transgressed group and individual lines, they were "played with" and put to different purposes depending on circumstance. Despite countless permutations of meaning, blood remained at the core of significance. Lowland Lauje concerned themselves more with separating the placenta from the baby than maintaining a connection. They tied black thread, signifying separation, in two places on the cord, and then cut it with a metal knife, intended to sever and block any continued association. The father cleaned the placenta as he would a dead body. Without speaking, he let water rinse blood from the placenta, lest his hands touch the blood. They treated the placenta ritually as if it were a corpse, replicating mortuary ritual. Their proximity to the coast brought the Lowland Lauje into closer affiliation with "foreigners:' Their rituals reflected their disdain for colonizers as interlopers. For them, foreigners who did not follow Lauje custom caused black umpute illnesses. Specifically, when a foreigner raped a Lauje woman before the forty-four day postpartum intercourse taboo had expired, "dead blood" mixed with "live blood:' The black blood of birth polluted the sperm and the child was at risk of a disease such as leprosy. They made use of the same symbolism as their Highland relatives, but they inverted the rituals. " Ideologies of blood pervaded the cultures of Papua New Guinea, Australia, Melanesia, and the South Pacific. The entire life cycle involved blood rituals. Childbirth was the just first stage. Throughout Papua New Guinea, women retreated to birth houses for three to ten days. This implied danger, but whether blood was dangerous for men or whether male spirituality was dangerous for infants, or both, was ambiguous. Nonetheless, birthing was a critical time. Ritual treatment of the afterbirth, placenta, and umbilical cord reflected this." In Papua New Guinea, most recoiled from touching the mother or baby once the infant's head had crowned. Umbilical blood was commonly forced down the cord into the baby's body, for extra benefit. Most people explicitly forbade using anything metal to sever the umbilical cord, favoring bamboo slivers. i" Many shared the belief that blood was hot. The New Guinea Yafar worried that blood loss in childbirth seriously cooled new mothers. Foods to warm their blood were prescribed for the duration of their time in isolation. For the Yafar, women about to give birth had to be "placed outside the social circuit, sexually prohibited:' Isolating them under the house or on the ground floor protected the entire community by restricting the great power their blood contained. Especially the father dared not touch the infant, who was "with blood;' until both mother and child bathed in the river and rejoined the

The Blood of Conception, Pregnancy, and Childbirth • 79 community. In a perfect reversal of the couvade, Yafar men went about their normal business, pretending that nothing unusual was happening." Kabana (Papua New Guinea) parturient women left their homes lest the hot, dangerous blood fall literally or figuratively through the floorboards. The garden was also off limits, for fear that wild pigs would be drawn to the smell of blood and trample the crops. An unused outbuilding was more appropriate. Men could be nowhere near. Women were modest and their husbands needed to be sheltered from the power of their blood . In fact, only kinswomen who were said to "share blood" could be present. Because her blood was as their own, they had a direct stake in the mother to be and were less vulnerable . However, adolescent female kin were excluded to spare them from being terrified of the pain and blood of childbirth. Mother and baby remained in seclusion for three days until postpartum discharge of blood had subsided." Foi women gave birth in the huts where women menstruated; the women had parallel status and similar restrictions. Any contact contaminated their husbands' food, clothes, or tools and caused him to fall ill. After parturition, they remained in the hut from nine to eleven days until the blood subsided, after which the child could be introduced to the father." Kinswomen helped a delivering mother of Wogeo Island, off the northern coast of New Guinea, by preparing a bed ofleaves on the beach and using mats to shelter her from rain. During labor, they supported her back and pressed on her shoulders. But once the infant crowned, they had to step aside and the parturient mother had to manage on her own. Even a breech infant could not be corrected by manipulation. A husband at home made sure to open every door and undo every cord, box, or bundle to sympathetically lessen his wife's travail. But observers could only call on magical specialists until the infant presented, even if mother and infant died. After the delivery, Wogeo women gathered up the afterbirth and bloody leaves and cast everything into the ocean. The husband's headman took the umbilical cord far out to sea to prevent it from shriveling up. The blood of the afterbirth was said to contain nine months worth of male impurities from having associated with men . Men undergoing ritual purification were termed the same as the afterbirth, bwaruka." The Bimin-Kuskusmin believed that menstrual blood formed both the fetus and the placenta . The cord symbolized the fetus's uterine link to its mother's blood. To symbolically extinguish this connection and cement the child to the patriline, the father'ssister cut the cord. To underscore the separation, they later buried a boy's cord in a taro garden belonging to an agnatic ritual leader-taro being a male-associated crop. The cord of a girl was given to the father 's sister to bury in her sweet potato garden, for they were female-associated crops." Hawaiians supposed that they could read the sex of the baby yet to be born by the hue of amniotic fluid once the sac ruptured. "Reddish-colored amniotic

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fluid portended a boy, a brownish fluid, a girl," If the fluid thickened and formed large clots, then the baby would be a large one. Hawaiians carefully washed the placenta of blood to ensure that the baby would not suffer "sore, weak eyes:' and then they buried it under a tree.so Midwives in Western Samoa situated the "life" of the baby in the placenta immediately after delivery. They massaged the "life" down the still throbbing umbilical cord, through the navel. They waited until it stopped beating before cutting it. They buried the placenta in the earth; the word fanua translated simultaneously as afterbirth, field, and land." Hindu Fijian mothers were excluded from the temple for thirty days because of blood pollution. Ritual purification involved bathing. Only then could they be reintegrated into the community/" The limited information on indigenous North American birth rituals repeats many already familiar themes. Many practiced ritual seclusion during birth. Bloody products of birth were treated with great reverence and respect. Everywhere we know of, blood was considered so much more than a fluid mess." On the lower Columbia River Wishram women gave birth in semisubterranean, earth-domed huts or in makeshift pits, both of which were filled with hot rocks covered with mats or grasses. Heating the new mother was the central therapeutic measure at every stage of the birthing and immediate postpartum period, when heavy bleeding was desirable. One midwife said, "With heat the mother bled clean very soon" and expelled the placenta and lochia clots.S4 Iicarilla Apache midwives continually chewed "blood medicine" during birth, "Otherwise, her hands will be knotted up; she'll have rheumatism through the knuckles and finger joints because she has to touch the child while it is still bloody:' They stopped the bloody discharge after delivery with herbal remedies such as teas made from watercress leaves, Eriogonum racemosum and Eriogonum jamesii roots, cinquefoil roots, anglepod seeds and roots, Bahia dissecta tops and roots, leaves of the New Mexico rubber plant, Juniper needles, arrowhead seed pods and flowers, stems of Mormon tea, roots of wild geranium, and roots of Androsace pinetorum . When all else failed, a black phoebe egg was broken into water, boiled, and drank. The blood of childbirth remained dried on the newborn until four days after birth. Then Jicarilla singers assembled to perform the "Water Has Been Put on Top of His Head" rite to bind the child to his or her family. Water from the two sacred male rivers, the Rio Grande and the Arkansas, and the two sacred female rivers, the Canadian and the Pecos, were mixed together for the infant's first bath . After procuring a perfect deerskin, with no wound openings, the singer painted it with red ochre, pollen, and specular iron ore. Next, the singer "starts now to paint the baby's face. He uses the palm of his hand and paints the entire face with red ochre. Then he paints the mother's face,

The Blood of Conception, Pregnancy, and Childbirth • 81 and next the father's. If other children of the mother are present, or any other children or adults, the singer paints them too:' Thus, all present received the greatest prayer and blessing." Navajo birth helpers gathered the bloodied sheepskin on which the new mother had delivered. They variously placed the placenta and other blood stained things in the branches of an isolated tree or in a shady spot, or they buried them. Such actions would help them "to avoid grave harm to the child" through the blood. Ritual could surround a newborn's first bath. Navajos took care to gently pour the bathwater in a safe, out of the way place, under a bush or tree. "The blood is treated with reverence because it is considered to be part of a person . .. 'an undeveloped human: " The blood was regarded as living tissue that retained a connection with the infant even after it was separated from it. Splattering it would bruise the blood, and it was not to be burned; burning the blood would bring on fever in the baby. The cultural trauma of the widespread trend toward hospital births has increasingly been mitigated for the Navajo by staff who were trained to be culturally sensitive. Traditional red sashes hung in delivery rooms on the Navajo Reservation for women to pull on in labor. Nurses knew to handle blood respectfully and to save placentas and umbilical cords for new mothers to take horne." Zuni midwives also treated the bloody birth products with great respect. The new mother's maternal grandmother could set the placenta adrift in the river "with a prayer that the young mother might be blessed with many children:' Midwives covered with sand the pool of lochial blood on the sheepskin where the new mother gave birth. The sand absorbed much of the blood, which they carried out of the dwelling for proper burial. 87 Southern Numic people, including the communities of Kaibab and San Juan and other Southern Paiute and Ute towns, shared the belief that the loss of blood during parturition seriously cooled new mothers. After childbirth, women were to lie on special hot beds to replenish them. Failure to do so seriously impaired their future reproductive potential. 88 The Cuyo Cuyo of the southern Peruvian Andean highlands considered women more susceptible to dangerous cooling of their blood because of their extra orifice. The vagina was also at risk of invasion by malevolent forces (wayras) . Squatting to urinate endangered them, but childbirth was the most critical juncture of all. The cumulative affects of multiple births exposing them to wayras rendered all middle-aged women debilidad, or debilitated. Repeated childbearing validated a woman's femininity while simultaneously robbing her of it.89 The Canelos and Iivaro of eastern Ecuador also thought parturient women to be critically dangerous because of the blood involved. An older midwife

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took a Canelos mother to be out to a plantain or manioc plantation to deliver on a prepared "ranch:' Once the child was born, the midwife washed the mother and used heated lava stones to stop the blood flow," After delivery, Haitian mothers and infants were bathed in calabash-steeped water. The vaginal area, however, was left untouched. For the next forty days, the area surrounding the birth canal was washed twice daily. The mother's kinswomen carefully shielded the bloodied birth cloths from others until they could cleanse them to prevent the blood from being used as a conduit for malevolence . Haitians sacrificed chickens, symbols of fertility in many parts of the world, at childbirth."

Conclusion The foregoing examples surely prove that imputing meaning to the blood of childbirth was a very natural thing for human cultures across the world to do. Some material is very sketchy, imparting only bits and pieces of insight into rituals that normally were integrated into an entire reproductive life cycle. However, a few more contemporary ethnographic studies convey detailed cultural matrices of ideas about the role blood plays in human reproduction. In every case that I uncovered, if scholars bothered to imagine that people might regard the substances associated with conception and birth as more than mere refuse, blood figured prominently. Peoples had various theories about how babies came into being . Their ideas about internal human physiology reflected their cosmologies. Nowhere else in the life cycle is the role of culture in determining which genes are selected for more obvious than in rituals directed toward women and babies in the throes of childbirth. Human attention was fixated because of the drama of conception and birth, the physical travail of parturient mothers, the redness of the blood, and the desperate need of newborns to be cared for. It was a liminal state where the lives of both mother and child were in real peril. Hygienic intervention could mean the difference between life and death, with all that implied in terms of the genetic future . Intense prohibitions about intervening, leaving the mother to struggle to care for herself and her infant, could and often did portend dire consequences. Every other ritualistic treatment of blood pales in comparison with the repercussions of how women and infants were treated during childbirth.

CHAPTER

4

Initiation Rites The Role ofBlood in Attaining Adult or Group Status

Most initiation rites centrally involved bloodshed. Culturally marking menarche, the first appearance of girls' menstrual blood, seems natural. However, boys' initiation generally involved bloodletting also, through either circumcision or some other bloody test of endurance intended to bond boys to the group and usher them to the status of adult men . My focus is on the symbolic meaning of the blood itself, when possible. Menarche blood universally signified a girl's newfound fertility. The meanings of boys' bloodshed varied more, but they usually emphasized male appropriation of the life-giving power inherent in women's blood and ability to give birth, while simultaneously purging boys of the influence of their mothers' blood.

The Anthropology of Initiation Rites Anthropologists have been engrossed with initiation rites since the inception of the discipline. Since the 1860s, "initiation" became the accepted terminology and spawned theory after theory that relied more on cross-cultural comparisons than studies of other human institutions. The rites lent themselves to this sort of fascination . They were practiced here, but not there, even within the same culture area. Some were complicated, others simple. However, androcentrism caused female rites to be treated as postscripts to male-focused theoretical models. Bettelheims classic Symbolic Wounds devoted only 10 percent of its pages to girls. Only now are scholars calling for holistic analyses that integrate initiation rites into cultural complexes, instead of being the sole province of a certain gender or age group . This allows the gendered relationships among initiation rituals to be brought into crisper focus.

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Androcentric biases seriously impa ired theorizing. Boys' initiations were often thought to socialize the boys. Adding girls complicated the issue. Some societies initiated boys, some initiated both boys and girls, and others initiated only girls. If universal psychodynamics motivated initiation rituals, then why was there so much cultural variation? Ifboys were being separated from the maternal, domestic sphere of life, then why were girls initiated in some cultures? Androcentrism marg inalized and neglected the roles of girls and women in ritual life. The people being studied understood women's pivotal centrality better than the legion of researchers with their PhDs . Male initiation rituals so extensively sought to duplicate women's procreative capacities as to be almost a trope. Men "menstruated;' gave birth to men , and gestated items associated with men such as canoes or yams. So strong was this association that women's bodies, with their power to reproduce, were potent symbols of the social body and social reproduction. Ubiquitous metaphors also made this connection. Given this, girls' initiation rites should be equally, if not more, important than boys' initiation rites. Androcentrism has generated mistakes . Many argued that male initiations expressed a culture's worldview, but female rituals contributed as much or more . Formerly construed as phallic, the long yams central to the Abelam cult were actually female symbols. The big woman who was the central motif in girls' ceremonies also lay at the core of their cosmology. Male rituals can seem extremely misogynistic, in contrast to the gender complementarity that often emerges when male and female rites are integrated in a more holistic context .' Theorists offered either sociogenic or psychogenic explanations for initiation rites. Sociogenic approaches, first voiced by Van Gennep in LesRitesde Passage, saw initiation rites expressing societies' needs . Radcliffe-Brown held that they acknowledged and verified a child's transition to adulthood. La Fontaine argued that initiation rites revealed the power of societies' cultural logic to perpetuate the social order. Both sociogenic and psychogenic explanations emphasized the psychodynamic operations of the human mind. The difference between the two hinged on causation. In the sociogenic view, ceremonies produced the psychological consequences society needed. In the psychogenic view,psychology was both impetus and effect. Psychogenic champions offered a number of interpretations. Rituals variously warned against killing family members or committing incest, mediated cross-sex envy and social gender role expectations, and expressed male jealousy of female procreative capacities and the intimate relationships between sons and mothers. Scholars rightfully rejected monocausal explanations. Researchers protested that such widely variable rites distributed literally across the globe should not be condensed to a "single set of circumstances:' The most important legacy has been scholars' understanding that initiation

Initiation Rites • 85 rites (and all rituals, for that matter) can derive from multiple origins, be complicated and nuanced, accomplish more than a single goal, and evolve over time. Rituals that appeared similar on the surface could have performed different functions.' "Initiation" implies induction "into" something, usually assumed to be adulthood and to happen only once . Those who held that true initiation rites properly inducted a group ignored ceremonies that marked individual transitions, such as most menarche rituals, producing a bias again st girls. Boys' and girls' rituals, even within the same culture, did not necessarily aim for or accomplish equivalent things. Reserving the term "puberty" rites for those who clustered around certain ages and physical changes is no longer justifiable. Gonadotrophin hormone levels start to rise for girls and boys around age seven and do not settle into cyclicity-thought to be the end of puberty-until after age seventeen. Menarche does not mark full fertility. Van Gennep advised that "it would be better to stop calling initiation rites 'puberty rites.':" Besides, "Puberty can only become a 'social fact' when the physiological fact is recognized socially" These assumptions cause serious distortions, including a far-reaching, ethnocentric Western bias." Life cycle rituals are components of a greater whole intended to move individuals throughout the life course. It is a gross mistake to pluck a single ritual for one gender out of the cultural whole, zoom the lens in, and assume that a full understanding can be gained. In most cultures, men and women, boys and girls, young, old, and in between are inextricably interrelated. Listening closely to the reasons people give for what they do is far more instructive than correlating male initiation rites with other cultural characteristics such as long-term mother-child sleeping patterns, long postpartum intercourse taboos, exogamous marriage patterns, residence patterns, male sodality societies, and so forth. Even the strongest correlation always falls far short of 100 percent. From an ethnographic perspective, such academic enterprises seem like bizarre exercises in abstraction that none of the cultural subjects would recognize. Initiation rituals usually included bloodshed. More sensitive studies have tapped peoples' beliefs to reveal that blood was never just a messy by-product; it had spiritual significance. Earlier scholars did not focus on blood, but often told how people treated it, and sometimes how they regarded it. Always, people saw women's blood and men's blood as distinct but interrelated. Although menarche and menstruation appear to be natural processes that lay beyond individual or social control, the culture surrounding "the body of the sexually maturing girl" determined "their meaning and . .. pattern:' A cultural and biomedical condition such as anorexia nervosa can totally eclipse menstrual cycling . Donna Haraway demonstrated that "nature" was not so fixed or given. Most cultures spotlighted menarche and menstruation, marked by red blood, as lying at the heart of female difference for better or worse ."

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Menarche Mayan, Greek, and Gypsy women did not tell girls about menarche, so it was traumatic. When girls cried, thinking they were ill, they received a cloth and were told they would bleed monthly and to hide it from men. This treatment also occurred in the United States at times ." Most maturing girls learned the cultural meaning of their bodies' physical changes in intergenerationaI, single sex settings. Whether in the kitchen, at the hearth, or in the fields, girls absorbed information from their mothers, other older women, and more mature girls. They might have learned to celebrate, as in the case of the Navajo Kinaalda ceremony, or to be apprehensive, as in the case of genital infibulation, or to feel something in between. Blood, which carried powerful connotations of both the generation of life and danger, marked physical changes in Gisu women. Menarche made a young woman marriageable and ready for childbearing. Rituals began as soon as the blood stopped. The woman was warned that menstrual blood posed dangers to others and was told to eat chickens and eggs to avoid barrenness. The Gisu highly valued virginity. Defloration blood demonstrated that a young woman had been carefully guarded. Should there be no bloodshed at this marriage ritual, she risked rejection. As a human act, defloration was distinguished from menarche and childbirth. Girls between ages fifteen and seventeen on the New Guinean island of Wogeo wept at menarche because they would soon marry and leave their natal homes. They were not segregated like older menstruating women. After hearing the news, women began cooking vegetable curry and the young girl was taken to the beach to bathe. She received a new, white-fringed skirt to mark her as a woman. Thereafter she wore a brown or black skirt while menstruating. It was taboo for her to eat with her fingers or touch her body; she received a special fork and a bone scratcher. She refrained from eating raw food, smoking, or chewing betel nuts . Unlike boys undergoing initiation, she could drink water only from a half coconut shell. She was ritually cool, but she could warm herself by eating curry. Coming close to the fire violated her beauty and withered her flesh. On the next day, girls who would soon menstruate kept her company. They went everywhere with her, embraced her to convey warmth, and washed her daily. They gave her bulima leaves to chew to blacken her teeth and enhance her beauty, and they observed her taboos. The girl moved about the community openly, as people collected food for a large feast. At first, only women attended the ceremony. They symbolically buried the girl's childhood. Substituting a black petticoat, they spoke to it in kinship terms ("Alas, you have left us, my grandchild; I shall see you no more:'), interred it, and otherwise behaved like funeral mourners. She was anointed with coconut oil and red ochre. At the end, the new woman stood over a bed of coals to

Initiation Rites • 87 smoke away impurities. She bathed and drank water with her friends in the hills, creating an everlasting bond of blood sisterhood? In Bhalara, Nepal, regulating legitimate sexuality through marriage maintained patrilineal honor. From a very young age girls internalized their caste status . They knew who might be polluted by whom and how to distance themselves. The greater the caste's status, the more tightly drawn were the boundaries governing marriage possibilities and girls' behavior. Mary Douglas noted, "What to do about honor [was] an issue of what to do about women:' Girls were expected to remain virgins until marriage, and most did not reach menarche until after marriage. At menarche, girls retreated to a neighbor's home to avoid relatives and men . Her mother first visited and brought her sweets and a walnut, symbolizing the homeless god Ganesh, who shared her temporary status . After four days she ritually bathed in a stream and could touch other women after five days. She received new clothing and returned home after ten days. Subsequent menstrual restrictions were less elaborate. s In the southern regions of India, menarche rituals were most pronounced. The duration of seclusion varied, but the Pulayan, Parayan, and Naya, encompassing more than a hundred matrilineal or semimatrilineal groups, shared similar practices. Girls stayed either in menstrual huts or in specific areas of their home. When secluded inside, they could not touch the earth or see the sky, reflecting their liminal status. Sometimes another girl or her mother stayed and brought her food. Male company was forbidden. The rituals featured symbols of fertility, such as coconuts, betel leaves, areca nuts, and turmeric. Ear piercing eased childbirth through a direct connection to the womb. A ritual bath and new clothing usually marked the end of seclusion. Then girls received gifts from visitors and shared a feast in their honor. Drumming or loud singing announced their new status to the community. The absence of subsequent menstrual rituals for these matrilineal groups emphasized coming of age, rather than pollution. In central India and the regions of Bihar and Bengal, menarche was marked in similar fashion . However, the higher castes of Bengal were more strict about proper performance. Women in these more patriarchal regions were more likely to observe ritual seclusion for subsequent menstrual periods, in contrast to matrilineal groups. Ceremonial defloration and marriage occurred before or soon after menarche . The most ancient texts from tribal India decree marriage at puberty. Puberty rites of the Toda of the Nilgiri hills prominently featured defloration because sexual intercourse stimulated menstruation and women's proper reproductive functioning. The Nattu Malayans, who resided in the Kerala jungles, considered a girl who reached puberty as a virgin impure and unmarriageable. Suitable sex partners were girls who were Nagnik«, or "one whose menstrual

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period is near:' A religious mandate compelled fathers to betroth girls early, often before menarche. Some religious texts intoned that fathers committed the sin of destroying an embryo every time an unmarried girl menstruated. The Parasara Smrti warned that girls should be married before age twelve. Failure to do so meant that their ancestors "will have to drink every month her discharge" and "the parents and . . . eldest brother go to hell:' The Vaya Purana congratulated the new husband of an eight-year-old for purifying "21 ancestors on his father's side and six male ancestors of his mother's side:' For Tamil girls, menarche was pivotal in a symbolic web of temperature and color. Food, people, humors, and flowers ranged on a gradient from hot to cold. Transforming processes were hot, so menarche was very hot, connoting the warming rays of the sun. It vividly demonstrated a girl's newfound fecundity and potential for procreation. A lotus bud symbolized the vagina at menarche. The girl's menstruai blood demonstrated the auspiciousness of fertility, marriage, procreation, and motherhood. Brides wore red, never white. Within the Tamil color complex, red was hot and fertile, white was cold and sterile." In twentieth-century Egypt, midwives or daya commonly deflowered brides semipublicly in the wedding ritual. While guests waited in another room, the daya thrust her cloth-covered finger into th e br ide's vagina to break her hymen. She then flaunted the bloodied cloth as proof of the bride's virginity. The daya produced blood in another way if the first attempt failed. 10 Others held that actual sexual experience or longing for a man prompted menarche. The Lepcha believed that all observable signs of pubescence, menarche, the growth of pubic hair, budding breasts, and emergent fat deposits followed a girl's first act of intercourse. Molingi, a Pukapukan, explained, "Girls who do not interest themselves in men do not start to menstruate until later on when they are older and ready to marry. Girls who menstruate too early have an undue fondness for men:' Pukapukan girls who menstruated early angered their mothers, who assumed that their daughters were already sexually active, or wanted to be. The Manus thought exercise could break a hymen, but that true menstruation followed a girl's first sex act. Some northern Australian groups also posited that intercourse caused menstruation. A Murngin individual echoed this view: "A.. . man takes a wife when she is very young. . . . He sleeps with her, loves her, and does everything but have intercourse with her.. .. This is before her blood comes:' The girl's desire for him enlarged her breasts. Her "first blood" came "after she . . . copulated with a man for the first time:' At menarche, this husband participated in the girl's initiation ceremony and painted her with red ochre afterward.I I Public menarche rites on the Pacific Coast and interior Southwest of North America shared "seclusion; attendant; restrictions on food and drink; scratching taboo; work at time of menstruation; instruction; and . . . avoidance of hunters, fishermen, gamblers, or men generally:' Many believed that the

Initiation Rites • 89 blood's power could harm others or elements of the natural world. She was vulnerable if she failed to follow prescribed rules. A girl's behavior at menarche predicted her future. 12 The Dine (Navajo) menarche ceremony, the Kinaalda, recognized a girl's first and second menstrual periods, when blood signified a new woman's reproductive power. According to Dine Oscar Tso, the blood of those menstrual periods and no others was considered "very precious. It is looked upon as very sacred:' The "first blood" was "considered 'life blood: So you have a real special ceremony:' Otherwise, menstrual blood was dangerous. Dine Mae Bekis was instructed not to wear pads: "They said it is just seen and you are not supposed to wear a pad. It is just seen at that one time:' Her mother told her that seeing the blood, only then, demonstrated that "you are a young lady now:' During this interval, the Dine believed that a girl's body was rapidly changing chemically. Elizabeth Yazzieexplained, "When you have your Kinaalda you are back into your infancy stage of life. Your body is in a stage of softness. You are thought of as a newborn baby. Your body feels like that:' During the Kinaalda, girls were to evade animal blood. Traci Michelle Begay explained, "I couldn't use knives to cut. 1couldn't . .. do any cutting of anything, or piercing. 1had to stay away from that blood:' Maureen Trudelle Schwarz did not elaborate further, but the juxtaposition of women's blood with the blood of the hunt resembles many cultures' beliefs. Four days of Kinaalda ritual keyed to Navajo cosmology followed menarche and the next menstrual flow. The ceremony closely paralleled the story of how Asdz4:4: Nadleehe, or Changing Woman, a principal deity believed to be the mother of all Dine, behaved at menarche. Found as a baby, in twelve days Changing Woman matured to experience her first menstrual cycle. Then she created the Kinaalda because there was no one to help her. Dine girls wore ceremonial clothing modeled after Changing Woman's attire. Families planned for years to have all necessary items on hand because they had to proceed the instant a girl noticed blood. Women anointed the girl several times with pollen, a fertility symbol, at the spiritually significant points of her body. Hair washing with yucca suds purified her. The east, where the rising sun signified fertility, oriented the hooghan and other ritual components. The girl ran toward the east for successively longer distances on four mornings. She returned to the hooghan just as dawn broke. A maize cake baking in a pit oven symbolized her connection to the earth. It was finished just as she returned on the fourth day. Women then "molded" the girl's body by massage, stretching, and pulling to the ideal presented by the image of Changing Woman. The U.S. policy of forcing children to attend off-reservation boarding schools interfered with conducting the Kinaalda. It was impossible to perform the rituals at the moment a girl noticed her first menstrual blood. Women who

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had not had a Kinaalda attributed fertility difficulties to this. The Dine altered th e timing to allow for abbreviated versions of the ritual. 13 Dine menarche practices heavily influenced Southern Numic peoples of the Great Basin culture area of the United States. Girls among the Kaibab and San Juan communities and other Southern Paiute and Ute groups entered seclusion, ran toward the sun before dawn, and were massaged and molded. Blood symbolized their new fertility. Like the Dine, menstruating girls avoided hunters' accouterments. Taboos against consuming meat were also parallel." At menarche, Oglala girls retre ated to a new tipi on the outskirts of the camp circle. An esteemed older woman cared for the girl and taught her the responsibilities of a wife and mother. Ten days later, her father sought a shaman to conduct the Buffalo ceremony, or Iinati Awicalowanpi. The shaman summoned the buffalo spirit to help girls acquire the attributes most coveted in Oglala women: "chastity, fecundity, industry, and hospitality:' Female relatives erected a ceremonial tipi with the doorway facing east. A cottonwood fire at the north side of the tipi protected the girl from evil powers . The initiate placed her "menstru al bundle" in a plum tree, a symbol of fecun dity, to ward off sinister forces. The father built an altar on the tipi's western side, a place of honor. He placed in the tipi a buffalo skull, a drum, rattles , sage, sweet grass, a pipe with tobacco, and a new dress for the initiate. The ceremonial setting was ready. Red was a sacred, prominent color and figured in the ritual. Red signified life, as did menstrual blood. The shaman painted his face, body, and hands red. While the pipe passed, he painted the right side of the buffalo skull red. He pantomimed a bull buffalo eager to mate and bellowed red smoke from his mouth toward the initiate. He painted the right side of the girl's face and the part in her hair red, saying, "Red is a sacred color. Your first menstrual flow was red. Then you were sacred:' The girl was entitled to paint her face this way in the future. The buffalo was a sacred fertility symbol. "It was a natural symbol of the universe" that "contained within it . . . the totality of all manifest forms of life, including people:' In their cosmogony "the buffalo and the Oglala [were] one:' Women and buffalo frequently connoted each other in stories and rituals. White Buffalo Calf Woman brought ceremonies to the Oglala. ls In northwest Amazonia, the Tukuna celebrated one of the most elaborate menarche ceremonies in South Americ a. In harmony with mythic precepts, a girl at menarche elaborately reenacted the Tukuna cosmic order. The girl initiated the process by hanging all her jewelry on the crossbeams of the family house or maloca at the first sign of bleeding. Her mother searched for her, guided by the girl's tapping together of wooden sticks. She was painted with black genipa dye for protection before being secluded in a specially constructed chamber within the maloca, analogous to the underworld. She remained there

Initiation Rites • 91 as a voreki for most of the three-day ceremony as she engaged in a deadly struggle with the Noo, demons of the underworld. Smoked fish, meat, and intoxicating drink had been stockpiled. A corral was built outside near the voreki's seclusion cell. Some attendees wore masks that recreated mythic demons. On day two, the girl wore ceremonial attire to emerge from the cocoonlike compartment. Women painted her blackened skin with red urucu, which acted as glue for hawk feathers . Glass beads adorned her skirt and hung from her neck. Striking toucan feathers draped down her back. Colorful macaw feathers protruded from bracelets woven of toucan feathers. The crowning glory of this avian symbolism was an elaborate headdress of bright scarlet macaw tail feathers . Usually only male shamans wore this on their cosmic journeys. Rarely in South America did women don such a head ornament. Red macaw feathers symbolized the sun's creative power. In artistic renditions the sun wore the same headdress as the voreki. Red symbolism united the fertility of the sun and the newly menstruating voreki. The voreki had been shielded from viewing the sun . At the precise moment of sunrise she entered the corral and the macaw headdress covering her eyes was lifted. The voreki emerged from her battle with demons to "bask in the full glory of the solar realm.?" Red, white, and black colors were core in the tripartite color symbolism of the Zaramo of Tanzania . Menarche was the first in a series of initiations to usher a girl to and through womanhood. Mothers saved the first pad that absorbed a girl's blood for future ritual purposes. Red most evoked women's fertility, but all three colors figured prominently in the rituals accompanying Salome's menstrual instruction, her coming out, her marriage, her children's births, and her grandchildren's puberty rites, which marked the end of her own fertility. Seclusion at menarche represented the symbolic death of a Zaramo girl. She became a mwali who stayed indoors away from light, refrained from work, and spoke in whispers. Prior to colonization, seclusion could last for fiveyears. Since then the length has been greatly truncated. Six months is normative, though two weeks can suffice. In the past, the rites culminated in a prearranged marriage, but today most girls pursue schooling and choose their own mate. The Zaramo were matrilineal, but individuals inherited spiritual endowments from their fathers . Mothers contributed their clan's material substance. Ritual assistants were carefully chosen to represent the bilaterality within this matrilineal society. Mothers were excluded, but girls informed the maternal grandmother or an older sister in deference to the matrilineal system. Her father's sister ensured proper ritual performance. An older female relative served as the girl's kungwi, or midwife, who had special responsibilities to her forevermore.

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The mwali rites were quite complex, involving instruction in proper men strual behavior, proper responsiveness to husbands, sexual techniques, childbirth, and conduct becoming wives and mothers. The detailed instructions about intimate matters shocked Salome because "[i]n our society it is . .. very strange even to hear someone talking about those things:' She was just a child and "I felt somehow strange the next day after the teachings when I was looking at all those people . . . and it was completely changed:' Mwali rites emphasized sexual education, but blood symbolism, metaphors, and rituals were core and represented the essence of the Zaramo people. Nyalutanga was the grandmother of grandmothers, the womb of creation. The name denoted female reproductive organs . Nyalutanga spread like a squash plant, populating the earth and gestating all food. Myths that accounted for millet and rice featured red, black, and white colors. The mkole tree was salient in Zaramo cosmology. Given by Nyalutanga, the mkole tree oozed white sap that turned red as it congealed . Mwalis were taught that white appeared first, then turned red, and then black. This sequence paralleled the appearance of sexual fluids in a maturing girl's body. First, clear sexual fluids appeared, then the red menstrual blood, which dried to black, signifying death . The blackness and decay of death also evinced the potential for new life. Mkole trees produce small, red, edible fruits. The Zaramo made arches, another fertility symbol, with their branches. Elephants went to mkole groves to give birth and when their offspring were small. The Zaramo identified three life elements: women's red blood, white milk and semen, and black death . "These three colors ritually bind together different aspects of life:' This color symbolism, represented by mkole sap, also abounded in the mwali rites. The mwali rite's most important segment revolved around the mkole tree. The father's sister supervised. Ideally, she and members of the fiance's family cut a branch from the mkole tree under which the mwali's placenta and umbilical cord were buried. They took it to a ritual site, under a much larger mkole tree that would accommodate many relatives. They fashioned mkole branches and those of a "masculine" tree into a gate to mimic a vagina. The mwali crawled through, enacting her rebirth to a new status. The gate also stood for "the 'door' of the mwali that had opened with the coming of her blood:' The grass on the path connoted pubic hair. The mwali was given a white, red, and black bead to hold in her mouth, and the branch from her mkole birth tree. Women sang of the mkole sap's slippery sliminess, which insinuated vaginal fluids, breast milk, and semen, and explained the beads' meaning: "White is for ... milk ... you sucked from your mother's breast. As you .. . have grown you have seen it appear in your own body (meaning the female sexual fluid) . ... Even when you saw it appearing, full maturity was not yet attained. The black is the body hair... . But that was not yet the full maturity. Today you have seen red . . . the full maturity. From

Initiation Rites • 93 this you were born, and this is the fulfillment of you:' The mwali's pubic hair was shaved, never to be seen again. Mwali rites have changed, but they remain a strong expression of Zaramo worldview. Colonization has centralized Zaramo political structures. New religions, like Islam, have eroded women's status. Most now speak Swahili. But the "deeply experienced symbolism" persisted.I ? The Bemba of Zambia also placed menarche blood within a larger matrix of beliefs about blood, involving color symbolism. Intercourse commingled men's blood and women's blood and polluted fire. Husbands and wives purified themselves by ritually holding a pot over a fire. Menstrual blood was the antithesis of the life-giving blood contained internally. Menstrual blood connoted death and was thought to interfere with other productive functions . Most Bemba ritual mitigated the dangerous, improper interplay of blood, sex, and fire. The chisungu, or menarche ritual, cannot be understood apart from these larger cosmological beliefs. Babies took life from their mother's blood, so menarche heralded a girl's fertility. The chisungu purified her and initiated her into women's responsibilities. Tripartite color symbolism suffused the ritual. Objects that signified women, such as fish and musuku trees, had roles in the month-long rite. Imitation bridegrooms wore horns like shamans who possessed fertility magic. A snake, a symbol of male fertility, was rumored to be concealed in the roof. Sponsoring parents or "owners" (mwine) sought the services of a respected older woman (nacimbusa) to conduct the ceremonies. The nacimbusa ushered the girl to her new stage of life. She imitated childbirth, swinging her body over a hole while balanced on her elbows. She would likely serve as midwife to the girl's children. In the past, fiances attended with other relatives. Girls learned proper behavior for women. Songs rang with admonitions about improper interaction among blood, sex, and fire. Pottery figurines showed the obligations of menstruating women, wives, mothers, and daughters-in-law. Girls who did not undergo the ritual were "just a piece of rubbish . .. an uncultivated weed . . . an unfired pot ... a fool . .. or just 'not a woman: " Above all, the perils of mishandled menstrual blood pervaded the chisungu . A girl would be protected only by scrupulously following the chisungus precepts. Safe passage through a series of mimetic actions would screen the girl and her relations from her power to interfere with other productive functions, especially those involving blood, sex, and fire. Red signified menstrual blood in wall designs and pottery motifs. The red glow of a lit taper inside a perforated pottery ball evinced the blood inside a woman. A red dye made of powdered cam wood was included in emblem bundles and smeared on initiates at important junctures of the chisungu . The girls were carried aloft back to the village in the manner of chiefs or brides, while they sang, " 'The chisungu has fallen off' . . . The red powder is the blood:"

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People rubbed red cam wood powder on successful warriors and lion killers. They, like chisungu celebrants, had "done something fearful and ... succeeded:' Male actions involving dangerous bloodshed and the chisungu were ideologically parallel. Whitening magic nullified hazardous menstrual blood. Girls painted with white clay to purify them were likened to egrets : beautiful, white birds that exemplified purity in many African cultures. However, red cam wood powder was again applied at the conclusion of the whitening magic segment of the chisungu. True women would never escape the overwhelming power of their fertility until they had passed menopause. Menstrual blood connoted its antithesis." As explicit pronatalists, the matrilineal Ashanti regarded pubescent girls highly. Because children formed from their mothers' blood (magya) and their fathers' spirit (sunsum or ntoroi, a girl's first menstrual blood occasioned great rejoicing. Once informed of a girl's new physical condition, the queen mother closely observed to ensure the regularity of her menstrual cycles and to make sure she was not pregnant. When she gave the word, nubility rites commenced. Ancestral deities determined the most auspicious time for the rites. A sunny, dry time of year enabled kin and friends to assemble easily. It took time to accumulate objects of wealth, such as lavish kente cloth, expensive beads, gold jewelry, blankets and mats, and large pots , to give the girl. Symbolically important plant and animals products were prominent in the ceremony: "eggs, fowls, sheep, yams, cocoyams, plantain, cooking oil, salt, smoked flesh of animals, firewood, palm-oil, onions, pepper, beans, garden-eggs, a certain amount of money, and a host of other things:' On rare occasions, wealthy families provided an elephant hide for their daughter's rites. Fathers and fiances funded the ceremony for female participants. The weeklong ritual began when many assembled women sang their spiritual thanks and chanted, "Rejoice, rejoice! She has menstruated, she has menstruated!" The girl was then "enstooled" like a chief. Ritual actions enhanced her fertility. She received a ceremonial haircut. She dressed in women's fashion for the first time . At a free-flowing river, a women stripped her naked and praised her body parts as she bathed them. In the feast that followed, the officiant explained the function of each food . God created plantain first. Salt brought happiness. Elephant hide made her womb capable of bearing ten children. Eggs lessened her childbirth travail. Bananas softened her womb. Finally, a boiled egg placed in her mouth made all her future children healthy. A friend struck her on the back to loosen her womb. The same restrictions that governed menstruating women bound initiates. Their blood's power could not interfere with other productive activities. They should not cook for others, especially their husbands, and they should not

Initiation Rites • 95 approach his possessions. Death awaited if they swore an oath, crossed a river, addressed their husbands directly, or touched talking drums or fetishes. The Ashanti abhorred bloodshed. Any blood spilled brought supernatural reprisals . Self-defense was no excuse. Blood that escaped the body brought retribution. A girl had to complete nubility rites before she was free to have sex. Intercourse before menarche was a grave offense against the community "because the forceful breaking of a little girl's hymen could cause her to bleed . . . and drive the super-natural powers in their fury to inflict calamities on the living:' Cultural censure of prenubility sex outweighed premarital sex. Prenubility sex was thought to bring barrenness, famine, disease, and drought to the living. If menarche had passed, then blood sacrifice on the ancestral stools might placate offended spirits. Otherwise, the errant girl had to endure the kyiribra ritual. Kyiribra (kyiri, "to hate" and bra, "life, or menses") expressed Ashanti attitudes toward premarital sex. The ritual purified the girl and society at large. Without it, "the sword of misery hangs over the community ready to drop at any time:' After an elder woman prayed to the insulted spirits, she forced the girl to view the vividly red damram leaf. "All kinds of red ... symbolize occasions of melancholy such as . . . death of a close relation, an act of war, national danger, sudden calamity, boisterousness, violence, and a show of dissatisfaction:' Mourning rituals were suffused with the color red. Being forced to confront the red damram leaflet the girl know that she was accountable for her gross offense. People forced her to sit beneath an akusia tree, symbolic of the chief's house. Earlier, criminals were executed here. She was stripped of all but a loincloth, with her legs splayed wide. An executioner held a struggling sheep aloft, slit its throat, and let the blood gush on the girl's head . Proper purification required the blood to course down the girl's genitals . The chief's spokesman then threw an egg at her head, intoning the spirits to let the misfortunes fall on her alone. Next he poured red palm oil on her head, followed by a pot of water. Blood and palm oil symbolized people's hatred of her deed. Water washed it away. The severed sheep's head was crammed under her left armpit, its legs under her right armpit. The head or legs of a chick were shoved into her mouth with the rest of the chick's body hanging out. With a final exhortation of "Let your illluck remain with you;' a mob chased the girl out of the village. If pregnant, she remained in the dangerous bush in the company of wild animals and spiders until she gave birth. They also poured blood on the offending boy's feet. He accompanied the girl into the bush because fathers needed to continue intercourse to build up the fetus. Given the relatively lax treatment of boys, most of the blame for the misdeed lay with the girl.

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A pregnancy produced by prenubility sex was the worst abomination of all. Despite the kyiribra ritual, people doubted that life could go well for anyone involved. Delivering a full-term pregnancy could kill a girl so young. People knew girls who later died from shame . People expected these children to be deficient. The girl's matrilineage anticipated calamity." In New Guinea, Ndumba mothers hurried girls who discovered bleeding to the house reserved for menstruating and giving birth, where they would un dergo the kwaasi ceremony. Senior women offered stories and instruction and people brought gifts to mark her new status . For a skirt, she received saamma bark, "to create the thick, rustling layers that turn the bodies of women into musical instruments as they swish and shake on the dance ground:' The active ritual phase commenced once the flow abated. Local women recognized her altered state. On the sixth evening , women from every town, clan, and age group packed the room. They sat in patterned formation: the girl in the center, her mother to her right, and three curers to her left. Behind her mother sat her clan relatives. Everyone else sat to the rear. Curers danced and sang of vegetative growth cycles. In burst a mother, dressed as a man carrying a bow and dancing in exaggerated male steps, and a daughter in a kwaas i bark skirt. They chanted, "Men are the enemy:' Spectators sang of fertile plants, birds, and animals . Attendees instructed them to be careful especially regard ing gardens, pigs, food, and men , who were vulnerable to her menstrual blood's power. If she harmed them , even accidentally, she would be punished. If her carelessness killed a man , she could be executed . Ndumba genealogies recounted such occurrences. More dancers entered and exited into the wee hours of the morning. Near dawn , the songs changed to ones of lament and shame . Mothers cried over their daughters' misdeeds. At dawn, the assembled throng filed away to their homes to rest. The next day brought a public reception. The girl's mother's clan relatives gathered, butchered, and roasted pigs. While the feast cooked , her matriclansmen escorted her to a stream. As she stepped into a pool, a kinsman seized her, and her mother's brother thrust saw-edged sedge plants in and out of her nostrils, just as in boys' initiation rituals . She bowed her head, allowing the current to carry the blood away. They pierced her nose and rubbed her body with stinging nettles, raising welts. In conclusion, men asserted the superiority of male, culturally created bloodletting in opposition to women's natural menstrual flow.20 Menarche was a critical time for Kafe girls in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea. While secluded, they observed food taboos and received instructions about their budding sexuality and women's responsibilities. They learned to manage the oppositional qualities of menstrual blood and semen to avoid endangering themselves and others. Women were not alone in their ability to pollute , and men were not the sole victims ."

Initiation Rites • 97 When formal , public acknowledgment through explicit, religious rituals was absent, some assumed that cultures did not mark menarche at all. Scholars assumed that menarche and menstrual taboos were "fixed and universal" when both were "changeable, subject to reformulation, and highly specific to time and place:' Emphasizing hygiene was itself a form of menstrual taboo. Historically, efforts to contain menstrual blood varied greatly. Some societies, such as the Amazonian Kayapo, had no "sanitary" restrictions and used no "protection:' The Kayapo word for menstruation translated as "stripe down the leg:' Extreme concern with secrecy and avoiding public disclosure became paramount to American mothers and their daughters.f Late-eighteenth century Americans regarded menarche and menstruation as natural processes. Imbued with the Protestant work ethic, physicians advised that exercise and industrious activity established proper menstrual functioning. Too much activity, however, such as dancing "inordinately;' interfered. A healthy diet without spicy or salty food was best. But dramatic change was afoot; the American Revolution, the industrial revolution, and increasing urbanization were transforming society, undermining the autonomy of households and marginalizing the status of women. Physicians worried about these changes and wrote their anxieties onto pubescent girls' bodies. Dr. w.w. Bliss warned that too much exposure to "fashionable life;' such as "balls, parties, the opera;' and "sentimental reading and card-tables;' and things of a sexual nature, such as "pru rient books, passionstirring pictures, statues, conversations upon love, constant proximity to, and fond toyings and personal freedom with, the opposite sex;' would bring on the menses earlier and produce heavier flows, none of which was productive, temperate, or beneficial. Opportunities to dally with men, which abounded in cities, contributed to premature menarche. Their apprehensions influenced how they guided pubescent girls." In the I800s, treating menarche followed the same trajectory as managing childbirth. Women increasingly ceded control to hospitals and "scientific medicine:' Girls spent less time with heterogeneous groups of women and more time in age-segregated groups. The rise of a highly individuated style of domesticity left mothers to instruct girls alone." Simultaneously, age at menarche dropped. In 1780, age at menarche in western Europe and the United States averaged seventeen years. Almost a century later in 1877, the average age had fallen to fifteen years. By 1901, the average age declined further to less than fourteen years. By 1948, the average age was slightly less than thirteen years. Today, the average age of menarche is about twelve and a half years. To begin menstruating, a girl must have enough body fat available to produce energy. Improved diet and greater control over infectious disease contributed to the declining age at menarche. Western Europe and the United States were producing "larger, healthier young women who menstruate [d] earlier.?"

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The decline of age at menarche was a biological fact that was interpreted within cultural contexts. The social world of girls in the year 2000 who reached menarche at thirteen, was far different than for girls in earlier centuries. Some girls would have married before they reached menarche. Elite mothers steeped in Victorian domesticity responded to declining menarche with denial. Believing that menarche marked their daughter's budding sexuality, many mothers tried to deflect the reality for as long as possible. Girls menstruated earlier and married later, so giving intimate sexual detail seemed like too much too soon . Prolonged adolescence demanded that their daughters' virtue be sustained. They thought disclosing the intricacies of menstruation was "the first step on the slippery slope to loss of innocence:' Proper Victorian mothers increasingl y evaded the topic. Declining age at menarche divorced girls from knowing about their bodies and sex. "Where 'innocence' was revered, as . . . in middle-class Victorian America;' menstruation was taught pragmatically with "the 'sexual connection' left until 'later: ,,26 Medical practitioners considered puberty a critical developmental period. Boys enjoyed greater strength and vitality, but girls began their monthly sojourns of weakness and debilitation. Girls had to reserve their vital force because "special dangers" attended their reproductive functions. Doctors recalled Hippocrates's warnings that "nubile virgins, particularly about the menstrual periods, are affected with paroxysms, [and] apoplexies :' Every menstrual period would make girls "susceptible to morbid influences and liable to serious derangements:' Physicians counseled girls to take it easy. Thomas Emmett told girls to "spend the year before and two years after puberty at rest:' She should pass each menstrual period "recumbent" until her system adjusted "to the new order of life:' Stanley Hall advised that girls be "turn ed out to grass" at menarche to "let nature do its beautiful work of inflorescence:' Others recoiled from this drastic suggestion of total inactivity for years on end, seeking balance between overly strenuous physical demands and healthful exercise to maintain fitness." Rest alone would not suffice. Physicians argued that going to school , especially college, impaired girls' ripening systems. Age at menarche had declined more for American girls than their European counterparts, which they interpreted as a problem. Physicians argued, "Mental activity during the catamenial week destroyed feminine capabilities and might well interfere with ovulation and arrest reproductive development. Studying forced the brain to use up the blood and energy needed to get the menstrual process functioning efficiently:' With such dire warnings, how could American girls be saved if their mothers did not teach them what to do?28 Doctors labeled mothers who failed to prepare their daughters for menarche "inadequate:' Girls were left in the dark about menarche and menstruation. The trend did not reverse until the mid twentieth century. Educators, physicians, and girls lamented their ignorance.

Initiation Rites • 99 In 1852, Edward Tilt, a trailblazer in obstetrics and gynecology, set the tone about preparedness seized upon by scores of disciples. The crusade escalated into the twentieth century. Incompetent mothers were to blame, and male physicians would come to the rescue. In the I870s, more American women were poised to enter universities. Arguing against women's admission, Edward Clarke of Harvard charged they did not know of their "rhythmic periodicity:' Even supporters of coeducation such as Cornell's Burt Wilder were aghast that parents allowed daughters to leave for college without informing them of their "generative function:' His influential book What Young People Should Know forewarned better preparation .29 It took one woman "nearly a lifetime to forgive my mother for sending me away to ... school without telling me:' Girls at home fared no better. Sixty percent of Boston high school girls surveyed in 1895 were ignorant of menarche. Seventy-five percent of the women surveyed at Stanford between 1892 and 1920 had no warning. One-third knew nothing, "Not the least in the world:' One woman's mother, a physician, "refused to instruct me when I asked questions:' Another received "the facts;' but was told that "such things were not talked about also not thought of" This ritual avoidance stemmed from declining age at menarche and the Victorian suppression of sexuality. However, the repercussions lasted long after the Victorians exited." Women cringed from discussing menarche, but not entirely from embarrassment. Ovarian function was unknown until the 1930s. Earlier scholars speculated. Hall wrote, "Precisely what menstruation is, is not very well known;' and thought it was analogous to estrus. Even so, the shrill cant of the inadequate mother brought girls into partnership with medical specialists." Between 1890 and 1920, American girls spared their reticent mothers by reading about menstruation. Some hid books such as Naphey's Physical Life of Women and Cowan's Science of a New Life from probing parental eyes. In Daughter, Mother, and Father, published in 1913, the American Medical Association recommended the perfect blend of biology, hygiene, and motherly advice to prepare girls for menarche. These advice books also mapped out the hygienic imperative increasingly advocated by physicians and their middle-toupper-class clientele.32 Immigrant working-class women before World War I were no more prepared . Mika, a Yugoslavian immigrant, explained, "We ashamed people. We don't tell mother nothing, mother no tell us:' However, there were other venues for learning. Crowded housing, the workplace, and close proximity with girls and women of all ages gave working-class girls more opportunities to learn their bodies' physical functions. Some expected their daughters to learn by word of mouth. A Finnish mother apologized, saying, "Poor dear. I thought the girls at school would tell you:' Girls with more experience init iated others. Irene learned from an older friend at a settlement house . "[My friend]

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was mature . . . and she would tell me things that would just go over my head: ' An Austro-Hungarian coal miner's daughter reported, "We just had to learn it from each other . .. because. . . way back, they didn't discuss things like that:' A first-generation Finnish American girl learned in the school bathroom. She overheard the "older girls .. .complaining-and bragging-about 'the monthlies' and 'Grandma coming to visit: ,,33 Corporate America capitalized on casting mothers as inadequate in marketing "sanitary products" after World War I. They advertised from a "vacuum of advice"; since mothers did not tell, Kimberly-Clark would. Nurses dispensed information, answered question s, and mailed samples in plain, unmarked wrappers. Marketers coached moth ers how to tell their daughters. Women should discard "old fashioned makeshifts;' which were "unhygienic and dangerous;' and tell girls, "Kotex, widely urged by doctors and nurses ... is used . . . in the better walks of Iife:'34 In the 1930s and 1940s, the sanitary-products indu stry established educational divisions to boost sales. They distributed tutorials to "mothers, teachers, parent-teacher associations, and the Girl Scouts:' Girls received such pamphlets as "Marjorie May's twelfth birthday:' In 1946, Disney funded The Story of Menstruation, the first indu stry cartoon viewed by ninety-three million girls. An avalanche of similar products followed, all warning mothers not to "scare her to death.?" After World War II, girls internalized what they were told. Poor Sandra Rubin, who viewed a "menstruation movie" with her mother in 1950 and lamented, "Mom doesn't understand me and laughs when I ask for a sanitary belt ... it makes me embarrassed:' 1ntergenerational differences persisted, but marketing success spurred on discussion among young girls. Lois Pollock was excited when she started menstruating in 1956:"Today 1got my period. I was over Pam's house. ... I called up my mother but . . . she didn't believe me. . . . I don't want to forget it either:' By the late 1900s, the industry targeted the adolescent niche market. The baby boom generation was a marketer's dream. Emphasizing hygiene, they hawked napkins, tampons, and panty liners for "protection" and told girls to change them often. Playing off long-standing fears of displays of menstrual blood, they suggested using both tampons and liners for added "insurance:' Baby boom girls anticipated menarche for several years as a coveted mark of maturity. Girls lorded their newfound physiology over those still waiting. Sarah Vaughn logged her reaction: "I got my period today! I'm so happy! It is weird to be bleeding. I'm still not used to it. . . . I got it at approximately 5:45. . . . I told Kerry I had it.. . . She said oh my gosh!" The sanitary-products industry channeled adolescent anxiety into the marketplace, where so many other aspects of girls' bodies landed. Girls' budding sexuality was inextricably linked with consumerism, as were their hair,

Initiation Rites • 101 fingernails, toenails, and physiques. Mothers played right along, usually without seriously engaging issues of sexuality that could have better prepared young girls for the sexual liberalism they would soon confront in the 1960s and 1970s.36 Some argue that there were no menarche rituals in the United States. This was not true. Adolescent girls' blood has been central to the ongoing construction of American femininity.

Female Genital Surgeries Female genital surgeries cut flesh, but the blood had spiritual significance. The shrill Western outcry against these practices has shrouded the meanings of both the ritual and the blood for the participants. More relativistic ethnographers are the only ones who allowed a glimpse of the blood's connotations. These practices had deep spiritual roots and social functions. The Dogon creation myth told how the god Amma created an earth woman with a clitoris made of a termite hill to copulate with. Because the termite hill obstructed his penetration, he cut it off to mate with the earth. In the first human birth, an unexcised woman's labor pains manifested in her clitoris. They were so intense that her clitoris fell off and scurried away "in the shape of a scorpion, whose venom was . . . the water and . .. blood of parturition:' The Dogon soul was both masculine and feminine . At birth, water spirits drew two shadows on the ground to represent this. The newborn was splayed on the shadows and incorporated them. Each child was androgynous with a feminine foreskin and a male clitoris. Genital operations extinguished bisexuality. Removing the foreskin launched full masculinity by resolving gender ambiguity. Altering girls' genitals established femininity, ensured virginity, and enhanced marriageability. In Egyptian ceremonies, boys shed their feminine head cloth to wear male clothing. Boys hated being called a girl or the "son of an uncircumcised woman :' Women scornfully told unaltered girls that they were "like a man:' Many African mythological accounts have an androgynous theme of the gods' and humans' bisexuality. Some gods were hermaphrodites. The gods embodied the principles of both sexes despite the gender images conveyed. Some male gods masturbated to give birth; others were portrayed with breasts. "Neith of Sais (Athens) as well as Mut-Amaunet, the wife of Amun of Thebes ... belong to those mother-goddesses, who, though they are portrayed with the symbol of motherhood, were . . . both mother and father. Mut was distinctly shown as .. . bisexual:' The pharaoh Amenhotep III chose to be portrayed in female clothing, reinforcing the bisexual trope. These themes illuminate the meanings of genital operations. Circumcision made men and women surgically incomplete but culturally gendered and

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acceptable. Without genital surgery, girls could never attain womanhood in societies with rigidly delineated gender roles." Mythic traditions alone do not explain genital surgeries, but they suggest deep spiritual elements. People gave multivocal reasons for supporting them, but most are mute about blood . The history of female genital surgeries is poorly known. Egyptian reliefs portrayed male circumcision as early as the sixth dynasty, or 2340-2189 Be. Clitoridectomy and infibulation were specifically mentioned by the first millennium BC. Herodotus reported the practices among Egyptians, Ethiopians, Hittites, and Phoenicians. From the first to sixth centuries BC, observers reported female excision in Egypt, which marked the age at which women were eligible to enter mosques, receive their dowries, inherit property, and marry. Some said the operation reduced sexual desire caused by enlarged clitorises stroking against women's clothing." Many attribute female circumcision to Islam. In truth, the procedures predated Islam, which is ambiguous about them. One popular account said Sarah had Hagar, her Egyptian cowife,excised once their relationship soured. Ishmael, Abraham's son by Hagar, was the founding ancestor of Islam. However, the Koran did not advocate female genital procedures. In fact, Mohammed counseled a circumciser, "If you circumcise, take only a small part and refrain from cutting most of the clitoris off. . .. The woman will have a ... happy face and is more welcome to her husband ifher pleasure is complete:' Despite this, Islamic jurists insisted that it was "an Islamic tradition mentioned in the tradition of the prophet, and sanctioned by Imams and Jurists in spite of their differences on whether it is a duty of sunna (tradition):' They supported it for "attenuating the sexual desire of women and directing it to desirable moderation:' In their conquest of North Africa, Arabs adopted clitoridectomy and infibulation and disseminated them . Ironically, people on the fringes of Islamic influence in Indonesia and Mali attributed genital surgeries to Islam, but Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran, and Tunisia did not do this . However, endorsement of circumcision has crept into Islamic teachings." Procedures varied. Circumcision cut away the tip of the prepuce surrounding the clitoris. Some called this sunna, which meant "following the tradition of the Prophet Mohammed:' Excision partially or totally removed the clitoris, all or part of the labia minora, and sometimes the labia majora . Excision did not involve stitching. Infibulation, known as pharaonic circumcision after its Egyptian origins, was the most ancient and severe form. Infibulation excised the clitoris, the labia minora, and from two-thirds to all of the labia majora . Both sides of the vulva were stitched together. A small piece of wood or straw created a tiny opening for urine and menstrual blood . The girl's legs were then tied together for up to two months to allow the wound to heal, creating a smooth sheath of scar tissue deemed more attractive.

Initiation Rites • 103 Childbirth was risky for infibulated women. Scar tissue was less elastic than perineal muscle, making normal delivery impossible. Scar tissue had to be cut for delivery, heightening the risk of hemorrhage. Reinfibulation followed. Every pregnancy required the same procedure. Cultures perfo rmed female genital surgeries variably from birth through adolescence. The colloquial Sudanese term for infibulation was tahur; meaning purifying or cleansing. They emphasized fertility, not sexuality. The pro cedures prepared a girl's bod y for womanhood. Clitoridectomy readied them for life'spain and hardship. Likened to cutting an umbilical cord, it symbolized achieving adult status . Family and lineage responsibilities were taught in conjunction with many initiation rituals; girls remained irresponsible juveniles without them. Many valued infibulation for ensuring virginity, chastity, and virtue to protect family honor. Limiting the vaginas opening restrained women's sexuality, enabling them to adhere to cultural norms more easily. As Hayes noted, "In Sudan, virgins are made, not born:' Many worried about the state of a woman's genitals at marriage. The procedures enhanced women's prospects as their economic security rested on marriage. Most rituals demarcated eligibility for intercourse, marriage, and childbearing. In Kikuyu, only circumcised women could own land, run a business, or hold public office. Clitoridectomy determined full social and political citizenship. Restricted opportunities made women dependent on men. Procedures associated with higher social status elevated women's marriage prospects. The upwardly mobile often emulated elite practices . Education and urbanity have not devalued female genital operations or reduced their frequency in many places. Today, 100 million women have had some form of genital surgery; another 2 million join them every year. Twenty-eight African countries in a subSaharan swath extensively practice genital cutting. Muslims in South Asia and Indonesia also keep up these ancient practices . As immigrants have moved to countries around the world, genital cutting has expanded with them. In North America, Brazil, Australia, several European countries, and South and Southeast Asia less than 1 percent of the populations practice some form of female genital cutting." In urban areas, the procedures have moved into hospitals where personnel trained in Western medicine administered anesthesia, worked with sterilized equipment and antiseptics , and adm inistered follow-up care. They also tried to persuade adults to use less dra stic procedures. Increased medicalization undermined the symbolic significance of flesh and blood. Most literature dealing with female genital surgeries in the late twentieth century br ims with outraged denunciations of both the operations and the women involved with them. Rarely have scholars sought to understand beliefs about the blood shed, though a survey of life cycle rituals strongly suggests

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that it had cultural significance. I review a few suggestive smidgens of evidence to this end . They do not support blanket generalizations but do suggest that female genital operations are part of cultural complexes that assign generative power to female genital bleeding, during childbirth, at menarche, while menstruating, or during ritual initiations." For some, the ritual was significant because "a sacrifice was made of a part of the body for the salvation of the whole. Some . .. look upon the operation as a sacrifice to the deity presiding over fertility:' Most sacrifices promoting fertility involved blood or an equivalent. Most Akan people in the Banda area of Ghana circumcised girls in the sunna tradition just before menarche, at around age fifteen. Menstrual blood nourished human fetuses, so the Sky-God sanctified the blood through genital surgery before it first flowed. If a girl menstruated before her puberty ceremony, someone of the Ligbi Muslim group purified her before she could join. Declining age at menarche required that ceremonies be performed earlier," Janice Boddy recreated in the northern Sudan village of Hofriyat the symbolic logic of infibulation that valued "enclosedness" or "interiority:' Boddy listened closely as Hofriyati women explained that infibulation aimed "to make women pure (tahir), clean (nazeej), and smooth (na'lmr' Similar metaphors expressed patterned associations in other arenas of village life. Splashing purified domestic pigeons . Scratching in the dust soiled chickens. Villagers kept chickens because eggs were "clean food"(akil nazeej) that "brings blood" (byjeeb dum) . Bachelors watched unmarried girls dance at weddings. They were called "pigeons going to market" (hamamat masheen fi suq) because their movements mimicked pigeons walking. To enhance their allure, young girls had marks representing bird tracks engraved in their cheeks. Young, circumcised girls and pure birds were associated as being clean, pure, and desirable . Fertility charms, ostrich eggs, or egg-shaped gourds full of dried seeds decorated each home. Ostrich eggs represented testes, a man's "eggs:' The creamy, white color connoted virtue. Whiteness was pure and clean. Lighter skin was holier; people with lighter skin reached heaven more easily. Brides lightened their skin with powdered vanilla pudding. White foods such as milk, eggs, rice, sugar, flour, and fish brought blood, so critical for women's role in procreation. Men purchased foods associated with the greater world for their pregnant wives. Watermelon, grapefruit, oranges, bananas, canned fish, and tinned jam, encased in thick skin or cans, were valued because they were contained and protected from impurities. They connoted infibulation, conveyed by the saying "a Sudanese girl is like a watermelon . . . there is no way in:' Each Hofriyati individual contained three vital properties. Riih, breath, was the seat of the soul, an absolute quality. The life force, consisting of emotions and desires, was nafs. 'Aqel enabled

Initiation Rites • 105 one to reason and control emotions and behavior. Nafs and 'aqel were variable. Emotions governed women more, and men were more capable of reasoning and control. Hofriyati semen conferred a child's bones, while women's flesh and blood nourished the fetus. Villagers were patrilineal but acknowledged their mothers with the phrase bain nehna lahma wa dum, "between us there is flesh and blood:' Blood was the essence of a woman's fecundity. She and her procreative power were vulnerable whenever her blood was manifest, so she took great care to prevent its loss or misappropriation. Infibulation partially contained menstrual blood. Metaphors of cultivation surrounded pregnancy. A man's seed mixed with a woman's blood to produce his crop within her. Men farmed. Women hauled water. This gendered symbolism came together in the preparation of their staple food, kisra. Women alone made kisra by mixing dura flour with water in agulla. This pumpkin-shaped pottery jar connoting a womb had a three-inch hole in the top. Gullas differed from water jars in that they had to be nonporous, or completely enclosed. A high-walled enclosure made the house or h6sh womblike. An early bloody miscarriage was treated as excrement. A fetus that had to be removed was wrapped in cloth like a corpse, put in a gulla, and buried in the hosh. They wrapped a stillborn in cloth, but buried it outside, next to the h6sh's wall. Drawing a breath before death meant that an infant received a full funeral and was interred in the graveyard at the village's fringe. Being enclosed united the gulla, the hosh, and the womb. Similarly, the h6sh's door, the gullos opening, and the cervix were equated. Before midwives received government training, diyat el-habil, or "midwives of the rope;' assisted women giving birth. Parturient mothers held onto a rope suspended from the ceiling and sat on a woven mat over a hole. To be infibulated, girls assumed the same posture. The same midwives attended them. Infibulation enclosed them more than nature had, stressing their fecundity by drastically curtailing their sexuality. Scar tissue was whiter than a normal vulva, further enhancing their purity and cleanliness. Their wombs were seen as oases. Recovery before the forty days required after delivery distinguished infibulation from childbirth. Enduring infibulation between the ages of three and ten deeply impressed on Hofriyati girls the cultural expectations surrounding childbearing. They should marry shortly after menarche, become pregnant within two years, and bear children every three years. Because most could not attain these standards, nearly half of all women between ages thirty-five and fifty attributed their personal failings to spirit possession. Red jinn spirits (zairan) composed of air, fire, and wind stood poised to attack them. Red signified their attraction to blood, fertility, and women. Possession was lifelong but could be managed through trances, when women allowed their zairan to emerge and romp about. Women

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possessed by zairan publicly acknowledged the ir failure to achieve fertility standards. They gained social means for managing it, relieving them of sole responsibility. However, they were also vuln erable to divorce or cowifery. Boddy intimately deconstructed an infibulation ritual's symbolism. It explicitly mimicked childbirth. Thus, it is relatively certain that infibulation blood, like all Hofriyati blood , held culturally constructed reproductive significance , as did the blood of menstruation and childbirth. The Sudanese were ambivalent about the daya, or midwives, because of their association with blood and sexuality. "Their work . . . exposes midwives to different types of blood:' which can be positive or negative "depending on the context:' They manipulated vaginal openings by infibulating and deinfibulating. Vaginas connoted fertility, but as conduits for blood, they were prone to invasion from malevolent jinn spirits. Daya, too, were suspect." Girls' infibulations in Egyptian Nubia were termed "big weddings:' The girl dressed as a "bride :' Her hands and feet were dyed with henna, the potent red fertility symbol. Family and friends joined in processions, sang, danced, and feasted as though at a wedding. Nubians highly valued fertility. Blood flowing "from the genital region entails a forty-da y period of 'sacred vulnerability' " for "the life-cycle crises of birth, circumcision, and marriage:' when fertility blood attracted evil spirits . As the girl recuperated, she shared the status and treatment of a bride or a parturient woman. Infibulation made her ready for intercourse and signified her adult status." Among the members of the Kikuyu Orthodox Church in Kawangware, Kenya, in the 1970s, girls between ages six and twelve years underwent a rebirthing ceremony before the ir circumcision. Bloody intestines from a sacrificed goat were wrapped around the girl, symbolizing an umbilical cord. Nearby, a woman assumed the birthing position. The blood-streaked girl pretended to emerge from the woman's vulva. The symbolic association with childbirth was explicit. In the Meru District northeast of Mt. Kenya, girls' initiation rites commenced, usually in their early twent ies, only after menarche and betrothal. The ritual process could span months or years. Successively, women had their ears pierced, stomachs tattooed, and genitals excised. Excision day was filled with singing and dancing. Excision bought "maturity with pain :' Women knew to appear fearless and inured to suffering . However, stoicism did not render blood meaningless. After all, Kikuyu initiation rituals encapsulated menarche, presumed virginity (preexcision pregnancies brought great shame and were aborted), celebrated incipient marriage and defloration and ensuing pregnancy and childbirth, and involved ear piercing, tattooing, and genital excising, almost all of which involved bloodshed. People regarded initiation blood as more than a mess.

Initiation Rites • 107 Anthropologists have not analyzed tantalizing components of the rituals suggesting the importance of women's blood. Female excisers had to be postmenopausal, sexually abstinent, and elected by the women's council. This implies that excisers had to be detached from women's blood and sexual relations . Excision blood could interfere with fecund blood.45 Circumcision celebrations in Abdah Galil village in Sudan resembled many others. Women adorned prepubescent girls in festive dresses. They dotted the part in their freshly braided hair with deep red henna, which had the symbolic power to stem an excessive flow of blood. Girls received jirtig to protect them from invidious spirits that threatened their vulnerable bodies. These same zag spirits were attracted to blood, fertility, and Hofriyati women." In the Vivunda Mzimu ceremony, cutting flesh was a minor part. The accompanying instructions were far more siginificant. Elders told the initiate how the minora, or "bugs;' would have threatened her femininity, her life, and her children. The exciser rubbed them on the initiate's forehead, cheeks, and chin, leaving blotches of blood. The initiate did the same to the exciser. The girl's mother dug her heels in the dirt and rubbed blood from her daughter's face to block bleeding and disease. Then the novice daubed the "bugs" on everyone present to protect them from what they had witnessed and threw the bugs backward between her legs. Women returned to the site to obliterate all signs of the ritual, making sure to cover any blood that had soaked the ground. They camouflaged drips from the initiate's wound on her way back to the village. As extensions of the novice, her blood or minora could be misused." The foregoing examples clarify the symbolic importance of excision blood for several African cultures. They resonate with cross-cultural examples that hold women's fertile blood in high regard. Any genital blood was signified. Excision blood, as part of initiation rites, generally paralleled that of menarche and childbirth to represent reproductive power. Menstrual blood, indicating the death of a potential child, connoted the opposite.

Male Initiation Rituals Physical changes during male adolescence are neither sudden nor marked by bloodshed. Subtle changes such as voice deepening, hair growth, changes in musculature, and penile elongation range over a longer time . Boys' celebrations tended to revolve around social initiation, not physical maturity. Though male adolescence did not involve natural bloodshed, most male initiation rituals shed boys' blood, applied blood to boys' bodies, or used red substances. Very few earlier works considered the symbolic importance of the blood that was shed in boys' initiation rites. Theories about the function of male

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initiation abound, but religion and spirituality speak more to people's beliefs about blood. Recent ethnographers' analyses of blood fall explicitly into the interpretive framework I am setting forth. Cultural correlations and tensions between women's blood and men's blood resounded in male initiation rites . The Jewish brit milah was performed shortly after birth. Many attributed the origins of Iewish circumcision to the Israelites' Egyptian roots , but ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic scenes and myths depicted an adolescent or premarital rite. Perhaps it was reserved for the elite or the priesthood. Herodotus ascribed Phoenician and Syrian circumcision to Egyptian origins. The Bible referred to circumcision elsewhere in the Near East. Even among the ancient Israelites, circumcision was associated with the army and was not universal in preexilic times . Max Weber thought it originated as an initiation rite that inducted individuals into warrior asceticism . The Bible conveyed many examples of circumcision as an adolescent or even adult ritual. Adam was born circumcised. Because Moses failed to circumcise his son, his wife Zipporah did so to stop God from killing Moses. Abraham circumcised himself at age ninety-nine. He circumcised his son Ishmael when Ishmael was thirteen. Joshua circumcised the desert tribes returning to Israel at all ages. Isaac, Abraham's son with Sarah, was the first to be circumcised on the eighth day after birth. Abraham was also told to circumcise all servants and foreigners, regardless of age. Executing circumcision eight days after birth transformed an adolescent ritual into a covenant ritual to demarcate Israelite men's relationship to God. Many argue that circumcision created a mark of Jewish difference . Most believe it became an emblem of Jewish national identity in the postexilic period when the Israelites lived in Palestine. Many saw it as sacrificial: "The foreskin thus removed and . . . the infant's blood are the Jew's offerings to God:,48 Current views about circumcision have lost their moorings with the ancient context. Rabbinic scholars have more fully contextualized it. I offer a hypothesis grounded in their observations, to extend their symbolic analyses of blood through cross-cultural analogies . Lawrence Hoffman contended that blood was more pivotal than the foreskin. Blood was the rabbinate's dominant symbol, "precisely because rabbinic Judaism was a religion of the body" They wrote their ideas about gender opposition onto human bodies, "especially. .. the binary opposition of men's blood drawn during circumcision and women's blood .. . during menstruation:' He identified the most ancient tannaitic and amoraic elements to find what had changed by the rabbinic period. He complicated what many regard as a seamless whole. The most recent of the four biblical writers gave the perspective of the priestly, rabbinic class. He obsessed over descent and created those long lists of begats, which included not one woman. Earlier authors did not care to cement

Initiation Rites • 109 patriliny and even referred to neighboring matrilineal groups. Mothers participated equally in early infant circumcision rituals, whereas all women were completely barred by the rabbinic period. Hoffman explained, "The Rabbis made Judaism inseparable from the male lifeline. .. . They had no idea of a female lifeline:' They ignored women unless they entered "the orbit of men :' Treatment of blood marked the transformation. Not until the Talmudic period was circumcision performed on the eighth day after birth. Circumcision had to do with fertility. Biblical discussions of "uncircumcised fruit trees" implied that pruning saplings and penises ensured fecundity. Abraham circumcised himself at age ninety-nine because God commanded him to "be fruitful and multiply"; his covenant was secondary. Abraham asked that Ishmael, too, be blessed with many descendants. When God acquiesced, Abraham circumcised Ishmael (his son by Egyptian servant Hagar), but the priests never admitted him into the covenant. The fertility theme overshadowed the covenant. Abraham's circumcision also reflected concerns about descent. As the sole men alive, descent from Adam and Noah was clear. Through circumcision, Abraham was sacrificially reborn to become the progenitor of future generations of the faithful, instead of Abram, son ofTerah. The name change symbolized regenesis. Eilberg-Schwartz argued that circumcision was performed on the eighth day after birth for two reasons. First, during the rabbinic period the priesthood became patrilineally inherited; men were born into it. Because entering the covenant "was not a mature, reflective decision of adult life:' circumcision was done near birth. What mattered was "being part of the genealogy of Abraham:' Second, a son's mother was unclean for the same duration as her men strual period, eight days. So was the baby who had been "wallowing" in his mother's blood. "Wallowing" is an ambiguous term. Eilberg-Schwartz linked the term to God 's redemption of Israel from the blood of childbirth. God saw the baby lying, rejected, in the open field, "wallowing" in his blood. God said, cc 'Live in spite of your blood " (emphasis mine) . The newborn's intimacy with his mother's blood demanded redemption. The blessing at the end of the circumcision ritual is based on the last part of this quotation. In Hoffman's reconstruction, the mohel repeated twice "I said to you: In your blood, live" to account for two sorts of sacrificial blood present during the original Passover episode, that of circumcision and the paschal lamb. The birth connection is much more compelling. In the final prayer, the mohel implored God to accept the newly circumcised infant "as if I had sacrificed him before your throne of glory:' Many Jewish scholars accept the sacrificial dimension of circumcision. As Nancy Jayso persuasively analyzed, sacrifice, nearly always performed by men, was a "remedy for having been born of women" (see chapter 6).

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During the Talmudic period (AD 500-625), mohels mustered more than prayers to neutralize the infant's pollution by his mother's blood. The ritual of metsitsah, in which the mohel sucked blood from the penis and spat it out, immediately followed circumcision. Montaigne observed that after slicing off the foreskin and tearing away the mucous membrane, "they . . . offer . . . wine to the minister, who puts a little in his mouth and then . .. sucks the glans of this child, all bloody, and spits out the blood .. . three times:' The mohel then salted and covered the wound with "red powder, which they say is dragon's blood:' Holding a blessed glass of wine, he "takes a drop of it with his finger to the boy's mouth to be sucked:' All the while he "still has his mouth all bloody:' Most explained that metsitsah staunched the flow of blood. However, this could be accomplished short of oral sucking. Perhaps public reaction against the practice replaced ritualistic rationales with biomedical ones. Even circumcision's champion, Rernondino, extolled its medical benefits, not its magico-spiritual ones. Stemming the flow of blood was desirable, but even this explanation did not deflect public criticism. Fin-de-siecle German doctors worried that metsitsah transmitted tuberculosis, syphilis, and other communicable diseases. Metsitsah was banned in France in 1854. Trying to discern the symbolic significance of this bloodletting was frustrating. Hoffman equated it with drinking wine, which is not persuasive. Here is my hypothesis: Symbolically neutralizing the pollution of mothers' blood through male bloodletting is a widespread cross-cultural trope in male initiation rituals. This was critical for turning boys into men. I suggest that this was the original purpose of metsitsah. Hoffman convincingly showed how wine was a symbolic substitute for blood. Near the end of the circumcision ritual, the mohel placed a few drops of wine in the infant's mouth. Hoffman saw this as contributing to healing. I explicitly associate this with men's providing blood from men in place of the women's blood drained from the penis. Another far- flung, cross-cultural trope associated the head, mouth, thoughts, words, and ultimately culture, as opposed to nature, with male power. Predictably, this was often contrasted with the natural, carnal, life-giving power of women's blood. The symbolic connection of men's orally sucking penile blood then providing symbolic blood to the boy's mouth bears exploration. Rabbis marginalized women as they achieved a patrilineally inherited priesthood. The priestly author's phobic attitude toward menstrual blood and childbirth blood reflected and constructed this view of women. Hoffman was uncomfortable about his conclusions in today's world, where many see women in a more egalitarian light, until he decided that it was "better to come to terms with the crawly creatures in the basement than to pretend that they are not

Initiation Rites • III there:' My observations are meant to extend the analyses of these scholars of Jewish history by teasing more from rituals that aimed to purge newborn boys of the pollution of their mother's blood." Muslims also circumcised very young boys, describing it as a blood sacrifice and purification rite. The Koran is mute about circumcision, but many attribute it to Islam's common roots with Judaism. In Africa, it predated Islam's arrival and spread with Arabic influence. The Ansari s, low-caste Muslims from the Barabanki district of Utter Pradesh, India, circumcised boys between ages two and six. The ritual purified and protected boys from future sexual relations . Ideological connections between men's blood and mother's milk united the child with the group and separated him from his mother by carving the outward sign on his genitals. The circumcision ceremony mimicked marriage. Flour powdered the conjugal bed as on a wedding night. The cutting paralleled breaking the hymen and readied the boy for deflowering. On the day before the circumcision ceremony, the boy's mother cut his hair and nails, massaged his body with mustard oil, and bathed him in flowing water. As in most liminal rituals, the boy was especially vulnerable to malevolent forces, so she was cautious . Purifying "ethics of the sphincters:' performed every Friday, remedied dangers associated with eating, drinking, defecating, and sexual relations. On the appointed day, his mother dressed him as a groom. Her brother presented him to assembled relatives to sit on a red cloth . Once the female barber sliced the prepuce away, his mother raised him to her chest for blood to flow on her breasts. Mingling blood and milk produced a healthy man . Fathers' blood and mothers' milk in balance were critical. Thi s also signaled the mother's willingness to relinquish her close, intimate bond with her son . Becoming male meant that her son had "enough blood to produce an offspring:' and she could no longer caress and frolic with him. Mother and son were to behave more like adults. 50 In chang ing boys to men , men always directed the rituals , but women were always complicit, whether or not they feigned anger and resistance. Taboos that restricted women's behavior also integrated them. Rituals varied , but in all of them , women aided men in transforming boys into men, or at least into not -so-little boys. The rituals always conformed to Van Gennep's formulation of rites of passage, where boys were temporarily removed from the community to reside apart in a liminal state, to be reintegrated after acquiring a new status. It was analogous to death and rebirth, with all of the attendant fears and dangers. In Ndembu myth, a boy who followed his mother had his penis slit by a sharp blade of grass. To force the boy to leave his mother, men severed his foreskin with a razor. Delighted , they decided that all men should be circumcised this way. The boy was "circumcised beneath a mudyi tree .. . symbolic

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of matrilinearity and mother's milk;' then was "placed upon the mukula log, which is red .. . a multivocal symbol representative of. .. huntsmanship and violence:' The father raised his son to bleed on the mukula log, symbolic of severing his intimacy with his mother. Barolong boo Ratshidi (or Tshidi) men of the South Africa-Botswana borderland appropriated women's reproductive capacities to transform boys into men . In Tshidi myth, a woman first circumcised a boy. Men killed her to own the rite and illustrate the ephemeral nature of all social relations except the permanent bonds created by men through sacrifice. Thereafter, men produced fully social men in a public arena. The initiation rituals did not simply reenact the mythic drama. They "engrave[d] its message on the bodies of a group of adolescent men ... rendering the myth both a self-fulfilling prophecy and a mystifying ideology:' The first phase ofTshidi male initiation, go rema or "to chop;' disjoined boys from their natal home. Boys spent days in the bush with adult men, but went home at night. Each father chopped down a moshu tree, which symbolized men's transcendent procreative powers. Once the liminal circumcision phase began, boys could not rejoin their mothers. Men constructed lodges in the bush , the layout of which replicated the hierarchical village social order. Women thatched the roofs and brought food but were otherwise barred from the encampment. Initiators could not have sex. Circumcision triggered the transformative process, which mimicked childbirth, infancy, and childhood. Boys wore blindfolds so that, like newborns, they could not see. Like infants, they lay naked on their backs. The same sharp spear that cut umbilical cords circumcised them. Though told to remain stoic, they cried like babies. The foreskin (called the molomo or "mouth;' a male symbol equivalent to the vagina) was treated like a placenta. In the circumcision lodge, boys remained naked like babies. They ate porridge (baby food), and crawled like infants through low entryways . Later they ate meat, indicative of male nurturance. Childbirth was more solitary. Circumcision was social. Men sacrificed foreskins to cleave boys from their former status . "The severance, a message of bodily violation, blood, and suffering, was carved on the organ bearing the major symbolic load of emerging adult identity:' It connoted rebirth by men with superior reproductive capacity. Men painted boys' bodies red before they rejoined the community as adult men, full of sexual potential. Sexual intercourse was often prohibited during initiation. Wiko parents separated spatially and sexually; men stayed with boys in the lodge, while women remained in the village. Parental sex retarded healing . The circumciser's wife put chalk in her vagina to absorb sexual fluids from ritual coitus. The circumciser chalked initiates to protect them from men who looked at them after intercourse. Basutoland parents also abstained from sex to benefit their sons.

Initiation Rites • 113 Rebirth was symbolized. Xhosa-speaking tribes painted initiates white like the vernix caseosa coating newborns. Dirty water simulated amniotic fluid. They ate roasted mealies to excrete something resembling meconium. Ngindo men cross-dressed and pantomimed birth. Yao circumcisers dressed as wom en. A Basutoland song likened circumcision and foreskins to childbirth and afterbirth. Gisu circumcision and childbirth were parallel. Pain created mature adults . Men boasted that their suffering was greater. Women tacitly agreed. During her son's circumcision, a mother assumed the birthing position, squatting in the hut holding the center pole, symbolic of patrilineal ancestors . Her posture facilitated birth and emphasized the patriarchal basis of Gisu society. In many African initiation rituals, white symbolized semen and mother's milk. The Shangana -Tsonga circumcised "with a razor blade, over a log, whose white sap" symbolized "mother's milk, which is being left behind forever, and the . . . semen of virile manhood and fertility:' Initiates changed color into manhood. They washed off the "white ochre body-paint for red, symbolizing the red fertile clay of Tsongaland, blood, and the sun:' The Yao circumcised boys over a pit where white ash covered medicine that was then topped with cock's blood. Xhosa-speaking initiates wore white paint during seclusion . At the end, they smudged their faces with red ochre before changing to khaki . These practices often embarrassed young, educated men who migrated to urban areas. Multivocal blood metaphors applied to both genders . Frequently, the blood of male initiation rites mimicked menarche or menstruation. The Wiko of South Africa thought so. This was also a widespread trope in Papua New Guinea . Fertility often demarcated female participation. In Basutoland, only elderly women who no longer menstruated or had sex could offer the ceremonial butterfat. Usually, only little girls and postmenopausal women were free from restrictions. They might even join in at some point. Conversely, male initiation blood interfered with menstruation. During Wiko circumcision, boys' blood was dripped into ant heaps, which were buried under water or a well-trod path, because "there are many penes which pass in a woman's vagina :' Uncontrollable bleeding seized the first fertile woman to pass. During initiation, most women had to stay shouting distance away. One postmenopausal woman became the "grandmother of the lodge:' Once the boys' wounds began to heal, only females who no longer menstruated could draw near. South African Xhosa-speaking tribes also feared that initiates' blood would spoil female fertility. At times, circumcision ceremonies reflected hierarchical statu s. High-ranking sons often went first. The Xhosa treated the chief's son specially. The Besorube circumcised boys from elite clans first. In Basutoland, boys reckoned seniority by being circumcised with a chief's son. Many worried that bleeding made the initiate vulnerable to spiritual ill will. Purifying baths and special handling of blood managed these threats. The Tiv accomplished this by "washing the blood fetish:' After bathing in a stream,

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the leader dabbed moist wood ashes on each boy's back, chest, and feet, taking care to cover the ir toes. Boys bled onto dust piles. The Tiv used "blood fetishes" to ward off pernicious forces. The Xhosa sandwiched the blood of the chief's son between, first, that of a member of the Bamba clan, and then all subsequent circumcision blood. They had to stop blood from being used for invidious purposes. Some African cultures operated regular circumcision school s (often called "bush schools" or "lodges") that taught male gender roles. Circumcision was a prerequisite for marriage and usually occurred later. Nyimang men were circumcised between ages twent y and twent y-seven . Men who attended together bonded and remained an age-grade or military cohort for life." New Guinean cultures offer amazing windows into the patterned indigenous conceptions contrasting women's blood with men's blood. People over this vast culture area believed that men's blood created patrilineal, agnatic relationships. No one denied the centrality of women's blood to reproduction; controlling and overcoming it were overt ritual themes. Males culturally created men from boys through initiation ceremonies marked by isolation, ordeal, instruction, revelation, and bloodletting. Nose bleeding, penile incising, scarification, and tongue incising all drained away their mothers' debilitating blood potency experienced in utero, while breast-feeding, and during childhood. Men emulated and inverted women's procreative and nurturing powers, creating cultural order to oppose women's natural, unrestrained, and hazardous disorder. "Blood and other bodily substances are woven into wider symbolic codes ; the natural world provides symbols of the body physical and the body politic :' In summary, many New Guinean cultures held that (l) male maturation had to be fostered , (2) men had to be created rather than developing naturally, like women, and (3) menstrual pollution endangered men. Elaborate symbolic themes, such as "sacred flutes, revelation of cult secrets and esoteric meanings, systematic deception, philosophies of growth and maleness, nose bleeding and nettles, the association of male liminality with hunting;' recurred throughout the New Guinean culture area. Similar beliefs also extended throughout the greater Melanesian or Austronesian culture areas. In some cases, men explicitly "menstruated:' Because menstruation cleansed women, ritual penile bloodletting purged men of sexual intercourse's weakening affects, when their penises were near women's womb blood. Many rituals shared this intent. All bodily effluvia had powerful and dangerous qualities . Men's and women's substances had parallel and antithetical attributes. Men could pollute each oth er and women as well. Menstrual blood defiled but also had magical qualities . Often, initiates consumed semen, either through fellatio or anal intercourse. Suppliers of nurturing semen were equated with mothers. Some have labeled this "ritual homosexuality;' but participants returned to wives. The behavior was context specific, not a sexual orientation.

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Opposition between men and women was residential as well. Households were women's domain; initiated men were either barred or segregated within. Sexual intercourse was reserved for the forest. Men's social interaction centered in men's houses. Women's houses were for menstruating, giving birth, and recuperating. Gender-segregated ceremonies occurred in both. To undo intimacy with their mothers, boys were tortured, terrified, and made hysterically apprehensive. They grew angry at their tormenters. Elders fomented this and channeled boys' anger into controlled avenues where it could eventually be summoned for group defense. The sources cited detail the ceremonies. I concentrate on the blood motifs. People on the New Guinean island ofWogeo counterpoised men and women physically and socially. Boys were cleansed of their mothers' debilitating influences as they grew. Initiation into the male cult began in infancy. In early childhood, an elder male from the opposite moiety pierced a boy's ears. Boys were admitted to the men's club and learned some of the secrets. Initiators rubbed red ochre mixed with coconut oil all over boys' bodies till they gleamed like polished copper. Ritual fighting between the two moieties was fierce enough to draw blood. Men revealed bamboo flutes as the source of noises that had been attributed to threatening monsters. Finally age-mates drank from the same waterfall pool to become blood brothers who were obligated to each other for the rest of their lives. Because a boy first suckled his mother's breasts, tongue scarification took place at puberty. The "headman of the beach;' who inherited the skill of tongue incising from his father or paternal uncle, did the cutting. Each boy sat at a fire where the initiator spat chewed ginger inside his mouth. The boys bit down on roots "for the tongue to tingle, swollen with all the blood:' The boys sat bent forward with legs apart , mouths open, and tongues out. The "headman of the beach" sliced each boy's tongue until blood flowed freely. Blood could not spatter the boys' legs or feet or be swallowed. Everything was spit into the fire. For three days, boys kept their tongues out. On the fourth day, they received mashed red Cordyline to replace their lost blood. Men purified themselves by penile bloodletting in the rite of sara, or men's menstruation. Finally, boys learned to incise their penises. With a crab claw, they went to the beach . Wading to knee depth with legs wide apart, they pulled the foreskin back and gashed their penises on both sides until blood streamed. This entitled them to don an adult male headdress. This was a lifelong exercise. Hogbin described the "salutary effects" as being "immediately observable :' He watched as a man's body "loses its tiredness, his muscles harden, his step quickens, his eyes grow bright, and his skin and hair develop a luster;' making him feel "lighthearted, strong, and confident:' It helped men succeed in hazardous endeavors. Menstruation was essential for "warriors . .. before setting out on a raid, traders before carving an overseas canoe or refurbishing its sails, hunters before weaving a new net for trapping pigs:' Recurrent penile bloodletting

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might have comp ensated for complete freedom regarding the frequency of sexual intercourse, which differed from many other New Guineans. Various liquids flowed within, to, and through Bimin-Kuskusmin people. Most important were agnatic blood, semen, and menstrual blood. Fundamental for procreation, these fluids also determined the physical, psychological, and behavioral dimensions of individuals. Red agnatic blood, which pulsed most strongly through men, conveyed lineage and kinship ties. Wild boars, which were conceived of as persons cosmologically affiliated with humans, also possessed agnatic blood. Menstrual blood weakened agnatic blood. Transmiss ion through women limited its viability to three generations. Thus , men sought to strengthen agnatic blood by ritually consuming foods reserved for men, such as taro and pork. Menstrual blood, construed as black, was critical for procreation, but was also a witch's tool and caused illness. It could wreak havoc with male substances and was the ultimate pollutant for everyone . Women responsibly contained their flow. Men controlled it ritually. The ais am adolescent male initiation rite extruded menstrual residues from boys' bodies . Men transferred semen to generate the dense, rigid internal body parts. The forehead , through which sacred male knowledge passed, was paramount. Except for menstrual blood, semen created all reproductive fluids, including breast milk, and the finiik spirit, or life force. This was strengthened during the ais am by agnatic blood , male food, and semen. Fertile fluids derived from semen gave rise to the soft, external body parts, including female genitals. In the ais am, boys ingested semen and pus, a distillation of semen, to hasten their growth into men. Male foreheads transmitted powerful wisdom, while female navels imparted trivial nonsense. Midwives coated babies' heads with protective funerary mud and cleansed their navels. The ais am inverted this . Red and white pigment overlaid boys' clean-shaven foreheads, while funerary mud encircled with black pigment connoting menstrual blood, sickness, and death covered their navels. This symbolized the transfer of boys' identity and loyalty to men . In the weeks long ais am ritual, initiators transformed between sixty and one hundred boys, strengthening agnatic blood while purging menstrual residues . Men denounced boys' maternal pollution and threatened to kill them. They doused the terrified, whimpering boys with sows' blood and held them aloft for their mothers to see. Mothers staged a mock assault, which men averted . Mothers retreated, their mourning wail trailing off in the distance. With pigs' blood, they sealed off boys' navels and breasts, former conduits of female essence. Funerary mud smeared on their heads terminated their former status. Women washed them brusquely and derided their puny genitalia. They ate female foods such as kauun pandanus, dapsaan marsupials, crayfish, black mushrooms, frogs, tadpoles , frog eggs, sweet potatoes, and ginger and

Initiation Rites • 117 then were thrashed with stinging nettles and made to drink pig's blood mixed with urine. Vomiting these foods drove home that they were never to eat them again. Four days' worth of nettle welts and vomiting weakened the boys. That night , sacrifices summoned Afek, the ancestor of human and totemic clans. Fathers seized each initiate while their mother's brother suddenly pierced their nasal septum with a cassowary bone . As they recoiled in shock, men scalded their inner forearms with hot marsupial fat, raising large blisters . Women came impersonating Afek, with enlarged breasts and red pandanus fruit simulating an erect penis . They lanced the blisters to collect the pus. They smeared fat and red pigment on the boys' chests, black salt and fat on their throats, and red pandanus juice on their jaws. Midway through the ritual, male symbolism rose to the fore as the boys successfully emerged from the transition, being purged of their mothers' blood influence. Funerary mud transferred to breasts and navels and boars' blood was applied to their heads . Initiators rubbed blood from cuts in their maleidentified temples on their penises . Concentric circles of red enclosed by white meant that the torture they had endured was strengthening their red agnatic blood, which still needed white protection. Initiators became more supportive, though the boys were angry and distrustful. The aisam ritual taught boys how to channel their anger. Initiators praised their fine, strong, male bodies, and fathers and sons displayed affection in public for the first time . Henceforth, initiates ate male food and lived in the men's house , nursing their anger toward their mothers, who had neither prepared them for nor rescued them from their ordeal. Highland Awa themes were very similar. Pubescent Awaboys left their mothers' houses. Initiators told them that they must separate from their mothers so they would grow; shoulder more responsibilities as productive men ; and never again eat fish, reptiles, amphibians, birds, rodents, and marsupials, which were women's food . Sweating and bleeding would purge them. Men thrashed them with stinging nettles and pulled vines between their legs to harden them to the rigors of climbing vines in the hunt. Initiators verbally abused them for their juvenile inadequacies. Once adorned with symbols of masculinity, boys were expected to behave in a dignified manner, remain with men , accept only food cooked by men, and do men's bidding. After ritual bathing, matrikinsmen led initiates into the men's house, announced by bull roarers and whistles. Patrikinsmen highlighted their mistakes, while beating them with firebrands, cudgels, and sticks as they sat around a fire. Further beating might erupt at any time . Women bathed initiates at a stream. A man leapt out with pitpit nose bleeders protruding from his nose and blood flowing down his chest. The boys were restrained while men violently jabbed pitpit nose bleeders in and out.

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Water carried the blood away. Thick vines thrust down their throats made them vomit, ridding them of more pollution. Then, while boys were held aloft, stomach upturned and legs spread apart, men pulled back their foreskin, and gashed their penises . Afterward they ran a gauntlet while being beaten with bamboo and stinging nettle. The Awa believed blood had liquid and fibrous parts. Bleeding removed the liquid, leaving the fiber to form strong body parts. Sweating, bleeding, and vomiting rid them of maternal influences. Analogous to nose bleeding, incising the glans fortified it. Young men in their late teens learned to purge their own blood and became initiators. Secret flutes were revealed to make the calls oflarge, menacing black birds . They now knew that menstrual blood was dangerous because of women's enormous reproductive powers. Menstrual residue adhered to women's hands, so men refused food from them. It could "trigger an over acceleration of the physical maturation:' Sexual intercourse was taboo. Dreaded male pregnancy ensued from too much intercourse, sex with a menstruating woman, or penetrating the vagina too deeply. If the penis touched womb blood, it coursed up the urethra to mix with semen, resulting in pregnancy. A fetus would form, grow teeth, and kill the man from the inside out. The only cure was to bleed him all over, including his penis . Prospective grooms underwent severe bleeding. Pitpit nose bleeders were pounded in with a mallet, causing near hemorrhage. Slices of tissue were taken from the glans, leaving deep wounds that sometimes penetrated the urethra. This increased the potency of their semen for reproductive success. Enduring pain prepared them for arduous undertakings fraught with danger, such as marriage, which involved sexual intercourse and propinquity to menstrual blood. Men assembled to bleed their penises . In "shooting the penis;' they punctured each side with the same small stone-tipped arrow used to treat male pregnancy. Regular penile bleeding warded off the dangers of menstrual blood. Group penis bleeding inaugurated marital sex. The Ndumba also had oppositional gender relations. Men and women lived separately and sat apart on public occasions . Within women's residences, initiated men were contained in certain areas. Sex, the most dangerous of all interactions, was strictly a forest affair. Women walked on their own pathways to structures for menstruating and childbirth. Both boys and girls underwent initiation rites. Boys' collective 'ummanra rites did not correspond to precise physiological changes . As before, my focus is on blood elements. A procession of men and initiates went into the forest. Boys were led to a pool to bathe. A sponsor seized their arms and pulled their heads back, while

Initiation Rites • 119 another sawed stiff-edged sedge up their nostrils. Boys from the previous 'ummanra joined to have their noses bled with stinging nettles. They licked gritty leaves coated with ginger and salt to make their tongues bleed. Boys mastered proper behavior as they endured further beatings and stinging nettle attacks on their penises . They absorbed food taboos and which gardens they could enter and from whom they might receive food . Bamboo flutes were exposed as the source of mysterious music they had heard as children. They learned the calamities that befell those who broke the rules. The common New Guinean trope of gender opposition lay at the heart of the 'ummanra ritual. Men had to be culturally grown . Nettles made their penises lengthen and pubic hair grow. Managing proximity to menstrual blood was critical to male health. Bleeding from the nose, tongue, or urethra cleansed their bodies of their mothers' menstrual residue. The ritual complex transformed polluted boys into men who mastered menstrual pollution. Complementary cultural inversions linked the boys' and girls' initiation ceremonies . Instruction followed nose bleeding in the 'ummanra ceremony, but was inverted in the kwaasi ceremony. Boys' initiations were public, whereas girls' rites were private. Girls matured naturally; boys matured ritually. The parallel ceremonies explicitly acknowledged gendered differences . The Ndumba conceived of women as carnal beings, seeking sex at every turn and threatening to weaken or destroy men in the process. "Ndumba men are ... uncertain as to whether women, with their secrets, can control these bodily processes; but of one thing they are sure-men cannot control them:' Men struggled to resolve the tension between being dependent on women to nurture their sons, yet retrieve them to become men. The Ndumba answer, as for many others, was bloodletting. Bloodletting graphically illustrated male domination-a culturally created control denied to women. When girls' private instruction in the kwaasi ceremony had been completed, men stepped forward to cement patriarchy by letting blood . Iatmul and Chambri male initiation rituals featured scarification. "The scarifiers . . . from the initiation moiety opposite to that of the initiate, finish the operation within ten minutes, making hundreds of half-inch vertical cuts in rows down the initiates' back, buttocks, and upper thighs:' Once again, the procedure rid boys of their mothers' debilitating blood to initiate them into their fathers' patricIans. Enduring the incisions was so trying that boys needed a designated comforter to lie on during the procedure. The comforter lay face down across an overturned canoe . Then the initiate lay on him. Among the Iatmul, the comforter was the boy's mother's brother, who shared the blood being drained from the boy and was immune to the pollution. The Chambri adopted most Iatmul rituals, but their comforter was the tsambunwuro. The tsambunwuro was linked to the initiate's father, but the maternal

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blood dripped on his body bestowed an affinal relationship too. The tsambunwuro became the initiate's father and mother, capable of "giving birth" to a fully grown man , no longer hampered by his mother's blood. The link created intergenerational agnatic continuity. The father ensured that his own son would have a tsambunwuro one day. The tsambunwuro linked wife-giving groups and wife-receiving groups. The initiate became a marriage partner for his mother's brother's clanswomen and a kinsman who supplied wealth for his father's patriclan. The tsambunwuro was the nexus for the Chambri sociopolitical system because of his ability to accept the initiate's mother's blood .f Semen -ingesting rituals and bloodletting rituals achieved opposing goals.The symbolism of both falls squarely within my argument. This bears exploring. Papua New Guinean people of the south coast, the Papuan plate, and the eastern cordillera south of the Highlands extensively practiced semen ingestion. These rituals shared the following features. (l) In mandatory rites, senior men transferred semen to junior initiates . Heterosexual marriage later followed. (2) Semen ingestion grew boys into men and enhanced reproductive success. Sometimes elongating initiates' penises was a goal. (3) Anal intercourse promoted male physical development. Semen from fellatio and masturbation was rubbed on initiates' bodies. Semen-ingesting societies fall within "the most elementary of elementary kinship systems:' Endogamous marriages reinforced existing kin ties, rather than expanding social networks by drawing in partners from outside. Leadership status was ascribed, not achieved . Men dominated low-intensity economic production for direct exchange rather than distant trade. These were the classic "great men;' who claimed to have created everything of value, including pigs and crops, but especially the next generation of men. In fact, they relied heavily on very productive women. Men minimized "women's contributions to . .. reproductivity and child nurture .. .by building . .. cults . .. around the . .. notion that men were . .. the chief reproducers and nurturers of male children-hence the centrality of semen as the chief symbol of male reproductive potency:' Hunting dangerous game such as wild boars and cassowaries gained status for men . Endemic intercommunity aggression led to blood feuding instead of compensating for murder with valuables. Institutionalized head-hunting occurred in the south-coast region . Men reproduced men. Whiteness equated semen with breast milk, so men appropriated the image of the breast-feeding mother. Like infants, initiates received semen passively. Semen ingestion and bloodletting rites were mutually exclusive. Semen ingesters did not identify penile bleeding as male menstruation. Acknowledging their mothers' influence accorded women too much power, which semen ingesters denied.

Initiation Rites • 121 Penis bleeders identified with mothers who transformed boys into men. However, they emphasized the dangerous, menstruating woman, not the nurturant mother. Menstrual taboos for both women and men and penile bleeding contained the power of women's blood. Cultures where bloodletting accompanied initiation rituals contrasted with semen-ingesting cultures. Intense economic production of pigs, mats, and garden produce for trade depended on and acknowledged women's labor. Men had far-flung trade networks. These were the classic "big men" so prevalent in Melanesian scholarship. Exogamous marriages brought spouses from outside the local area, often cementing trade alliances. Wives were not closely related kin, in contrast to cross-cousin marriage and sister exchange practiced by semen ingesters . As outsiders, they posed dangers that were contained by menstrual taboos.53 Selako fathers also used sacrificial blood to create men, while eradicating residues of mothers' blood and milk. Men sacrificed a chicken over the boy's head before circumcision. Circumcision blood, containing maternal impurities, was collected in a coconut shell containing white ash and deposited at the circumcision site. Bathing in moving water purified. Earlier, the boy would have embarked on a ritual head -hunting campaign to shed blood himself. In North Fiji, some groups likened the severed foreskin to a sacrifice. Later in life, if a man became ill, he approached younger relatives to undergo the operation on his behalf. Men repeatedly bled their penises because "the ancient gods continually required the spilling of blood:' Male sacrifice was, again, equated with childbirth" Subincision slit the urethra along the penis's underside from its opening for an inch . Later, it was elongated to the length of the penis . Subincis ion was most extensively performed in Australia . The blood and subsequent penile bleeding were parts of larger male bloodletting complexes. Anthropologists offered speculative explanations for subincision. It was described variously as a religious tradition or "dreaming:' an initiation rite, a bloodletting ritual, male menstruation, vulva simulation, a method of birth control, a hygienic measure, a way to urinate more quickly, erotically enhancing, and a marker of rank among naked people. Walbiri men shared few of these ideas, referring to mythic explanations for creating burras (subincisions). Walbiri myths are explicit about kangaroo genital anatomy. Marsupials have forked-glans penises that appear grooved . Marsupials had to squat to urinate to avoid being wettened. The Walbiri and other Australian groups had kinship relations with animals, especially kangaroos. A recurrent trope in myth s was that kangaroos instructed others in the art of cutting burra, and they gave them the gandi, or flint knife, to do it. They also taught creatures how to draw blood from their burras by inserting a stick. One myth said, "Kangaroos have a burra. .. . The burra is

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copied from the kangaroo who is father of the peoples of central Australia:' Subincision and penile bloodletting had explicit foundations in Walbiri mythology. Walbiri men maintained that the law, conveyed through dreaming, mandated that all boys have burras. The wider channel promoted cleanliness and eliminated odor, and men could urinate faster by spraying it on the ground, like women did . Subincision was an initiation rite. Women enjoyed men's wider erections. Walbiri men denied that it imitated menstruation or simulated vulvas. One man explained, "Dreamings do not put these bloods together in the same story:' He observed simply, "Burro blood is easier to get than arm blood if you are in a hurry. . .. The blood is no different, not more .. . sacred:' Drawing blood either way had sacrificial implications. Male sacrifice generally co-opted the blood-centered reproductive power of women ." Most ethnographers did not consider adolescent male circumcision in holistic fashion. They described ritual elements without examining gendered associations with other life-stage practices. Some noted that newly circumcised men stayed away from women, but left it at that. Suggestive parallels to broader patterns were left undeveloped.

Conclusion Gendered oppositions abounded in initiation rites, where all blood intimated fertility. Menarche blood was quintessentially fertile. Boys' initiation rites were sacrificial. Initiators reproduced men, as mothers reproduced babies. The vast majority of rituals let blood to rid boys of the influence of their mothers' blood and compensated for being born of women. This cultural interplay between women's blood and men's blood permeated initiation rituals. The culturally produced blood of men consistently contrasted with and compensated for the natural blood of women. Women physiologically and uncontrollably bled from within. Men consciously and purposefully created wounds, as they did in the hunt.

CHAPTERS

Menstruation The Fundamental Foundation

Menstruating wom en and menstrual blood were extensively ritualized and managed much more than is ph ysiologically warranted. Never was it considered mundane. The understanding of menstruation as the sloughing off of the lining of the uterus once an egg had not successfully implanted is very recent. The red blood, women's inability to control it, and the widespread belief that menstrual blood contribut ed to fetal growth heightened cultural imperatives to regulate it. Menstrual blood and menstruating women were powerful and dangerous.

An Evolutionary Oddity Only human females menstruate; th is is an evolutionary oddity. Monthly external displays of genital blood were genetically selected for. No blood phenom enon has aroused more cultural attention than menstruation, but customs probably had no evolutionary consequences.' The universality of color perception and the centrality of women's blood to the reproductive life cycle ensured that humans were drawn to signify the red, uncontrollable blood. Humans have left a clear record of their concerns, evidenced by the sheer ubiquity of menstrual rituals. However, making sense of them is problematic. Regular menstrual cycling in todays world is an "evolutionary anomaly:' Our gatherer-hunter-fisher foremothers abided most of their short lives either being pregnant or lactating for as long as three to four years . For them, menstruation was a rare event. By contrast, women of the Western world today typically have more than four hundred chances to conceive. Because they will take advantage of only two or three opportunities, the amount of wasted fertility is immense and of no evolutionary advantage. Women can control their reproductive potential, but "women as biologic ally autonomous beings are without 123

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evolutionary precedent:' Our genetic evolution has not caught up with our physiological choices. Hence we must suffer the twinges, pains, and serious adverse health conditions that can be associated with menstrual cycling. It is worth exploring the dimensions of th is transformation at greater length.' Long periods of menstrual cycling are culturally constructed. Women spend far less time pregnant or lactating because innovations in birth control have allowed them to restrict their fertility far more than ever before. They are choosing to significantly narrow the opportunity for their own genetic inheritance to be selected for. One consequence is a considerably longer life span , not only because of medical technologies but also because they have fewer pregnancies and fewer health risks associated with abortifacients. The genetic implications of this development cannot be fully known, given the scale of evolution. However, women are making conscious choices that determine, at the very least, how many of their genes can be selected for. Menstruation might have been interpreted differently if cycling was infrequent. Furthermore, men strual blood often connoted death as "not a baby:' Understanding this can help clarify cultural restrictions of menstruating women's behavior, more than simply regarding them as arcane measures of women's oppression. This is not to argue that women were never oppressed. However, endogenous understandings of cultural restrictions are insightful; regulations could be complex and directed toward more individuals than menstruating women. Human females have no biological imperative to attempt to procreate at every fertile moment, but culture approached biology in the demands placed on Paleolithic women. Menarche signaled maturity, but many would have been subfertile during early, irregular menstrual cycles. Some who conceived at first ovulation would never have menstruated. As during childhood, they would have been amenorrheic throughout pregnancy and lactation. Reproductive success for the species imposed a double-edged sword on women . Only women's bodies were mobilized in response to extremely high infant mortality rates. Pregnancy and childbirth made them more vulnerable than men to early deaths. Life expectancy was estimated to have been twentyeight for women and thirty-three for men. Women would have reached menarche late, at around age eighteen, and died before they reached their thirtieth birthday. Upon ovulation, they would have been continually pregnant, lactating, or both. Paleolithic women practiced total lactation, which suppressed ovulation and menstruation. After menarche, many would never have had another menstrual cycle unless they were infertile. The breast-feeding practiced during most of human history differed from the contemporary world where supplementary bottles and food are used. Instead of schedules for feeding , babies were like appendages of their mothers who received the breast on demand. Suckling stimulates the release of the

Menstruation • 125 hormone prolactin, which suppresses ovulation and menstruation. Infants suckled poorly nourished mothers more frequently, producing more prolactin that prolonged lactational amenorrhea. This continued for three to four years, as has been observed among band-level societies. After this prolonged breast -feeding, the woman would again become pregnant, initiating the whole process all over again. Of course, this depiction is idealized. Infertility, miscarriage, fetal and infant death, and infanticide all could have brought on menstruation until another pregnancy was established. Fertility was also affected by environmental stresses and malnutrition.' Band-level gatherer-hunter-fisher societies and preindustrial societies pose instructive, though inexact, comparisons. An average gatherer-hunter-fisher mother of five children, who reached menarche at age eighteen, spent four years menstruating, four years pregnant, and fifteen years in lactational amenorrhea. Large differences distinguish gatherer-hunter groups such as the !Kung San of southern Africa and Australian Aborigines from women in the late-twentieth-century United States. Gatherer-hunter-fisher women typically had six children whom they breast-fed for three years each. In between, they had on average 160 menstrual cycles, compared with American women who have more than 450 cycles. This disparity was even higher for our Paleolithic foremothers, who reached menarche only by age eighteen and lived very short lives. In a contemporary preindustrial society, a woman who lived longer and experienced shorter periods of lactational amenorrhea menstruated for only a quarter of her thirty-three reproductive years. She menstruated for eight years instead of four, but it was still her least frequent reproductive state. In eighteenth-century America, colonial women bore seven children on average and breast-fed each for one or two years before promptly becoming pregnant again. By contrast, contemporary Western women who reached menarche at age thirteen and menopause at age fifty had two children on average and spent thirty-five years menstruating on a regular basis. This amounted to half of her lifetime, and was nine times as long as her Paleolithic ancestors ." We are accustomed to regarding menstruation through a twentieth-century Western lens as a regularly recurring cycle experienced in common by all women, at all times, everywhere . Greater knowledge of menstrual physiology has led many to cast menstrual rituals into the dustbin of antiquarian gibberish at best or to condemn them as evidence of the subjugation and persecution of women at worst. The infrequency of menstrual cycling for most of the human experience lends insight into the attitudes toward and practices for managing menstrual blood that today seem exaggerated and overdrawn. Menstruation as a physiological event was always interpreted within cultural contexts. Some revered menstrual blood as the blood of life and a visceral connection with mother goddesses. Some reviled it as the most polluting

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manifestation of a subordinate group. Some thought women's entire beings and purposes were determined by their reproductive functions . These examples do not exhaust the possibilities; they merely suggest the wide array of variations .

Pollution, Power, and the Anthropology of Menstruation In many cultures, women were taboo when menstruating. They were secluded and admonished not to touch certain tools and utensils, cook for others, or walk in certain areas. Even their gaze could damage those on whom it fell. 5 Ancient and religious texts portrayed menstruating women as a tornadic force, twisting and rending everything in their path . Babylonians and Jews restricted menstruating women. Pliny, the Roman naturalist to whom so many turned for his "wisdom;' called menstrual blood "monstrous" and detailed all that it fouled, such as wine, corn, grasses, herbs, buds, fruit trees, mirrors, edged tools such as swords and knives, iron, steel, bees, and dogs. Outside of medical treatises, Greeks were silent. There were no menstrual metaphors or taboos in mythology. Hippocrates and Aristotle even prodded husbands to have sex with their menstruating wives." Iudeo-Christian thought resounded with pronouncements. Mosaic Law declared menstruants and everything they lay or sat on and whoever touched them or their beds impure. The Bible warned that sex with them was deadly. The Talmud predicted death if a menstruating woman walked between two men. Rabbi Nahmanides, in the thirteenth century, provided a clue as to why when he spewed, "The dust on which she walks is impure like the dust defiled by the bones of the dead:' The blood connoted "not a baby;' which was akin to death. " European ideas about menstrual functioning were multivocal; blood could contaminate, but regular menstrual functioning was essential to women's reproductive health. Productive activities such as cooking and other domestic responsibilities, wine making, canning jam, or brewing ale were thought vulnerable to its power. At the same time, physicians offered remedies for late menarche, "menses obstructed;' "chlorosis" or anemia, and a "plethora" of blood. Menstruation was potentially dangerous and required regulation, but it was also absolutely necessary for women to safeguard their health and bear children. Similar multivocality occurred cross-culturally. South African Bushmen worried that a single glance from a menstruating woman would transform a man into a tree. African cattle breeders fretted that they would die if a menstruating woman drank their cows' milk. Laplanders feared for their fisheries and forbade menstruating women from walking on adjacent shorelines . The overwhelming concern was the power of menstruating women to countermand fruitful activities. However, women needed to bleed to be fruitful. Interference with their menstrual function could occur in a number of ways.

Menstruation • 127 Spiritual forces, malevolent sorcerers or witches, or factors affecting blood's warmth were believed to affect women's normal menstrual functioning." Indian religious texts illustrate the transformation, often forcibly, of matrilineal societies into patriarchal ones . In the most ancient of Indian texts, the Tantras, menstrual blood was a most sacred substance, suitable for offerings to mother goddesses. Nothing pleased a goddess more than menstrual blood from a virgin, but that of married women and widows was also appropriate to bestow at altars . When the Bhils, a north Indian group, planned to plant, they placed a stone daubed with vermilion in the field, a symbol of sacred menstrual blood. The imagery linking menstrual blood and fertility ofthe field and invoking mother goddesses was clear. When Brahmanical law books were codified, attitudes toward menstrual blood were turned on their head, a reflection of the aggressive efforts of the patriarchal order to supplant the matrilineal one. According to the book of Manu, a Brahmana eating dinner should not look at "a Candala (a man belonging to the despised caste), a menstruous woman, a boar, a fowl, a dog and a hermaphrodite:' A menstruating woman was among the worst of company. The book of Vyasa directed a menstruating woman to hide, stop bathing, not speak or move, eat only once at night, and lie on the ground. The Vrddhaha_ rt-smrti wanted a woman to be burned alive if she was menstruating at the time of her husband's death. The varaha Puriina detailed menstrual taboos in their own chapter. Two books of the Purana recounted that long ago women menstruated only once in their entire lives, explaining the imperative to make every menstrual period productive. Indian tradition identified the period immediately after a woman's menstrual cycle as the best time for conception. In the Mahbhrata a woman could commit adultery to make her menstrual cycle fruitful. Despite this last provision, Brahmanicallaws governing menstruating women were very harsh, representing an almost complete inversion of the reverence paid to menstrual blood found in the Tantras." Scholars have used a variety of cause-and-effect arguments to explain these proscriptions. Their interpretations turn on biological, psychological, and sociological explanations. I review these explanations briefly before abandoning monocausal arguments. Some sought to prove that menstruating women exuded poisons. Reporting that their touch withered flowers, they hypothesized that toxins emanating through the skin or hands were the culprits rather than blood. This verified what the ancients and religious texts said but did not gain a large following. Some postulated that the oppositional relationship between menstrual taboos and hunting stemmed from the fact that menstrual blood smelled like venous blood and prompted an avoidance response from white-tailed deer. 10 Some analyzed menstrual taboos comparatively to discern possible patterns. Ford found intercourse taboos to be universal in the Human Relations Area

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Files. Most other restrictions he attributed to community surveillance because the flow of blood was unstoppable. Montgomery constructed a sequence of menstrual taboos organized to predict correlations. The presence of a certain taboo meant that all of those taboos after it in sequence were also present . The sequence was as follows: (l) Women must remain sequestered in men strual huts during their menstrual cycles; (2) men may not accept food cooked by menstruants; (3) menstruating women were directed not to make contact with things associated with men: weapons, tools, personal possessions, crops cultivated by men, or spiritual items; (4) restrictions were placed on the menstruant; these taboos related to food proscriptions and behavioral admonitions about where the woman could walk and what she could do; (5) sexual intercourse was strictly prohibited during menstruation; and (6) negative attitudes toward menstrual blood defined it as polluting or dangerous. To follow Montgomery's logic, if women were consigned to stay in menstrual huts, then all of the other five categories of taboos were also present in that society. However, if only intercours e was taboo , then the only other accompanying attribute was negative attitudes toward menstrual blood . The associations she discovered were uncannily on the mark ." Some wondered if male attitudes were at play. Did men have castration anxiety in the framework of a universal oedipal complex? Would this create more elaborate menstrual taboos? Or, referring to Bettelheims concept of vagina envy, were menstrual taboos less restrictive when men felt that they played significant roles in reproduction? Evidence to support these psychological dilemmas is elusive. 12 Others turned to structural-functionalism for solutions . Some noted that matrilineal or semimatrilineal groups most strongly adhered to functioning menstrual rites. Others suggested that when men and women were sharply segregated and communication was constrained, menstrual taboos were more likely to emerge. They correlated menstrual restrictions with institutions of male solidarity, such as age-grade societies, secret societies, or men's houses . Mary Douglas predicted that unbridled male dominance backed by coercion would retard the development of menstrual restrictions. Powerless women do not need to be controlled. Conversely, male dominance (tempered by female independence or beliefs that women deserved more protection than men) would foster sexual pollution beliefs. As has been the case with much of high structural-functionalism, it breaks down under close, cross-cultural examination of case studies and can usually be met with numerous exceptions. Most of these earlier studies failed to consider the cultural logic expressed in indig enous cosmologies." Late-twentieth-century feminist writers approached menstruation in celebratory fashion. Germaine Greer in The Female Eunuch advocated tasting one's menstrual blood as a measure of emancipation. If it nauseated you, then

Menstruation • 129 "you've a long way to go, baby:' Annie Leclerc in Parole de Femme invoked the "voice of the vagina" to suggest , "Watching and feeling the warm, tender blood that flows downstream from its source once each month is happiness. . . . To be this vagina is bliss:' In The Woman in the Body, Emily Martin advocated venerating menstruation. "Some have urged us to revel in menstrual blood and make it a matter ofspiritual delight by developing new rituals, 'bleed-ins:" This voice ethnographers had not encountered.l" Feminist anthropologists, most notably Thomas Buckley and Alma Gottlieb in Blood Magic, recast the undue stress on pollution, arguing that a single interpretation of menstrual rituals could not accommodate various cultural con texts and ambiguous meanings. They stressed connections between biology and cultural systems. They found two general sets of rules: some restricted menstruating women and some involved vulnerable people who might interact with them. They identified five classes within these two sets: (1) menstrual blood as dangerous, (2) isolating menstruating women, (3) intercourse taboos, (4) cooking taboos for menstruating women, and (5) other idiosyncratic rules . While they acknowledged that these did not invariably result in women's oppression, they offered little beyond critiques of existing theories. Women could be as vulnerable as they were threatening. Some saw menstrual blood as fecund, not always as toxic or polluting. Bettelheim simply reduced women to passive victims of male neuroses by relating female isolation, circumcision, and penis perforation to "menstru al envy:' They acknowledged Mary Douglas's work showing how bodily fluids that transgress the bounds of the body were seen as dangerously polluting, but pointed out that the cyclicity of menstrual blood also signified the potential for life. Finally, they suggested that menstrual blood seemed out of place and dangerous because men monopolized bloodletting in most societies. Had they situated menstrual rituals more holistically within broader cultural complexes of reproductive rituals, they might have discerned the patterned relationship between women's blood and men's blood that lies at the core of my study. IS During her field experiences with the Saramaka people on the island of Suriname in the 1960s and 1970s, Sally Price followed their menstrual proscriptions, and she repeatedly spent time in the menstrual hut. This enabled her to observe firsthand the moods and relationships among the Saramaka women in the menstrual hut. Menstruating Saramaka women were resigned to seclusion customs that they did not anticipate with pleasure. They joked about women whom they believed cheated to circumvent "the dirty house:' They did not eagerly await communing with their sisters, but participated "out of a sense of community responsibility:' These practices were of great longevity and had drawn comment by numerous historical observers. Price then turned to the well-received anthology Blood Magic. Despite the authors' argument that menstrual customs could not be portrayed in singular

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fashion and required contextualization, Price found a tendency "to portray women's lives through images of empowered individuals, solidary sisterhoods, and enlightened practitioners of 1980s-style Western feminism:' She closely analyzed several selections contained in this anthology, going back to the original sources cited. What she found confirmed her suspicions that the authors' biases had caused them to misconstrue the evidence to fit their interpretation. Nothing in the sources pointed to empowerment or sisterhood. "Here:' Price charged, "is where commentators risk stepping into the quicksand of ideologically shaped interpretations.?" Most accept the fact that we bring ourselves to our research. It should not be surprising that these notions of sisterhood in the menstrual hut should cross over from popular literature to scholarly, academic discourse. Examples from "other" cultures where menstruation had a more positive cast were put to service in criticizing negative Western constructions. Few people equated menstruation with bleeding internal wounds. The Maria Gond of India told how vaginas once held teeth. Removing them created a wound that never quite healed, producing monthly bleeding. " The Arunta of Australia thought demons scratched the vagina walls with their sharp fingernails, causing bleeding. 18 Among native groups of Southeastern North America, menstrual blood connoted fertility and women's association with plants, especially maize. Where the blood of the Cherokee female fertility deity, Selu, touched the ground, it produced maize, their most important staple crop. The connection between women, blood, and fertility was clear and strong. A Creek story told how an old woman saw a drop of blood as she stepped over a log. She scraped it up in a ceramic jar and watched it develop into a male spirit child. A menstruating Shawnee woman killed a serpent with her "soiled" cloths. Stories such as these show powerful women with status and prestige. People worried that the power of menstruating women's blood might deflect male spiritual powers embodied in their sacred bundles, but they did not revile them." Others also associated menstrual blood with fecundity. Sephardic Jewish women used menstrual blood in magical formulas to overcome infertility. In other Jewish communities in Europe in the Middle Ages, barren women would "dip a piece of paper into menstrual blood, tie it to a fruit-laden tree, and say: 'I am giving you my illness and my weakness; you will give me your power to bear fruit: " Yafar men of New Guinea secretly collected their wife's menstrual blood as the most potent ingredient in magical charms to enhance their hunting.i" But just as often, people saw menstruation as the quintessential curse. The most classic example is the Judeo-Christian decree that God inflicted menstruation and the pain of childbirth on Eve for eating an apple in the Garden of

Menstruation • 131 Eden. Menstruating Mayan women were said to "carry an evil wind;' and were dangerous to others, especially newborns." Some thought menstrual blood could function as a conduit for malevolence . The Congolese fretted that those who envied a mother's fertility could steal her menstrual blood or placenta pieces to use against her. They used caution in handling these bodily emissions." In Papua New Guinea, witchcraft was closely linked with menstrual blood. Nothing seemed more out of place than "the active use of blood, uncontrolled ritually by men:' Fears of witchcraft paralleled men's fears of women's using menstrual blood against them . Among the Bimin-Kuskusmin, "menstrual blood carries the capacity for farnam witchcraft," Only agnatic blood ties could impel farnam attacks . Men might become witches, but only women could carry out lethal attacks. Witches menstruated continuously, even while pregnant, and lactated menstrual blood. Witches wielding menstrual blood were the "polluting woman par excellence:>23 Cultures that constructed menstruation as polluting often mandated periods of seclusion for menstruating women. Relegating menstruating women to structures separated from their family was a widely practiced custom. Women remained sequestered alone or with other menstruating women for the duration of their menstrual cycles." Nepalese women of Bhalara retired to a barn and refrained from "household reproduction, either material (productive) or biological (she is barred from sleeping with her husband)" as their dharma or duty. They touched only nurs ing infants, and they prevented others from contacting anything they had touched. Girls and childless women observed these restrictions for six days, while mothers did so for five days. All ritually bathed on the fourth day.25 Many religions obstructed menstruating women from full participation. Orthodox Judaism banned menstruating women from praying or going to temple, as did Hinduism, Buddhism, and medieval Christianity. Islam also prohibited menstruating women from fasting and circumambulating (Tawajf) around the mosque (Ka'ba) or performing her "farewell Tawaf]" before returning to her home village, which was otherwise proper behavior for a pilgrim. Greek women could not go to church, light candles, or touch icons in their domestic shrines ." Sexual intercourse was typically taboo during the menstrual cycle. Orthodox Jewish and Muslim couples refrained from intercourse during the entire menstrual period. Ritual purification ended abstinence ." Leviticus ordained that a menstruating woman was unclean for seven days, but after the destruction of the Temple, rabbis elaborated greater restrictions for women, even as they lessened the laws of purity for others. The M ishna further codified laws of family purity in the sixteenth century. They lengthened

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the intercourse taboo , mandating twelve days of abstinence to ensure cleanliness. However, the medieval Jewish physician Maimonides believed that a couple should be excused if they had not yet "fulfilled the commandment to procreate:' In reality, Jewish couples' practices varied. Some paid no heed. Some refrained from sex only during bleeding. At the other extreme, Orthodox couples might remain celibate for the entire twelve days, sleep in separate beds, and avoid handing things to each other. Purification rituals demarcated the termination of polluted seclusion. Jewish women immersed themselves in a purifying mikveh bath after seven days, which included "living waters" drawn from lakes, streams, rainfall, or some other natural source. In earlier days, women performed a sacrifice after their menstrual cycles to underscore their dedication to God. After the Temple was destroyed, women waited twelve days before the mikveh and did not sacrifice. By the Talmudic period, ritual purity had become woman's private concern. However, a new realm of family purity (taharat hamispahah) emphasized that the purity of her whole family rested on a woman's proper enactment of ritual observances. Karaite Jewish women in San Francisco reported that husbands knew when their wives began menstruating. They slept in separate beds during menstruation . Once she was ritually cleansed, her husband joined his wife in her bed to ensure the absolute purity of his own. Between 1920 and 1940, Jewish women enjoyed a substantially lower incidence of cervical cancer. Because no one knew why, medical experts and Jewish leaders turned to the laws of family purity for explanation. Concerned more about the pace of Jewish assimilation than cervical cancer, especially in regard to gender roles, conservative Jewish leaders exhorted women to remember their responsibilities not just to themselves but also to the "purity" of their families. Lengthy abstinence requirements spared their cervixes for almost two weeks out of a month. Rabbi Simon Baumberg warned that after a woman's menstrual period, "a residue of gases from the chemical and neuro-electrical charge remains clinging to her externally, which can only be got rid of by immersion in a Mikvah," Baumberg argued that only the "living waters" of the mikveh "contained radioactive qualities uniquely capable of removing toxins: ' A douch e would not do. Without the mikveh, according to Jacob Smithline, "all kinds of bacteria" cling to the cervix. Jewish intellectuals thought mikvehs should proliferate as public facilities in every community and privately be "constructed in bathrooms, hidden in closets, and disguised as living room and bedroom furniture:' Parents should give their newlywed children an "insurance life-policy" by having a home mikveh installed, without which their grandchildren would only narrowly escape physical and mental retardation.

Menstruation • 133 In the late 1970s, a close-knit Syrian American Jewish community in Brooklyn began to construct public mikvehs. Although many young women opted to pursue higher education and careers, they still emphasized becoming a wife and mother and maintaining the proper kosher home and cycle of Jewish holidays. Young women thought that American culture humiliated and deprecated women. By reviving customs that their mothers, had abandoned they created positions of respect and autonomy for themselves that were subject to community sanction while maintaining firm commitments to their heritage and institutions. Just when their growing affluence threatened to bring them into conflict with the dominant American society, they created boundaries to shore up their own status and keep the outside world at bay. In the process, they also influenced men to adhere to tradition and not wander too far astray." Islamic law prohibited Muslim husbands from divorcing their wives during their menstrual cycles. Only after three sex-free menstrual periods could a divorce be final. These restrictions related to inheritance laws, making sure that any unborn baby would not be denied paternal rights." Many urged women to seek sexual intercourse with their husband at the conclusion of menstrual seclusion because it was the most fertile time for conception. Jewish leaders noted that laws of niddah and family purity were perfectly designed to ensure the maximum possibility of conception. Others thought this recaptured the power of a woman's sexuality for the patriline. The Nepalese of Bhalara optimized intercourse on the fifth day after ritual purification as perfect for conceiving a son. South Asian Indians also emphasized making a woman's menstrual blood fruitful by having sex as soon as the ritual period of isolation had passed. t" Numerous cultures equated menstrual blood and the blood of childbirth. Leviticus was explicit: "If a woman conceived, and bears a male child, then she shall be unclean seven days; as at the time of her menstruation:' Greeks restricted menstruation, childbirth, and miscarriage in the same way because of the blood . Jews and Muslims held that the bloody clot of early miscarriage required a seclusion like that of a menstruating woman; a miscarriage of a more human form required the same rituals as those for a parturient mother. Ethiopian Jews in Israel used the same isolated huts for menstruation and childbirth. George Thomson observed, "There is no sphere of human life in which a greater uniformity can be observed than in the treatment of menstrual and puerperal woman.t" The Iicarilla Apache believed that people would develop rheumatism from touching or smelling menstrual blood or the blood of childbirth because the offended daughters of a monster, who had been sexually rebuffed by their central culture hero, Monster Slayer, cursed humans. Special "blood medicines" were the only treatment. Midwives chewed the root of Bahia dissecta, which

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has red tendrils on the roots, lest their fingers become knotted. Men chewed the seeds of Berlandiera lyrata and had tea made from its boiled leaves rubbed over their joints .32 Congolese people equated early pregnancy with menstruation. For three months, a woman carried a lisole, which would later become a lieme, a fetus that moved. A lisole consisted of blood and water. The woman carrying it was treated like a menstruating woman. She should stay away from sick people and new mothers, called Mama Wale. The lisole carried a poisonous "gas that can sting and kill:' A Mama Wale's breast milk might dry up. "Alisoles bloody gas is never seen, only touched. Women caution each other to be careful where to sit:' The Congolese distrusted missionary efforts to train teenage girls in mid wifery. They feared that "when they were menstruating the spirits would 'use' them and cause the death of the sick one:'33 It also has been a widespread cultural trope to oppose menstrual blood and childbirth blood with hunting success, hearkening back to the dawn of human culture. Menstruating or parturient women were warned to stay away from men and their hunting accouterments. When their wives were about to deliver, Nanai men of Russia "made absolutely sure that no hunting articles were in the room:' Anything that he overlooked "touched the blood;' and "(gloves, stockings, shoes, hunting clothes) had to be changed, or else no animals would be found." :"

Holistic Considerations within the Reproductive Life Cycle Studies of discrete reproductive rituals are inherently flawed in that they cannot capture holistic cultural world views that integrate and give meaning to reproductive rituals throughout the life course for both sexes. This perspective can help clarify other rituals that occur at puberty, childbirth, and death. Rather than being distinct, each rite of passage is linked to a larger symbolic context by a particular cultural logic. Yet very few studies attempt anything like this; this book is hampered by the underdeveloped status of the field. The Dine (Navajo) case is illustrative. Their menarche ceremony, the Kinaalda. was a prophylactic ritual designed to usher the girl into society as a fertile woman. She dressed as a central deity, Changing Woman, and elder women "molded" her body to achieve cultural norms of proper stature. The blood of her first two periods was very sacred . Thereafter, menstrual blood was potentially very dangerous. What cosmological principles underlaid this transformation? The laundry list of taboos constraining menstruating Dine women looks quite similar to cultural proscriptions the world over. Dine women retreated to menstrual huts . Contact with menstrual blood was hazardous to everyone. Sexual intercourse was strictly forbidden. Menstruating women were not to

Menstruation • 135 cook, carry water, go to the fields, have contact with livestock, touch children, visit sick people, enter a ceremonial hogan, use a sweat house, be a patient or attend or lead a sing, join in any ceremonial dancing (except the Kinaaldai, or view a sandpainting. On the surface, they seem to have been unfairly treated. Delving deeper into Dine cosmology helps explain these proscriptions. As one Dine woman commented, "When you miss your period, it's because the blood is being made into the baby:' Conversely, the flow of menstrual blood signified infertility-conception thwarted. Dine women who started their periods remarked, "My grandmother came to see me again .?" Grandmothers did not bear babies. Menstruation meant that a baby was not being formed, with connotations bordering on death. Gary Witherspoon observed, "The giving of life and the sharing of sustenance is considered to be the most powerful, the most intense, and the most enduring of bonds . .. the ideal pattern or code for all social interactions.?" The places and activities from which menstruating women were restricted were exactly those that sustained life as the Dine knew it. "It is .. .a woman's activities as productive, creative, that explains both the function and content of the menstrual taboos. The daily activities of sheep herding, farming, making love with her husband, or handling children, are all symbolic of what it means to be a traditional Dine woman. These were precisely the activit ies which are temporarily suspended during menstruation.?" It is tempting to extend this logic cross-culturally, but each cosmological context must be carefully examined. Inventories of taboos cannot convey this . Unfortunately, most studies focus only on the content of restrictions. However, the Oglala Sioux case is as instructive as the Dine case. As with Dine restrictions, the restrictions governing menstruating Oglala women had to do with the power of their menstrual blood to interfere with other productive aspects of life, Oglala women could participate in certain ceremonies only when they were prepubescent or postmenopausal. Intercourse was prohibited because semen was a finite substance that would be wasted during menstruation. Wasting semen was antinatalist. Menstruating women and women in labor were segregated because of their blood, but they were not scorned. Instead, they were considered paragons with power so great that it had to be carefully managed socially." Origin stories of native groups of southeastern North America highlighted associations among women, blood, and fertility and elevated the importance of agriculture over hunting and gathering. A common trope involved the primordial family: the maize mother, hunter father, and two sons . One son was the biological offspring of the primordial couple . The other son was created from discarded deer's blood. The rascal sons discovered the pen where their father had confined game animals and liberated them, making them hard to find. Thus, the hunt was born. They wondered how their mother furnished them with maize and beans. So they surreptitiously peeked at her in the storehouse,

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only to be repulsed because the maize and beans came from her body. In the Muscogee version, she scraped maize from her thighs (associations with the stain of menstrual blood on the inner thighs leap to mind). Thereafter, they refused the food, reviled her as a witch, and determined to murder her. Their mother caught on when they refused to eat and told them how to kill her. They were to prepare a large plot of land for cultivation and then drag her corpse over it seven times, the sacred numerical sequence. The ever-disobedient boys cleared only two small patches ofland and dragged her body over it only twice. Thereafter, maize grew only where her blood had fallen, and produced only two harvests per year instead of the year-round abundance their mother originally promised. Menstruating women in the early historic period also refrained from their very substantial productive pursuits. They did not farm, cook for others, make pottery or cloth for others to use, or come near their husbands and their tools. Men could be harmed if they smelled menstrual odor, trod where menstruating women had traveled, or bathed downriver from them. Fertility symbolism also enveloped children. All babies were integrated parts of their mothers, female, and without bones. Regardless of sex, babies ideologically had no phallus . All babies suckled safki, a symbolically important watery maize gruel, from their mothers' breasts and received names from their mothers' clans at birth. At puberty Muscogee men and women separated. Boys left the maternal realm to avoid being polluted by it. Men channeled and controlled the female capacity to reproduce. They figuratively killed their mothers and then left "to live as warriors hunting in the forest," At puberty, their fathers' clan gave boys a war name at the green corn ceremony tposkita, meaning "to fast or separate") after an initial foray into the male forest domain. They returned with animal parts to prove their manliness. After completing these initiation rites, new men were awarded ballsticks or guns . Sticks, guns, bones, and even firewood were phallic symbols of masculinity. Men provided firewood ; women cooked. Male power both united and separated the two genders. Men described menstruating women and women's gossip as uncontrollable, like menstrual blood. Men brought order to potential chaos . Women's reproductive capacities had to be "defined and shaped by a man to form both a child and a political alliance" through marriage. But Muscogee women were not simply powerless as implied by "lack of a phallus :' Their power was "the basic principle of vitality to which males respondjed] ," Men shaped "social form .. . through identification with fire, sun's light, logs, bones, and instruments for combat," Given this religious foundation, Southeastern native people held deep beliefs about the power of menstrual blood. In the early 1700s an observer described how a Muscogee man vomited his meal of sagamite when he learned that a

Menstruation • 137 menstruating woman had prepared it. He claimed to see red particles in the pot. In the 1750s, the Chickasaw praised menstruating women for sequestering themselves during an attack by the French so as not to thwart the effectiveness of their husbands' virility. Similar beliefs persisted into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.f It is impossible to capture the depth and integrated nature of reproductive rituals by focusing on menstruation alone. Broadening the lens to include men created greater contextualization. Considering the life course expanded our understandings even more. Indian South African women felt ambivalent about menstruation. Most drew on either the Muslim or the Hindu religion to explain why women menstruated in the first place and why it eventually stopped completely. "Allah told Eve not to eat from the tree but she did and that is why women are punished:' Quite a few postmenopausal women had resented being unable to perform religious rituals during their menstrual periods. It prevented them "from lighting the (Hindu) lamp, from going to the (Muslim) mosque, or from assisting in washing the deceased in funerary preparations:' Premenopausal, younger women enjoyed a break from religious ritual. Couched in spiritual terms , Indian South African women also expressed indigenous understandings of biology. They related menstruation to "a cleansing of the body ('system') as 'old blood: impurities, or surplus blood leave the body:' The process was healthy and readied the body for pregnancy. An older woman explained, "Bad blood needs to come out. Some have their period for six or seven days, others like me for only two. Most of these others later suffer with high blood [pressure] because they have too much blood:' Most worried that menstruating women were more vulnerable because "they were losing blood or because the uterus was 'open: " Older women explained that intercourse could hurt men andmade women more susceptible to venereal disease. Younger women felt that it was messy and unclean. Women were integrated members of the cultural system and shared these ideas. Even so, some resented men's freedom from all of this: "Men can go where they want , they are free to do anything, they are not restricted in the practices of religion or sex, and they do not have the monthly 'bother: " All of this ambivalence is characteristic of life as most people live it.40 James Weiner captured the rich, complex interplay of gendered blood symbols and rituals in his rendition of Foi (Papua New Guinea) beliefs about procreation and sorcery. Women spontaneously and regularly menstruated, "which is at once the source of sexual regeneration and of lethal illness:' Intercourse depleted semen and made men vulnerable to the power of menstrual blood, traces of which were omnipresent. Male rituals sought to appropriate menstrual blood's power in two ways. First, they paid bridewealth to "transform female birth into male patrifiliation," This occurred prior to marriage and after the wife's death, which they viewed as an alteration in relations , not an

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endpoint. Second, they collected menstrual blood as the central substance for their sorcery rites, which accorded them control over life and death. Bridewealth payments to a wife's relatives consisted of status items such as pearl shell and ropes of strung cowrie shells. These items compensated women who "worked hard" to give birth and their relatives who "worked hard" to raise children. These acts converted "the innate lineality of females into the conventionally defined lineality of males:' Men's relation to their children depended on substituting wealth for women. This transformed women into "things;' such as tools, sago palms, land, weapons, and magic spells, that could be exchanged against status items. Because wives became possessions, men protected their rights to sexual access. A man had be careful because an angry, resentful wife could pollute his possessions with her menstrual power and make him age more quickly. So men's chief defense lay in punishing any man who dared to seduce another man's wife. The central element in their sorcery was menstrual blood. Men manufactured irikao, the most common form of sorcery, by taking bamboo tubes and inserting "stiff and irritating" plant matter and even stinging insects into its hollow center. In pre-mission times, the man secretly climbed a woman's funeral scaffold, preferably one who had died in childbirth or had fair skin . He shoved the bamboo into the corpse's vagina to allow the bloody fluids of decomposition to collect inside. When colonizers banned platform funerals, men turned to th eir menstruating sisters as the most trusted donors. The y sealed the tube and stored it above the fireplace unt il the matter dried into a "gritty powder:' Then they sprinkled it on the victim's chest or sleeping mat. Death was expected shortly. A husband protected his rights to his wife by resorting to sorcery using menstrual blood from a dead or closely related woman." Papua New Guinea and greater Austronesia were awash in blood beliefs. Bernard Iuillerat produced the most thorough ethnographic account of the complex relationship between women's blood and men's blood among the Yafar of New Guinea. Their origin stories reflected what they said of themselves: "We the Yafar are the children of the blood:' The Yafar worldview acknowledged two complementary divisions: (1) plant hoofuk, specifically that of the sago palm, and (2) animal blood associated with men's hunting activities. Hoofuk was the central white pith at the core of plants that transmitted and channeled life. Plants , especially those cultivated by women, connoted fertility. Hoofuk was associated with both the digestive tract, through food and feces, and sexual reproduction, through menstrual blood, semen, and other genital secretions. The undeniable power of women to conceive, incubate, and give and nourish life was "hoofuk par excellence, the source of life," Nothing else approximated its potency. The best white hoofuk enabled women to become pregnant effortlessly and often. Only repeated sexual acts

Menstruation • 139 could make a woman with red hoofuk pregnant. The hoofuk of infertility or menopause was black. Hoofuk was hard when a woman was young, runny if she lost a great deal of blood in childbirth, and firm if she did not . Women's hoofuk was far more powerful than anything men possessed. Men tried to minimize their vulnerability to women's power as manifested in menstrual blood and the blood of childbirth. Women's blood, areas women frequented such as the village ground and forest trails, and animals women frequently walked near received ritual treatment. Menstruating women retreated under the house to protect the entire community from their mighty hoofuk, which was "not shared and not cognitively controlled:' Menstruating women knew to avoid cultivated areas because their blood would attract wild pigs to ravage the crops. To evade conveying the dreaded power of hoofuk, they knew not to go into the garden , do any harvesting, bring their husbands raw food, cook, carry water, or gather firewood . They especially stayed away from male rituals or hunting objects such as bows, arrows, masks, and fish poison . A telltale "chronic cough and difficulty breathing" identified contaminated victims. "Old men's bronchitis [was] .. .the inevitable mark of the contamination of all married men:' The concepts of "one blood;' common among New Guineans, and generations help explain how hoofuk pollution was transmitted. A woman shared the same "blood" as her siblings, her first parallel and cross cousins, her children , her siblings' children, and her grandchildren. Sharing blood made these relatives immune to her hoofuk. However, immunity passed only down the lineage. Her own parents, aunts and uncles, and grandparents were vulnerable. The order of transmission was "an irreversible one-way street" and "contaminate[d] only when it flow[ed] back up the generations:' Her husband and his relatives were most susceptible. Only her sister-in-law seemed "to be assimilated to a sister and [could] without risk accept . .. food" prepared by her brother's menstruating wife. These restrictions also governed sharing certain red foods, of which pandamus was paramount. The Yafar associated the deep red color of pandamus fruit with blood and "strictly regulated" its "planting, preparation, and consumption:' The rules governing pandamus consumption closely paralleled Yafarbeliefs about the routes hoofuk contamination took. Daughters and parents did not eat pandamus together. Uncles and aunts did not eat pandamus with their nieces and nephews with whom they shared blood. Only prepubescent children who had not been "ritually blooded" (sanctified on the chest with animal blood and ochre) were exempt. Just as hunters could not eat the game they had killed themselves, cultivators could not prepare or eat their own pandamus because "one does not consume one's own blood :' Even looking at the wrong pandamus was taboo, so people avoided relatives' farms. Similar rules governed other blood-related items, such as "the reddish-shelled eggs

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of the abi wildfowl;' partially smoked cigars, areca nuts (which produced red betel juice), or a man's bow. Yafar husbands actually co-opted the power of their wife's blood. Defloration rituals anticipated successful hunting. Men clearly connected women's blood and the blood of quarry. Intercourse aimed to magically ensure bountiful game. The new husband collected defloration blood, mixed it with chewed "magic hunting rhizomes;' and rubbed it on his chest while chanting fertility phrases connecting the vagina, blood, penis, semen, and animal blood. Seasoned husbands kept this up, sneaking under the house where their menstruating wives sat to scoop up "a few dark spots in the dust:' Men wrapped minute bits in leaves and carried them in net bags as magical ingredients in secret rituals. Young hunters were consecrated with it at puberty. It was fed to hunting dogs to enhance their prowess. Dance masks and arrow tips were daubed with it. Furthermore, "Mixed with red ochre, animal blood and extracts of strong-smelling rhizomes, and .. . associated with the mythic blood of the Primordial Mother and with her cosmic hoofuk, human menstrual blood is used to redden the ground in planting rituals:' Menstrual taboos had counterparts in hunting rituals . Dogs were great helpers to Yafar hunters. Just as adolescent hunters at puberty were presented to the guardian spirits of game animals, so too were hunting dogs. Redness suffused these rituals. At small pools in the bush where hunters placed plants coated with red ochre, dogs' joints, heart, genitals, tail, and mouth were coated with a red-tinted mixture of betel nuts chewed with "magic rhizomes" to enhance their hunting prowess. Spitting red betel juice all over the dog made it appear "luminous" and "adorned with blood" as it was introduced to the guardian spirits of the game. Afterward, dogs were still occasionally fed magic rhizomes mixed with human menstrual blood . A paradox in the social management of blood caused great consternation and a creative solution. Pigs raised by women ate village garbage; they should have been unsuitable for consumption. Yet pigs were ritually purified so that the benefits of animal husbandry would not be negated. Men ritually "hunted" domestic pigs at slaughter time. Women lured pigs into the village with sago jelly, coaxing them directly into the hunters' path . When wounded pigs ran off, hunters tracked them. When retr ieved, pig carcasses were governed by the same distribution taboos as game animals . Hunters were forbidden to consume animals they had killed. The ritual transformed domestic animals into game animals, erasing the fact that women had raised them in the village, where menstrual blood and childbirth blood had polluted the ground. 42 Most peoples of Highland New Guinea denoted kin groups descended through women as being of "one blood:' Those with a common female relative were said to "share blood :' Those who "shared blood" could not marry. Only among the Melpa was "one blood" reckoned bilaterally. Others also traced kin

Menstruation • 141 connections through either "one breast" or "one penis:' One's clan group was said to "share meat ;' while other clans "gave meat:' Highland New Guineans believed that repeated intercourse allowed adequate semen to accumulate to form a "root;' enabling the fetus to overcome the strength of uterine blood, which would otherwise destroy it.43 Among the pastoral Masai of Africa, blood mediated between milk and meat in a dietetic cultural code that replicated their cosmological view of the social order. As a patrilineal people they addressed themselves as inkishu, the word for cattle. Men lived with cattle in households; women lived in dispersed houses. Relationships with men determined their social status. Women procured cows' milk, considered everyday food, while men provided beef for ritual consumption. Blood was drawn from live animals and ritually slaughtered ones. It was both ordinary and sacred, and simultaneously symbolized life, death, and rebirth.t" Tuareg bodily symbols mapped social concerns and complex class dimensions shared by men and women. While many Tuareg menstrual restrictions hailed from Islam, some derived from earlier religious traditions. They were "not directly defined by gender at all and not restricted to the view that menstrual pollution and menstrual blood are by definition viewed negatively" Tuareg menstrual taboos were "not so much restrictions as precautions" that gave them "a sense of control over perceived threats to elite identity, threats not exclusively posed by recent change but deeply rooted in Tuareg society:' They were "assertions of power:' A complex web of restrictions had evolved as elite Tuareg women and men endeavored to maintain their advantaged status . They sent "messages about social vulnerability and the protection of noble, pastoral identity:' Women also strived to preserve the continuity of their matrilineage. The Tuareg worried that their bodily orifices made them vulnerable to malevolent forces. Men feared oral invasion. Women scrupulously guarded their vaginas. No one bathed nude; it was too risky. The Tuareg associated red with fertility, menstruation, the blood of parturition, and the devil. It also conveyed protection. Women painted their fingernails with henna at marriage and life crises when they perceived themselves as vulnerable. White connoted nobility. Ai baraka, meaning "a blessing or life force;' existed within animals ' milk, newly mature crops, men's religious amulets, fruit pits, new skin sacks, swords, chiefs' large drums, and sacrificial animals and while praying , fasting during Ramadan, and hunting. Contamination brought disaster. Menstruating women kept away from things containing al baraka, though "in certain contexts female biology acquire[d] a sacredness almost comparable:' Blood, milk, earth, and leather were key symbols richly woven into cultural metaphors. Menstrual blood signified fertility, not pollution. Tuareg women gave birth on the earthen floor of the mother's tent surrounded by her female

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matrilineal relatives, far from affines. "Home ground" received the blood of childbirth. Through blood and place, infant s were tied to the matrilineage, a vestige of their pre- Islamic heritage . Blood and milk linked matrilineal relatives. Relationships between sisters remained strong throughout life, superseding the husband-wife bond. Marriages dissolved over this issue. Men who journeyed with caravans for as long as seven months of the year or migrated to seek new gardens were fleeting figures. Matrilocal residence provided women with a more reliable lifeline than did marriage. At a woman's death, akhudderan, or "living milk;' inheritance passed her possessions to her female matrilineal relatives. The word for stomach, tedis, translated literally as "matriline:' The Tuareg said, "It is the stomach . . . that colors the child:' A story accounting for conception likened the mother's stomach to a leather sack that protected the child. Menstrual restrictions kept elite women of pastoral nobility away from tho se of lesser classes, which was the whole point of the ritual taboos practiced by both genders . Women of the lower status blacksmith group did the leatherwork that was the hallmark of Tuareg renown. Former slaves gardened. Menstruating noble women stayed away from leather, gardens, and crops in their quest to secure and maintain pastoral nobility. Menstruating Tuareg women observed the Islamic avoidances of saying prayers, perambulating around mosqu es, and attending services. Women became full participating Muslims at menarche. However, menstruating women did not isolate themselve s; they freely inter acted with men. They were more concerned about their vulnerability to malevolent forces through their men strual blood . They wore the same wrapper skirt for the duration of their menstrual cycles, which they surreptitiously removed only at night to wash. Women followed these precautions most closely during their childbearing years. Noble men had to guard against envy and jealousy. They owned most of the valuable livestock, especially camels. They controlled the caravan trade. They collected a percentage of the harvest of oasis gardens harrowed by former slaves. Even though reciprocity governed their relationships with their clients, noble men wore face veils to guard their mouths from the "evil mouth" and the "evil eye:' Veiling requ irements were as strict as menstrual taboos . An adolescent boy's first veiling was a ceremonial occasion , whereas nothing marked menarche. Noble Tuareg women and men alike were vulnerable to pernicious forces. Restrictions governing gender and sexuality aimed to protect life.Menstruation did not pollute, "rather, men and women use the concept of menstrual danger to assert ritual and social statuses bound up with interests of descent and economics:' Failing to abide by gender restrictions, whether menstrual or

Menstruation • 143 otherwise, meant an abandonment of self-respect. The burden of maintaining noble purity fell on both women and men." Few scholars have conveyed the subtle detail and cultural complexity that Rasmussen, Iuillerat, or Weiner have achieved. Blood was always central , though its meanings have been multivocal. Examples of menstrual rituals that are far more sketchy should prompt us to be prepared to envision more holistic cultural contexts .

Menstruation and Medicalization in the West Clinical approaches to women's bodies have closely mirrored cultural predilections about women. Their reproductive capacities were favored targets. Folk views of menstruation as "the curse" approximated the pathological hypotheses devised by "learned" men . Many associated menstrual bleeding with purification because of its cyclicity. People assumed that women needed to be periodically cleansed because retaining menstrual blood was potentially harmful. Because menstruation ceased with pregnancy, many believed the blood either transformed into the fetus or nourished it. Aristotle interpreted menstruation as a sign of women's inherent inferiority. Men's active role in reproduction was evidenced by their ability to transform matter through heat into semen. Women were colder, so their blood just dribbled away each month if they were not pregnant. Menstrual blood simply nourished the fetus. Hippocrates concurred, and this belief persisted for centuries. Pliny surmised, "Women who do not menstruate are incapable of bearing children because it is of this substance that the infant is formed. The seed of the male, acting as a sort of leaven, causes it to unite and assume a form, and . .. it acquires life and assumes a bodily shape:' Explanations for menstruation multiplied. In the second century AD, Galen argued that women's languid lives required that they regularly empty themselves of fluids. Soranus figured that men accumulated fluids too but evacuated them through exercise. Even though William Harvey's mapping of the circulatory system proved these notions wrong, as late as 1766, Smellie conceded that "the catamenia is . . . a periodic discharge of . .. superfluous blood:' Others wondered how blood left women's bodies . Avicenna, the eleventhcentury Arab physician , conjectured that blood left the uterus because it was the most fragile organ, having been formed after all the rest. In the seventeenth century, Regnier de Graaf likened menstruation to fermented spirits "seeping out of a defective barrel " By the 1600s in England, menstrual metaphors proliferated. Europeans had long associated red flowers with fertility, so menstruation easily became "the

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flowers:' Labels such as "the courses;' "the terms;' "the months;' "monthly evacuations;' and "those monthly periods" reflected periodicity. Medical specialists expressed pathological viewpoints in handbooks that referred to the "monthly disease;' the "sickness;' and the "monthly infirmity:' Latin or Greek words, such as menses, catamenia, and menstris, abounded. Circumlocutions such as "natural purgations;' "those Evacuations of the weaker Sex;' and "the time of your wonted grief" were also common. An intimate couple might simply say "them" or "those:' Lesspleasant were phrases such as a "Monthly flux of Excrementitious and Unprofitable Blood:' The terms employed reveal a great deal about medical specialists' attitudes toward what they thought of as menstrual "disorders :' Older folk beliefs persisted alongside scientific advances in understanding the circulatory system and the relationship between ovulation and conception, and were far more robust in popular thinking, even as late as the seventeenthcentury in Europe. Breast milk was thought to be derived from menstrual blood, so some warned that intercourse during lactation would drive the blood back to the womb. Lactating mothers were warned against copulation "lest she provoke her menstruous disease:' Contact with toxic menstrual blood inside the womb was thought to cause the childhood ills of fevers, measles, pustules on the head , scabs, scales, and itches." By the seventeenth century, physicians worried about menstrual irregularity. Everyone agreed that regular menstruation maintained good health . The most recognized "diseases" of menstruation were amenorrhea (no menstrual cycling) and menorrhagia (excessive bleeding) . Amenorrhea was more common, perhaps because of dietary inadequacies. Menorrhagia was considered more serious, even resulting in death. Remedies for both were similar. Henry Manning thought most women's diseases "are the consequences of obstructed catamenia:' Some of the ills attributed to amenorrhea have no contemporary counterparts. Old virgins who did not menstruate suffered "greensickness:' People worried that menstrual blood and women's "seed;' which was released during intercourse, would build to toxic levels. Another uterine ailment, "mother-fits;' "suffocation of the mother;' or "strangulation;' might result. Riverious, a French doctor, elaborated in 1655, "When Seed and Menstrual Blood are retained . . . they putrefi e and are corrupted, and attain a malignant and venomous quality:' Medical specialists agreed that either a woman's blood was too thick or her muscles were too taut to allow the blood through. Most seventeenth-century medical treatises still followed Galen's recommendations. Warm baths, fumigations, and pessaries topped the remedies . Less strenuous activity would counter the ill effects of excessive exercise. Menorrhagia brought forth similar advice. Bloodletting also seemed to be sound therapy for profuse bleeding. Medical handbooks advised provoking vomiting.

Menstruation • 145 Physicians commonly counseled pessaries for inadequate menstruation. They soaked wool in medicines. Medications were inserted into silk or fine linen bags. Crawford noted, "There was no unwillingness to advise married women to insert objects into the vagina:' Many heeded the advice of the ancients, who believed that linen could extract blood from the body. Medical specialists' preoccupation with the noxious impact of menstrual disorders led them to misdiagnoses. Any bleeding could be vicarious menstruation. Nosebleeds and breast bleeding were lumped under menstrual disorders. The "cares and passions" of a woman's mind could disrupt her menstrual cycle. Queen Anne's doctor advised her to dissociate herself from state affairs during menstruation to enable him to manage her gout. Physicians frequently promoted sexual intercourse as a corrective for menstrual disorders. "Matrimony for maids, vigorous sex for wives" would cure them. Alterations in nutrition, exercise, and atmosphere might help. Some remedies, such as excessive phlebotomy, were detrimental. Even though Harvey disproved Galen's calculations about the volume of blood in the body, the wisdom of the ancients was remarkably durable. Ancient thinkers also attributed the litany of withering vines, dying plants, uncurable hams and pickles, discoloring mirrors, and blunting knives to women's "flux and course:' Observations did not bear out these warnings, and people began to take note that "[d]ogs did not run mad if they tasted menstrual blood:' James Drake dismissed Pliny's laundry list as superstition. A more empirical approach to "the flowers" was beginning to appear, but it advanced only in fits and starts, with many ideas resurfacing in the twentieth century. As late as 1974, Lancetcorrespondence reported flowers wilting when handled by menstruating women. Even so, intercourse taboos remained firmly in place. Eighteenth-century texts still cautioned that menstrual blood could "Excoriate the Parts of Men by the Meer Contact:' Stern dicta and poetic verse on the "art of begetting beautiful children" conveyed how "Foul Leprous Spots shall with his Birth begin, Spread oer his Body, and encrust his Skin:' Men and women may have given them no mind. Mariners apparently paid them little heed . However, if men and women deviated from the norm, they were aware of it.47 Seventeenth-century English women had private, personal menstrual experiences. However, they also had to negotiate the public sphere of physicians' attitudes and remedies, and social proscriptions. Evidence is scarce, but some reliable observations about their circumstances and attitudes can be made . Physicians reported that women were very private about menstrual matters and would rather suffer silently than come forward with their complaints. In 1670 a report on "Groaping Doctors" revealed the abusive practices of some doctors who feigned the need to feel women's genital area to discern their problems. Men also intervened with their own "cures" in "treating" their wives and daughters. Perhaps women had good reason to keep quiet.

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Women had their own opinions about medical intervention. Because they believed that breast milk derived from blood, they worried that phlebotomy for menstrual disorders would interfere with lactation. Women traded on physicians' preoccupation with amenorrhea to end unwanted pregnancies. Many herbal remed ies for amenorrhea were also known abortifacients. Women obtained abortions even though medical texts did not openly discuss them. Doctors warned each other not to be duped into "unwittingly serv[ing] as an abortionist:' Most women turned to midwives and each other for menstrual advice. Physicians resented the rejection of their authority. Samuel Purchas complained in 1619, "How many old Women preferred before their greatest Doctor?" James Primrose objected that "other women" recommended taking "red wine with cinnamon often" to remedy menorrhagia. Using cinnamon he thought inadvisable because a hot dry spice would increase rather than decrease blood loss. Women's views on menstruation depended on how they regarded pregnancy. Women who wanted a baby delighted in missing a period. On the other hand, having endured difficult deliveries could have made pregnancy a fearsome thing. Women's medical commonplace gives some indications about their attitudes. They abound with herbal remedies for dealing with amenorrhea and its concomitant ills, "greensickness:' and "mother-fits:' Sometimes women annotated in the margins, "it hath helped myself:' Women learned effective cures from poor women begging at their door. "The old Countesse of Arundels" shared her treatment. Women discussed their issues across "social barriers?" Beliefsabout menstruation in Europe and its colonies were not homogeneous. Late-seventeenth-century Anglo-American medical ideology had European roots but accorded colonial women indispensable roles in the American economy. Medical texts moralized about bodies instead of souls. Reflecting the Protestant work ethic, enterprise and moderation translated as virtue and temperance, and idleness became sin. "Poor health, including .. . menstrual ills, replace[d] eternal damnation as the wages of sin in this medical theology:' Dr. William Buchan wrote the most popular medical self-help book. The fact that the book was reprinted thirty times in the colonies and only nineteen times in Great Britain reflected the poor state of American medical training. The most widely available treatments were remedies administered by women, who found Buchan's treatise invaluable. Buchan offered hearty advice that exercise ensured healthy menstruation. "One seldom meets with complaints from obstructions amongst the more active and laborious part of the sex; whereas the indolent and lazy are seldom free from them :' Industriousness was the key. Dr. Samuel K. Jennings, a physician and minister, sermonized about the robust economic benefits of women's work. He effused about "the blooming maid dexterously whirling the useful wheel, cleaning and adjusting the furniture,

Menstruation • 147 regulating the wardrobe, directing in the kitchen , superintending the dairy:' Even with all this work, she spent the day "cheerfully;' ate "sweet" food, and retired early to her "soft and pleasant" bed. All able-bodied members contributed to households. Women managed child rearing and the domestic production of textiles, candles, poultry, and eggs for sale to merchants. They assisted their husbands' enterprises and assumed control if widowed. This continued until the industrial revolution disrupted household domestic economies and marginalized women. Doctors advised that pubescent girls be like interns properly to "establish a good constitution:' No one knew of germs or hormones, so speculation about the foundation of good health rested on lifestyle. Holistic notions of health and well-being united mind and body. Menstruation was normal and all would be well if women lived resourceful lives in harmony with nature. But precautions to ensure healthy menstrual function penetrated deep into a young woman's life. Dr. William Potts Dewees set forth a thoroughgoing regimen for establishing healthy menstrual cycles. Girls could help themselves by engaging in "regular . . . exercise in proper weather;' consuming vegetables and milk, shunning alcohol, avoiding spices, keeping "the bowels regular, or even a little loose;' sleeping "not too long ... in a cool room upon a hard bed, and without too many bed clothes, or even curtains;' keeping their lower extremities warm, and having periodic bloodlettings. Dewees's moralizing became apparent when he warned against dancing too energetically. Prescriptions for menstrual health increasingly cautioned against immoderation and urbanity, which were fearful specters suggesting that their world was changing. Several aspects of women's behavior most concerned medical specialists. Temperance was imperative . Eating too much spicy or salty food, drinking liquor, staying out late, and dancing "inordinately" all wreaked havoc on cyclicity. Overexposure to sexuality brought on premature menarche with heavier flows. Dalliances such as parties; balls; the opera; cards games; suggestive books, pictures, or statues; and flirting would provoke the menses. Physicians warned that such trifling made menstruation more painful. Dr. Colombat opined that women who suffered dysmenorrhea were "generally of a nervous or bilious temperament, of ardent feelings, and greatly addicted to coitus:' Physicians feared that the transformation from rural to urban life threatened the social order and women's reproductive performance. Lurid, urban influences, they argued, interfered with menstrual functioning. Dr. J.H. Kellogg wrote, "The excitements of city life, parties, balls, theaters, even the competition of students in school, and the . .. excitement to the nervous system which occur in city life, have a tendency to . .. awaken the sexual activities of the system into life." Clearly, these concerns were culturally constructed. They advocated productive, temperate living and worried about industrialism and urbanization, as did the larger society.

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Advising active industriousness for women directly opposed the incoming tide of counsel that they rest and do nothing or imperil their reproductive function forever. Physicians in the early republic did not prescribe separate standards of conduct for women as did Victorians. Menstruation was natural, not pathological. Women were to be active and energetic, not idle and indolent. Failure to be productive was harmful, not the other way around. However, physicians made inroads as they worried about flirtatious sexuality and urban enjoyments." This grave advice had nothing to do with blood; it was grafted on women's signature biological function to achieve other purposes. There were many breakthroughs in understanding about women's physiology on the way to the twentieth century, but ideologies can have lives of their own. New insights would not free women from constructions of menstrual bleeding. In the mid 1600s, Regnier de Graaf discovered how an ovum burst forth from an ovary to traverse the fallopian tube and lodge in the uterus. The site was named the "graafian follicle:' He speculated that ovulation and conception occurred simultaneously. Scholars began to connect menstruation with ovarian functioning. By 1793, Dr. John Beale Davidge imagined that the ovaries controlled menstrual blood flowing from the uterus. In 1812, John Power found specific ovarian changes related to menstruation. Studies of ovaries proliferated thereafter. In 1844, French physician Achille Chereau opined, "It is only because of the ovary that woman is what she is:' Forty years passed before anyone knew the true significance of ovaries to women's physiology. Thus began what Laqueur called "the most egregious instance of anatomical aporia, and the clearest case in which cultural assumptions fueled a research tradition whose results in turn confirmed those views:' This view persisted into the twentieth century. By the late nineteenth century, middle- and upper-class women had been marginalized by the industrializing economy. Factories manufactured items previously produced domestically, such as soap, candles, and textiles. The workplace moved out of the home, and separate spheres emerged with women planted at home doing unpaid work. They also began to find their voice. Women reacted in diverse ways to being peripheralized. Malcontents found, in voluntary associations, ways to address their concerns. Moral reform lay within the female sphere. Exemplary women advocated for temperance. Moral women challenged slavery and championed abolition. Abolitionism fomented feminism. Were not women kept in bondage in a democracy like slaves? Women learned to organize politically, fund raise, petition, and campaign and set those skills toward advancing women's higher education and suffrage. When they did, male backlash enforced boundaries, "charming picket fences or stern barbed-wire enclosures . . . erecting No Trespassing signs before the world of business, higher education, and political life, and donning the mantle

Menstruation • 149 of newfound science to justify ... barriers in front of women's aspirations:' Until women challenged their assigned place, justifications were not articulated. Discovering spontaneous ovulation in dogs and pigs profoundly influenced the representations of women's bodies. Pouchet's "eighth law" put forth that "the menstrual flow in women corresponds to the phenomenon of excitement which is manifested during the rut . . . in a variety of creatures and especially in mammals:' Augustus Gardiner, an American physician , said this more crudely in 1856: "The bitch in heat has the genitals tumefied and reddened, and a bloody discharge. The human female has nearly the same:' Concern for mutual orgasm was nowhere to be found . No one argued that men and women had similar genitals, though men's were extruded and women's were still inside. The idea of the single sex body had been dealt a deathblow. Ovaries had been differentiated from male testicles only a hundred years earlier, but they unfurled into the engine of female physiology. Menstruation became an external manifestation of the ovaries' overwhelming power. Matthews Duncan, a famous British physician, explained, "Menstruation is like the red flag outside an auction sale; it shows that something is going on inside:' The functions of a small organ a few centimeters long and weighing seven grams became synonymous with women's whole being. This completely countered the musings of more than a millennia of respected intellectuals, from Aristotle, to Pliny, to Haller, to Blumenbach, to Remak and Muller, who explicitly distinguished the human menstrual cycle from mammalian estrus. Laqueur noted when he nailed down the transformation of the single sex body into two distinct sexes that "the social characteristics of women seemed writ in blood and gore and cyclic rages scarcely containable by culture :' Today it is believed that the uterus goes through three stages: proliferative, secretory, and menstrual. In the 1800s, researchers described from four to eight stages. The "constructive" state disrupted the "quiescent" state and was followed by the "destructive" menstrual phase and finally the stage of "repair:' The chosen words depicted war-torn devastation, suffering, and affliction . The influential Cambridge physician Walter Heape called the formation of the menstrual lining "a severe, devastating, periodic action" each month "leaving behind a ragged wreck of tissue, torn glands, ruptured vessels, jagged edges of stroma, and masses of blood corpuscles, which . . .would .. . hardly . .. heal . .. without . .. surgical treatment:' Havelock Ellis echoed that women were "periodically wounded in the most sensitive spot in their organism:' This physiological roller coaster meant "even in the healthiest woman a worm .. .gnaws periodically at the roots of life:' Medical opinion constructed women as menstrually disabled and used this to deny them opportunities until the late twentieth century. Physicians superimposed the animal madness and burning passions of estrus upon women to justify their exclusion from activities such as formal

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education, physical exertions, and athletics. Reducing the central power of religious doctrine, elevating physicians over priests as authorities, and making reproduction subject to rational analysis undergirded this transformation. In the late 1800s, American physicians accepted Pfluger's theory that ner vous stimulation precipitated menstruation. He thought the graafian follicle irritated the ovarian nerve to prompt simultaneous ovulation and menstruation. This theory dominated for decades. Stephenson argued that menstruation stemmed from "cyclical waves of vital energy, reflected in the body temperature, daily urine and pulse rate:' Vital energy stimulated the menstrual flow, which then sought the most frail outlet , the uterus. A physical blockage anywhere in the body could produce a wave, prompting sympathetic menstruation. Hall said this explained why "every trouble in a woman demanded special attention to the pelvis:' Both Mary Putnam Jacobi and John Goodman wrote of undulating menstrual waves that permeated a woman's being, inducing instability and even hysteria . Although Jacobi reproached those who considered menstruation ghastly, she did little to cast it in a more ordinary light. She insisted that women should be banned from obstetrical practice because of it. King declared menstruation utterly abnormal, though he believed conception took place then . He considered intercourse perilous because he thought menstrual blood caused gonorrhea in men . His solution for this dilemma was to keep women constantly pregnant so they would never menstruate. Medical practitioners enlarged the scope of the trauma menstrual blood caused, especially to the penis . In Conjugal Sins, Dr. Gardner cautioned that menstrual blood would inflict "disease, excoriat ions and blenorrhagias" on the "unwitting penis:' John Cowan worr ied that menstrual intercourse would harm a newly forming fetus, admonish ing, "Do not, I pray you . . . do this unclean thing .. .while a new body is being developed:' These views cemented the image of women being "driven by the tidal currents of her cyclical reproductive system, a cycle .. . reinforced each month by her recurrent menstrual flow:' Dur ing a woman's "thirty year pilgrimage;' menstruation was depicted as a macabre , unnatural injury-"a disease requ iring specific therapies:' This ungovernable proces s shaped women's temperaments and determined their physical capabilities. Dr. Van de Worker thought women's menstrual handicap made them physically inferior. Others assumed menstruation rendered women temporarily insane, "varying from .. .slight psychosis to absolute irresponsibility:' Westphalen rejected the irritant nerve theory in 1896 when he discovered how the uterine lining thickened and disintegrated in cyclical fashion . After 1900, scientists experimented with endocrinology. They learned that ovarian hormones triggered the cyclic transformations of the endometrium. But old ideas die hard, especially when they undergird a social system based in part

Menstruation • 151 on women's subjugation. In 1912, the New York Times reported, "The mind of a woman is always threatened . .. from the reverberation of her physiological emergencies. f" Nineteenth-century physicians explained and treated what they constructed as a pathology. This markedly departed from the earlier view of menstruation as a natural process. Edward Clarke pinpointed menstruation as the source of all female diseases. Too much or too little blood was equally deleterious . Michelet identified menstruation as "the cause of the whole drama;' while Hayes called it "an internal wound, the real cause of all this tragedy:' The example of Dr. Edward H. Clarke, a member of the Harvard Board of Overseers in 1873, best illustrates how science not only bent to political currents but also helped form them. Women's demands for access to higher education put pressure on Harvard University to open its doors to women. Not coincidentally, Clarke chose that moment to publish a short treatise on Sex in Education, or; a Fair Chance for the Girls. Though controversial, seventeen editions were published in thirteen years. Edward Jenks wrote in 1887, "No work ... succeeded better in attracting the attention . . . to the influence of the habits of modern life on the sexual organs:' Clarke had great company in his efforts to constrain women's educational possibilities. Clarke expressed deep anxiety about order typical of the period. Women's efforts to broaden their "place" threatened the social order. This sense of dread underlay scientists' preoccupation with regulating girls' and women's behavior during what they constructed as a very vulnerable time. They conceived each body as having finite vital energy. Too much expended in one direction meant that there might not be enough for other important functions. Herbert Spencer was very puissant in disseminating ideas about women's physiological impediments and wrote, "Nature is a strict accountant . .. and if you demand . . . in one direction more than she is prepared to layout, she balances .. . by making a deduction elsewhere:' Spencer gave an evolutionary rationale for women's disabilities. "Primitive" women neared equality with men in their ability to do hard, physical work, but they lost it on the evolutionary path to the present. It took more energy for girls to develop faster than boys. Menstruation and childbearing also "taxed" them. Women's "tax" was a "reproductive sacrifice" necessary "for the sake of the race:' Not enough vital energy remained for women to develop their intellects. "Brain work" jeopardized their entire reproductive capacity. Physicians constructed the height of adolescent female vulnerability to coincide with the timing of girls' entrance into college. Male physicians privileged women's physiological functions far above any cultural pursuits they might desire; they should not overload their plates and detract from their physiological responsibilities. As Clouston explained, "We would rather err on the safe side and keep the mental part of the human

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machine back a little . .. this applies to the female sex . . . more than to the male [since] women's chief work [is] to the future of the world:' Menstrual depletion debilitated reproductive function . Dr. Hughes Bennett worried that repetitive bleeding made women "almost certain to fall . . .victim :' Dr. Taylor viewed women's "monthly returns" as "periods of ill health" when a woman was "an invalid .. . since the monthly flow . .. readily rekindles the expiring flames of disease:' The notion of monthly incapacitation took Europe and the United States by storm. Dr. Tilt wrote that women were "thrown into a state of haemorrhagic and other orgasm every month" for thirty years and were disqualified from "thought or action:' Michelet felt that a menstruating woman was "not only an invalid, but a wounded one" whose plight was "to ceaselessly suffer love'seternal wound:' Dr. Runge concurred that women were "enfeebled, if not downright ill:' Hall agreed that they "can do less work with mind and body [and] make less accurate and energetic movements.'?' This shrill menstrual cant would be laughable if the social, economic, and political consequences had not been so grievous for girls and women. Physicians felt free to map out women's entire life courses based on only their reproductive functions . They used their professional platform to argue that merely thinking would tangle and twist women's entire procreative physiology, rendering them weak, sickly,and impotent for the rest of their lives. As growing numbers of women entered universities in the 1880s, the virulence of the antieducation rhetoric escalated. It remained at fever pitch while these early inroads were achieved and even after women graduated and began their professional forays. Dr. William Goodell, the University of Pennsylvania's first professor of gynecology, forgot menstruation altogether, as he trumpeted, "Too much brain work, too little housework is another crying evil of our land:' In his mind, "the one great mission of the physician, a mission which he must cheerfully and dutifully accept" extended beyond relieving physical problems, and he exhorted his comrades "to reform these abuses, to reclaim woman to womanhood, to make wives helpmates:' Dr. Lawson Tait also gladly stepped up to the political plate, declaring, "The questions raised by .. . advocates of women's rights are to be settled, not on the platform of the political economist, but in the consulting-room of the gynecologist:' That education did not injure women's reproductive systems only made them more defensive and strident. Early feminist pioneers mustered fortitude and commitment to blaze a path despite their vitriolic critics. Hall campaigned for girls to be educated only as wives and mothers. They should learn "heroalogy" and know that their heroic service lay in being "bearers of the race:' Expert performance transformed the "mansoul" into a "supermansoul," Clarke told girls that mental energy directed anywhere else retarded their reproductive systems' maturation. The menstrual period should be a sabbath. Clouston rehearsed the maladies that struck an overstimulated

Menstruation • 153 brain, including headache, nervousness, hysteria, stunted growth , and insanity. Kellogg chimed in that "many young women have permanently injured the ir constitutions . .. by excessive mental taxation during the catamenial period:' Maudsley warned that the girl who studied "leaves college a good scholar but a delicate and ailing woman, whose future is one of. . . suffering:' Those who championed educational opportunities for girls had to acknowledge their need for rest and subdued physical activity during menstruation to stand a chance of succeeding. Julia Ward Howe tried to offset claims about the debilitating influence of education by pointing to environmental effects. Try as they might to protect young women from "violent exercise and fatigue .. . a single ride on horseback, a single wetting of the feet . .. may entail lifelong misery. . . . I have known . . .of incurable disease and even of death . . . arising from rides on horseback taken at the critical period:' Other educators pointed to studies showing the superior vitality of women in college. The real problem, they argued, lay in not providing for adequate rest. A Vassar doctor outlined the following safeguards taken to protect women's physical constitutions during menstruation: "carefully instructed regarding precautions;' "positively forbidden to take gymnastics ... during the first two days of their period;' "forbidden to ride horseback;' and "strongly advised not to dance, nor run up and down stairs, nor do anything else that gives sudden and successive . .. shocks to the trunk:' Instead they were "encouraged to go out of doors for quiet walks or drives, or boating and to steady the nervous irritation:' Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, Mary Putnam Jacobi, Alice B. Stockham, and Clelia Mosher countered the notion that lounging was imperative or even fitting in normally menstruating women. They agreed that warnings about the ill effects of education for women were "not well founded:' Jacobi rejected Clarke's pronouncement of menstrual pathology, arguing that it "is in striking contrast with the opinions that prevailed throughout antiquity, the middle ages, and even until recently, in modern times:' She contended that the "menstrual flow is the least important part of the menstrual process;' and recommendations for rest were totally misplaced . They knew they faced an uphill battle, but who better to make these arguments than women trained as doctors who presumably menstruated? The key was physical activity that helped create a female body that could withstand the physical duress of repeated pregnancies and the total demands of child-rearing and household responsibilities but did not unduly tax menstruants. Clouston advised exercise that "hardens the muscles ... softens the skin, enriches the blood, promotes but does not overstimulate the bodily functions:' Kellogg insisted that a girl's vigorous, outdoor childhood had to cease at menarche. Thereafter, exercise should come from "nature's gymnasia;' the washroom, the kitchen, and the garden. "Homely gymnastics" would keep women fit.

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Physicians warned about illnesses that befell menstruating girls who refused to rest. "Anorexia scolastica" ensued from overstimulation of the brain, particularly during the menstruation, and led to an overly thin, weak physique. Chlorosis, adolescent anemia resulting from iron deficiency, which was not understood at the time, gave the skin a greenish tint. Doctors speculated that chlorosis derived from "poor diet, lack of exercise, lack of fresh air, impoverished blood and mental effort:' Chlorotic girls often manifested menstrual problems , including amenorrhea, an aversion to meat, and an inability to sustain physical activity for very long. Physicians employed the moon, tides, and currents as natural metaphors for menstruation to keep women in their places. Hall waxed poetic that female puberty "is like floating down a broadening river into an open sea" where "the currents are more complex and . . . tides make new conditions and new dangers:' Grant Allen keenly felt his responsibility, insisting, "We must not abet woman ... in rebelling against maternity, quarreling with the moon, or sacrificing wifehood to maidenhood:' George Engelman wanted to shield women from being "dashed to pieces on the rock of childbirth . .. ground on the everrecurring shallows of menstruation." John Ellis alerted women to "the effeminacy of wealth, the new woman movement and foeticide:' Physicians longed to be women's "medical guardians" and "moral directors" of their "intimate, personal behavior:' Those who clung most ferociously to the doctrine of menstrual disability also worried most about "feminine excess, whether it be in study, professional work or in sports and exercise:' Doctors chose the concepts and phrases from the vocabulary and imagery of science that best fit their paradigms. Physicians consistently drew on menstruation, conception, and delivery as the physiological facts that should compel women to stay in their places or doom their health and ability to become mothers. By the twentieth century, medical practitioners had successfully positioned themselves as authorities about puberty, menarche, menstruation, pregnancy, and childbirth. They classified women's life cycle phases as medical crises requir ing physicians' management. The timing coincided with some women's efforts to shatter the bounds of the ir "separate spheres:'52

The Hygienic Imperative Women had to manage more than whether to be physically active or recumbent during menstruation. The blood itself was an issue. American women were phobic about potential displays of menstrual blood and staining. An atmosphere of secrecy that increasingly surrounded menarche and menstrual cycling contributed to this gross anxiety. The corporate hygiene industry ultimately benefited by marketing products to fit the phobias.

Menstruation • 155 Despite mothers' reticence to forewarn their daughters about menarche, hygiene books assumed that they would certainly instruct their daughters how to avoid exhibiting menstrual blood. Most women created absorbent pads from "flannelette" or cotton remnants in the "rag bag:' Others used inexpensive, absorbent materials such as cheesecloth or gauze. Although manufactured "sanitary napkins" were available by the 1890s, the cost was likely prohibitive. One hygiene text advised that linen "napkins" were best, connoting "genteel middle-class dining:' Bloodied linen napkins could then be soaked for several hours before washing. However, the wisdom of leaving bloodied cloths to soak was challenged by new ideas about the sources of disease. Joseph Lister's formulation of"antisepsis;' the notion that hazardous elements were alive in human waste, was commonplace among the middle class by the 1860s. By the 1880s, public health officials championed "antiseptic cleanliness" of body and home. "Germ theory" transfigured women's hygiene, personally and at home. Greater hygienic standards led doctors and advice books to emphasize washing and being more careful with menstrual discharge. In The Wholesome Woman , Dr. Joseph Greer exhorted, "Every part of the body [should be] as clean as the face:' He advised menstruants that "the napkins should be changed .. .every morning ... and at night:' Because saturated pads smelled, menstrual blood had to be "noxious effluvia;' a perfect breeding ground for bacteria. Greer believed dirty genitalia contributed to the odor and counseled baths and vaginal douches, "a clear indication of his belief that the vagina, like the middle-class home, required antisepsis:' Steeping bloody cloths placed menstrual germs in a warm pool, which hygienists claimed bred disease. By the 1900s, elite women rejected the age-old dependence on reusable cloths, in the name of "sanitary science:' These women and their daughters managed menstrual blood in a novel way by using disposable materials that would be neither soaked nor seen. Upper- and middle-class women regarded disposable products as essentials rather than expensive luxuries . Corporate vendors jumped to capitalize on the market. In 1895, Montgomery Ward featured the "Faultless Serviette or Absorbent Health Napkin;' pads that were "antiseptic .. . required no washing .. . [and were] burned after use:' Sears Roebuck hawked a silken "Ladies Elastic Doily Belt"and "Antiseptic and Absorbent Pads" in their 1897catalog. Their products were doctor approved and promised women a new, chafe-free experience. Though they were not mass-produced until after World War I, the trend toward labor-saving devices was underway. They were also touted as more comfortable, affording freer mobility and a germ-free experience simultaneously. The market conveyed the more covert message that menstrual hygiene "was as much a social concern as a matter of health:'

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Working-class mothers had neither the means nor the predilection to turn to commercially available substitutes. Menstrual periodicity joined women and their adolescent daughters in the recurrent cleansing of scavenged cloths. In close quarters where women shared cloths, washbasins, and the area where clothes were hung to dry, each individual's menstrual status could not be masked. Soaking blood -stained cloths and bedclothes periodically spattered with red splotches were provocative reminders of a shared experience that could hardly be kept secret. Italian immigrant mothe rs were reticent to discuss menstruation with their daughters because of the high cultural premium placed on chastity and virgin ity.They told their daughters nothing and were impervious to the hygienic imperative to "sanitize the men strual experience:' They believed that menstrual blood should flow freely without obstruction. Some feared that "an emotional shock at ... menstruation could send blood to the lungs, causing tuberculosis, or to the brain, causing insanity:' A heavy flow and saturated cloths indicated health and vitality. They were not likely to heed the advice of hygiene experts to change pads several times a day. 53 World War I ushered in heightened concerns about venereal disease. Progressive-era public health campaigns aimed to purify everything about sexuality. Information about menarche and menstruation was integrated into school curricula for younger children. The Girl Scouts of America melded it into their health education programming. Critics abounded, but the prevailing sentim ent was that knowledge about sex was "better a year too early, than an hour too late:>54 What was taught reflected the cultural standpoint of Progressive-era middle- and upper-class America . Explicit messages interpreted what menarche and menstruation were and how to manage them . They emphasized genital cleanliness, measured exercise, and commercial menstrual products. No longer could improvised rags be tolerated .

Raging Hormones By the late twentieth century, medical specialists portrayed menstruous women less as vulnerable than dangerous and threatening. The labels have recurred cross-culturally and across the millennia, but in this context they received the imprimatur of American and European science and medicine . Menstruating women became downright dangerous just as more women excelled in higher education and attained their goals of professional advancement. Remember, in all the conjecture that follows, that premenstrual syndrome was "perhaps the only medical syndrome which [was] defined by over 150 different symptoms:' making it inherently vague and open to wildly varying interpretations. The only constant in these discussions was menstrual bleeding.

Menstruation • 157 In 1966, M.J. Daly argued that restless and overly aggressive prepubescent girls were impeded in the "proper development of feminine passivity:' At this late date, he thought women functioned primarily as "sexual creaturels]" and "servant]s] to the species:' Premenstrual discomfort depended on personality, environmental stress, and cyclical hormonal shifts. Katharina Dalton published more ominous findings about women during their paramenstruum. Their criminal activities increased, and half of all accidents, hospital admissions, and attempted suicides occurred near menstruation. Devoted disciples lengthened the list to include emotional instability, lowered mental and physical efficiency, lowered performance on exams, increased incidence of taking children to medical clinics, increased number of aircraft crashes, and baby battering. Menstruating women seemed dangerous indeed! In 1966, a trio of physicians recommended medically reducing the frequency of women's menstrual cycles to mitigate their pathological aspects . Clinically proven biomedical facts made derogatory labels and restrictions of the past not only understandable but also justifiable. It was civic-minded to control menstruating women to protect the public. Physicians worried that such intervention might depress sexual responsiveness. They also believed that women depended on "monthly discomfort and bleeding ... for validation of their sexual identity, for the satisfaction of their masochistic needs, or for . .. gains such as time off and special consideration:' The Saturday Evening Post prematurely proclaimed that "release of a drug to arrest menstruation and associated witchings for six months to one year awaits completion of testing on women:' All of these studies had methodological problems. They lacked proper controls and used statistical analysis and averaged scores improperly. Samples were small and unrepresentative. However, they laid bare the cultural construction of the behavior of menstruating women. For more than a decade, gynecology texts conveyed women's behavior during menstruation as pathological. Over and over, "psychogenic factors" and "faulty outlook" explained women's complaints. Pain was reduced to some abstract "problem" associated with being female.55

Second-Wave Feminists Respond Late-twentieth-century feminists responded by first minimizing and then glorifying menstruation. Downplaying menstruation conveyed its insignificance. Minimizers welcomed the biomedical promise of prostaglandin as a silver bullet for dysmenorrhea, then recoiled from the invention of premenstrual syndrome and its "raging hormones:' Minimizers portrayed menstruation as nothing much, but yearned to be rid of it. Authors of The Curse called menstruation "a friendly monthly nuisance:' Germaine Greer was more pointed: "Menstruation does not turn us into raving maniacs or complete invalids; it is

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just that we would rather do without it:' How excited they were about menstrual extraction. A syringe pump created a vacuum in a small bottle . An attached tube was inserted into a woman's cervix at the onset of menstruation. As the tube was swiveled around, it sucked out the blood and the woman did not have to bleed. Minimizers longed to be free of blood and its multifarious constructions. Glorifiers celebrated menstruation, expressing their newfound joy through many different media . Intellectually, they searched out matriarchies and goddesses and any rituals, real or imagined, that elevated women's status. Viscerally, they embraced menstrual blood. Vashte Dublex was saddened that she was menopausal before she discovered the virtue of blood, "no longer fearing it but using it to reach our inner selves-even to paint pictures with:' Menstruating women sat on poster board to create blood prints. "Red Flag:' a lithograph by Judy Chicago, showed a woman's legs foregrounded by a hand tugging on the string of a bloody tampon. Karen Lindsey in "falling off the roof" sets her feminist menstrual bliss to verse: I have finally plunged my hand into my bloody cunt licked my fingertips and smeared my face with blood with war paint ... when I learn to love my blood the revolution's begun Glorifiers imagined women thousands of years ago sequestering themselves to blissfully revel in sisterhood in the menstrual hut . Carol Erdman imagined what this must have been like, in "Song for Sisters in the Moon Hut": "Long ago, when we knew our full power, / . . . / We set apart the women when the moon of their nature was full and overflowed into darkness:' In "I Love My Sponges:' Marilynn exhorted women to enjoy: "Put it in, pull it out. Rinse it out. Feel the blood:' However, glorifiers did not realize that defining women by their physicality, even in celebration, put them squarely in the old Victorian camp of Edward Clarke, only updated. Our multicultural tour of blood-centered menstrual beliefs and rituals demonstrates that they have been and are culturally constructed, if nothing else. Gloria Steinems counterfactual spoof about how menstruating men might be constructed helps illustrate how ideology works: Military men, right-wing politicians, and religious fundamentalists would cite menstruation Cmen-struation') as proof that only men

Menstruation • 159 could serve in the Army ('you have to give blood to take blood'), occupy political office ('can women be aggressive without that steadfast cycle governed by the planet Mars?'), be priests and ministers ('how could a woman give her blood for our sins?'), rabbis ('without the monthly loss of impurities, women remain unclean'). Louise Lander continued, "Congress would establish a National Institute of Dysmenorrhea and popular culture would glorifythe manliness ofthe mensesf'"

Contemporary Constructions We are not free from constructions of menstrual blood . Victorians defined women by their menstrual cyclicity, and women are still viewed as the most cyclical humans. In truth, all life on Earth, including men, is cyclic. Chronobiologists study human rhythmicity. Many bodily functions adhere to a daily, rhythmic cycle that biologists term "circadian:' from the Latin circa (about) and dies (day). This characterizes all life, including one-celled organisms. Body temperature varies predictably over the course of every day. The temperature cycle is calibrated with cycles of blood pressure, heart rate, and respiratory rate. The list could include almost every human function from pain threshold, to hormone production, to the timing of labor, childbirth, heart attacks, and death. Moreover, circadian cycles also have an annual cycle.57 Hormones are less obvious than menstrual blood . Victorians had not a clue about hormones. By the late twentieth century, it was common to attribute women's cyclic behavior to "raging hormones:' Both men and women produce all the sex hormones (gonadotropins) and sex steroids (androgens [mostly testosterone), estrogens, and progesterone), but in different concentrations. Which of them "rages"? Estrogen levels rise and fall in a balanced, monthly curve, varying only by a factor of six. Testosterone production is far more erratic. A study measuring male testosterone "produced graphs . . .that are crazylooking zig-zags:' Testosterone secretion happened in bursts that created "extremely rapid oscillations in blood level, jumping to a peak .. .four times the lowest level in . . . only a few minutes:' The point here is to deconstruct the notion that female anatomy "rages" cyclically, making women impaired and out of control. For most of the 1900s, scientists thought various glands excreted hormones into the bloodstream as part of the endocrine system. It was a very orderly conception. Each gland secreted its own hormone, which journeyed to its intended destination to trigger its characteristic effect. The pituitary gland was the grand maestro, orchestrating the entire sequence. However, radioactive isotopes and electron microscopes have allowed discoveries that have exploded classicalendocrinology. Hormones are synthesized

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in many sites and influence disparate bodily functions . The notion of a target organ is hopelessly antiquated. The endocrine system is intertwined with the nervous system. The hypothalamus, once thought to be the control center of the autonomic nervous system, is also an endocrine organ with both a circulatory and neural connection to the pituitary gland. It influences the pituitary gland's release of hormones. It also produces hormones to be stored in the pituitary gland. Nerve fibers connect it to the rest of the brain and to the spinal cord. In short, the hypothalamus is intimately integrated into hormonal behavior, making brain events hormonal events as well. "Behavior, the psyche, even the social context can affect hormones as much as hormones affect them:' Hormones influence behavior, but not by chemistry alone. Athletes' cortisol levels are higher during competition. The social context causes the leap, not a specific gland. Relaxation techniques can reduce levels of stress hormones. Hormones do not act alone, and they do not dictate . Hormonal events are enmeshed in a hodgepodge of brain events and social events. "Rage" is nothing more than a word chosen in a particular historical, cultural context, just as women graduated college and entered the professions in greater numbers than ever before. Someone felt "rage;' but its application to menstruation was constructed, and incorrectly at that. 58 At the turn of the twenty-first century, menstruation could be obsolete. For most of human history, total lactation and bearing five to six children prevented menstrual cycling for most of a woman's reproductive life. Birth control pills promote bleeding by inserting placebos at monthly intervals to prompt the endometrial lining of the uterus to break down. Because the pill prevent s ovulation, the bleeding is not a true menstrual cycle. Whether women needed to cycle endlessly was never publicly debated. Pharmaceutical scientists worried that women would fear pregnancy and the loss of femininity without monthly bleeding. Women might control their fertility and avoid unwanted pregnancies, but they would be made to bleed. Menstrual cycling in todays world of highly regulated birth control is an "evolutionary anomaly" and exacerbates physical disorders such as anemia, endometriosis, and a host of symptoms termed "premenstrual syndrome:' These are not minor inconveniences . Malnourished women in poverty-stricken countries who might also be combating hookworm or malaria cannot afford to lose iron. Endometriosis results when some of the endometrial lining of the uterus escapes into the abdominal cavity during menstruation. It adheres to lesions on other organs, especially the damaged follicles of the nearby ovaries where eggs erupted. The endometrial tissue grows, binding organs to one another, and bleeds as it would inside the uterus, spreading the condition further. Severe cramping can result. Every menstrual cycle exacerbates the condition . Endometriosis is the leading cause of infertility. After seven corrective

Menstruation • 161 surgeries, Marilyn Monroe died from the pain medication she took to excess to combat the crippling pain of her advanced endometriosis. She never bore the child she so desperately wanted to conceive but could not carry. Women who menstruate cyclically without becoming pregnant are also at greater risk for breast cancer, uterine cancer, and uterine fibroids. These might also be by-products of the evolutionary glitch separating our cultural reality from our biological reality.59

Conclusion Despite patterns among menstrual rituals, these rituals vary more than childbirth rituals or initiation rites. Ritual complexes throughout indigenous North and South America, Africa, Southeast Asia, Australia, greater Melanesia, and Oceania have similar basic contours. Women's blood was powerful and dangerous at once. Entire communities were at risk unless it was carefully managed. Pollution constructs predominated in the rhetoric of the world's major religions-Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism-which all restricted women from religious practices and required purification ritual s before they could be reintegrated. Most strikingly different were the ruminations of elite European and American intellectuals . Their efforts to maintain male dominance and deny women equality rang clearly through the staggering wealth of documentation. Appraisals of menstrual cycles could turn on a dime . If women's labor was economically integral, as in the colonial United States, sage wisdom told women to be active and productive. When remunerative labor left the home, as in the Victorian era, doctors cautioned elite women to be more languid and passive. When they entered higher education and the professions, worried physicians warned that it endangered their reproductive capacity. Whatever the concern, the fact that women bled was fair fodder for any rationale. Pollution constructions of women's blood accompanied patriarchy, but women participated in these cultural systems; they were not simply victims . Powerful blood carried with it serious responsibilities. Especially in indigenous North America, women respected and celebrated their blood's life-giving potency. However, Sally Price's depiction of Saramaka women dutifully, if reluctantly, enduring seclusion in menstrual huts is probably more normative than the devotion of second-wave feminists who gleefully created menstrual blood prints. Some women rebelled against oppressive constructions of their blood. Religious reform movements sometimes resulted in purification rituals following men struation and childbirth being abandoned. Christian women attained greater participation in liturgical services. Women at the turn of the twentieth century defied medical experts to pursue higher education and careers .

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However, menstrual cycling had a hold on women too. Do women want to bleed? Although they consider it "messy" and "a hassle;' they also fret about doing away with bleeding altogether. They feel their womanhood might be at stake. They are probably distrustful of a medical establishment that has hardly seemed to truly have women's best interests at heart. Hormone replacement therapy, which has been around almost as long as the pill, has recently been shown to cause more harm than good . Gynecologists warn about the perils of "menstrual" cycling. They encourage women to lengthen the interval between cycles. In a way similar to kicking an addiction, women can opt to bleed every three months, and then gradually increase the length of time . Once women and gynecologists compare notes and feel successful, they might choose to stop bleeding altogether. Perhaps understanding the variety of cultural constructions of menstruation can help women to construct their own menstrual futures.

CHAPTER

6

Sacrifice "Birth Done Better"

The tension between women's blood and men's blood evident at the dawn of human culture and in rituals surrounding childbirth, initiation, and menstruation was also obvious in sacrificial rituals . Conceived of as life blood, women's blood resonated with procreation, the greatest force of all. Men assumed responsibility for generation by manipulating blood flows.This shows how powerfully sacrifice was counterpoised with childbirth and childbearing women. The vivid gushing of red sacrificial blood competed with the drama of childbirth.

The Anthropology of Sacrifice Before the domestication of plants, the sun's daily cycle connoted life, death, and rebirth . Once agriculture supplanted horticulture, the life-giving qualities of the sun, blood, and food crops came together. Cherokee cosmology made this connection figuratively as the female creation deity Selu bled on th e ground allowing th eir staple crop, maize, to grow. Blood sacrifice figured prominently in the agricultural realm. To ensure the soil's fertility, a religious leader, often a god incarnate, might be sacrificed, the blood allowed to seep into the fields. Early Egyptians reenacted stories about the sacrifice of the god Osiris at sowing time . Red-haired men substituted for Osiris; red oxen filled in later. Among Mesoamericans and Incans, human sacrifices accompan ied the entire agricultural cycle. Blood also nourished European soil, vestiges of which sur vive in May Day celebrations where the annual king and queen are celebrated instead of sacrificed. Sacrificial blood complexes arose only in agrarian and pastoral societies and disappeared with them.They accompanied ancestor worship and were str ikingly prominent in "the development of the state in ancient and preindustrial societies,"Although all sacrificial compl exes shared the goal of ensuring agricultural

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fertility, sacrificial acts usually had multiple meanings and functions. Sacrifice "maintained . . . the continuity and discontinuity of social groups . . . and of social time :' All of the "world's great calendrical systems" (Greek, Chinese, Egyptian, Mayan, Israelite, Roman, Ashanti, Hawaiian, Vedic, and Nahua) ordered sacrificial festivals to the agricultural year, and were oriented to lunar and solar months. Nearly everywhere, men dominated blood sacrifice .' In Mesoamerica, many patrilineal states practiced extensive human sacrifice and attributed life-giving abilities to blood. "Blood" had multifaceted meanings in Nahuatl: tocelia (our freshness) , Totzmoluica (our growth), and nemoani (that which gives life). Mochich icaoa (one is greatly strengthened) was sometimes associated with blood. Accompanying offerings to the earth or water were nextlaoalioia (payment of debt) and nextlanlli (the debt paid) . For the Nahua, blood was the "primary ritual nourishing agent " for the annual regen eration of the earth and seasonal changes . Blood connoted death into life as a "religious recycling of life energies between the social and natural orders:' Ancient Mesoamericans wrote their three-tiered cosmos onto the human body as "the nexus and unifying structure of the universe:' The head (tonalli) corresponded to heaven , the seat of the "soul that provided vigor and the energy for growth and development." Through the sun, the gods provided tonalli, which was also connected with hair. Nahuas sacrificed so the sun would rise again. When the sun "died" each evening, it took with it the spirits of women who had died in childbirth. The heart's (teyolia) counterpart was the lower heavens, which gave "emotion, memory, and knowledge to the human:' After death, this teyolia soul transformed into birds so it could continue to live and have efficacy. Through sacrifice, the teyolia or "divine fire" of special people went to heaven to feed the sun . The underworld corresponded to the liver (ihiyotl), which was a luminous gas that could "attract and charm" others and was the seat of "bravery, desire, hatred, love, and happiness:' The human body centered this cosmological system of logic. The cosmology of the ancient Mesoamericans celebrated the symbiotic relationship between gods and humans. Gods let blood to create the cosmos. Blood and maize were the "most potent substances:' Deities offered blood to transform maize "into human substance:' Human flesh consisted of maize. The World Tree icon in the Palenque Temple of the Foliated Cross conjoined blood and maize imagery. In the Nahua Codex Ferjervary Mayer: "Tezcatlipoca has been cut into pieces and divided over the . .. world , with his blood flowing into the center. The divine blood is flowing into the axis of the universe, which redistributes the divine energy to animals, body parts, vegetation, and the calendar, which is divided by the four quarters of the cosmos:' The relationship was reciprocal. Mayans believed that "human beings were created to nourish and sustain the gods through sacrifice:' "Bloodletting literally gave birth to the gods"; women pulled ropes through their tongues and

Sacrifice. 165 men pierced their penises . They dripped blood onto paper and burned it so the gods could consume the smoke. On important occasions, especially when a male heir was born or a leader ascended to the throne, they sacrificed humans. Through penis perforation, Mayan leaders replicated women's capacity to give birth. These men were the "mother of the gods :' Bloodletting brought male ruler and female nurturer together in one person. Human sacrifice achieved this quite literally. Gods (often ancestors) passed to the terrestrial human world through the bloody wound to be reborn. "The Maya gave blood ... to receive a vision in which the gods and ancestors appeared in the world of the ceremonial center and . . . to perceive the spiritual presence of their ancestors:' Art shows the Vision Serpent materializing from the blood. Manifestations of gods appeared within the mouth of the Vision Serpent. Human sacrificial blood united Mayans with their gods. The royal ruler passed to a "higher social and sacred status:' The superior power of kings derived from cosmic beings, especially ancestors, "who became incarnate in the body, blood, actions, and costume of the ruler:' The ruler reigned as both human and god. In the regal body, sacred and profane forces intertwined. Much of Mayan art documented "the bloodlines of classic Maya kings" from gods and ancestors to fathers to sons to demonstrate their legitimacy.' Despite blood's centrality in Mesoamerican sacrificial complexes, the available sources have veiled its meaning until quite recently. Archaeological evidence cannot speak to all realms of human experience, and there were no ethnographers to fill in details of Mesoamerican social systems. European observers condemned human sacrifice and did not seek more sensitive understandings. Nonetheless, the juxtaposition of childbirth with male power to give birth to the gods through bloodletting falls within Nancy Jay's gendered interpretation of sacrifice. Jay clarified sacrificial situations by turning a feminist lens to their gendered dimensions. Blood sacrifice was nearly everywhere a male domain and strongly correlated with ancestor worship in state-level agrarian or pastoral societies . When extended families dominated productive resources such as farmland and livestock, inheritance through intergenerational male descent became a paramount objective. This kind of social structure did not exist in either gatherer-hunter-fisher societies or industrial societies. Jay argued, "Where the state and the social relations of production ... [were] not separable from patri lineally organized social relations of production, the entire social order may be understood as dependant on sacrifice:' Jaycharacterized sacrifice as "a remedy for being born of women:' Opposition between sacrifice and childbirth or childbearing women was a cross-cultural constant, which sometimes included the notion that childbirth or menstruation , or both, were polluting. Sacrifice ensured inheritance through particular

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male lines. Patriliny was achieved, providing social and religious continuity to fathers and sons. However, being born not just of women but of outsiders marred this ritualized symbolic immortality. Sacrifice represented "birth done better" than mothers. Mothers bestowed only mortality; other genealogical connections were erased. More than just worshiping the dead, ancestor cults were "ways of organizing relations among the living.":' Sacrificial complexes across the globe reflected the tension between childbirth and male bloodletting. Spotlighting the tension between sacrifice and childbirth required adequate descriptive information for nuanced, contextualized case studies. Sacrificers' perspectives were necessary, because sacrifice can only be identified within its own context. For example, Marvin Harris's and Michael Harner's conjecture that Nahua sacrifice was done by butchers compensating for dietary protein deficiency is completely divorced from its cultural logic. Killing is not necessarily sacrifice, and sacrifice does not always entail killing. Gender analysis is doubly powerful because it easily clarifies a scholarly quagmire. Gender opposition was prominent in all contexts, but sacrificing situations were not monolithic. Sacrifice always cemented patriliny, but it could occur in societies with matrilineal or bilateral features. Cultural logic can be slippery. Many actions are means to an end . The woman went to the market for food for her family. This quest is clear. Other associations are not so obvious. The Bible directed that "without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin:' The association is obscure outside of a Judeo-Christian logic, and might not be observable within it. Before ritual was understood as symbolic action, social scientists engaged in a riotous melee of speculation that was applauded by some, denounced by others, and usually incomprehensible to the actors themselves . This was especially true of all those timeless, ethnographic "others" that filled late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century texts. Positivists looked to science, not the people's own perspectives, to illuminate the others' worlds. By comparison, contemporary ethnographers are more attentive to indigenous worldviews. Ritual came to be seen as symbolic action that expressed meanings. Scholars differentiated two features of ritual action: (1) '''instrumental action; which does things, which causally affects the material world;' and (2) " 'expressive action; which says things or communicates meanings:' All ritual actions involve both aspects. Many dismiss "instrumental" action as not really doing anything. In terms of sacrifice, this places researchers right back in the old positivist school, which dismissed what human actors thought they were doing . Sacrifice has an obvious instrumental affect. "Sacrificers act through and upon meaningful matter: the living body:' Severing sacrifice from its material dimension is an act "not unlike sacrifice itself:' The ritual act is slashed in two. The researcher implicitly decides "which half is the good, intelligible, expressive half and which the bad

Sacrifice. 167 erroneous half, with its unintelligible instrumental claims. The one is kept and shared communally in the social-science literature, and the other is thrown away:' This cannot clarify sacrifice or the blood spilled, and probably accounts for the academic free-for-all resulting in no theory at all. Social scientists assumed that beliefs preceded their manifestation in action. While language must exist for linguistic expression, it is also "true that no act of speech can be understood before it is spoken, no text interpreted before it is written:' All interpretations are secondary, making it impossible to capture the meaning. Both sacrificers and interpreters are situated. "The one is unattainable and the other is inescapable:' The postmodern turn has taken us this far. Nancy Jay proposed to move beyond this to understand sacrifice. Jay suggested that examining social organization would help create a comparative approach to sacrifice to make sacrificers' actions intelligible from our situated position. Ritual's cultural context is integral for understanding it; it is not merely a picturesque backdrop. Jay recommended a three-stage comparative model as an analytic lens to bring sacrificial rituals into sharper focus. First, identify the logical structures of sacrificial actions. Second, locate the social contexts of sacrificial acts, even if they seem foreign. Finally, show the cultural logic of the sacrificial acts. This easily identified parallels, making the analytic lens a powerful one. Scholars erred in positing two separate types of sacrificial systems: (1) communion or joining and integrating, and (2) expiation or separating and differentiating. Scholars more often spotlighted communion rituals because they united and distinguished participants, while overlooking expiation rituals . Gendered aspects of sacrificial rituals were opaque to androcentric scholars who assumed that patriliny was natural, instead of viewing it as being achieved . In fact, all sacrificial systems had both communion and expiation rituals. Communion rituals usually involved distributing flesh to men to consume, while expiation rituals compensated for wrongdoing by restricting women from joining in. Female symbols created "a pole of absolute otherness from cleanness that work[ed] like a magnet to draw away uncleanness:' This dichotomous feature of sacrificial systems created poles of clean-unclean or order-disorder that can be expressed in formal logical terms as ANot-A . The cultural content of A can change without altering the distinction between A and Not-A. Aristotle first articulated these formal rules oflogic: in the Principle ofIdentity, A is; in the Principle of Contradiction, A and Not-A are mutually exclusive; and in the Principle of the Excluded Middle, everything must be either A or Not-A. Sacrificial systems intended to create this sort of ordered social reality. The categories A-Not-A help clarify sacrificial systems and pollution constructs. In numerous cultures a man who touched a menstruating woman or anything she touched became polluted. Why? He transgressed the excluded

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middle that separated A and Not-A. The excluded middle kept the clean from the unclean. Anything adjoining Not-A is Not-A. Expiation rituals removed the pollution and fully restored the individual to A. Sacrificing created and maintained both structure and order, even though the cultural content of the rituals differed . A-Not-A does not occur naturally; it is man-made (gender precision purposeful) and must be man-maintained to be sustained. This purpose lies at the heart of sacrificial logic. Each sacrificing culture practiced both communion and expiation rites and had its own logical, symbolic structures. Together, this triad of features helps clarify the function of sacrifice.4

Communion and Expiation Sacrifices Ancient Greek, Israelite, and Nuer sacrifice illustrate this strategy. They also demonstrate two elements that unite all sacrificial complexes . First, all communion sacrifices are alimentary; that is, they are consumed. Usually, eating expiation sacrifices is strictly forbidden . Second, sacrificial complexes identify that which must be expiated with femaleness . Hesiod related how in the Golden Age of Greece only men existed, who derived from the earth, not women. All of creation issued spontaneously. Men enjoyed leisure and feasted with the gods. Prometheus occasioned the first sacrifice that separated men from gods. He sectioned an ox's body in two halves. On one side he placed the bones covered with glistening white fat. On the other he laid the flesh draped by the less appealing hide and stomach. For the gods' portion, Zeus chose the deceptively shrouded bones. At Greek sacrifices men dined on meat, and burned the bones and fat. Smoke carried the gods' share to Mt. Olympus. The angry Zeus also gave an illusive gift, beautiful Pandora, the first woman. Epimetheus, Prometheus's moronic twin brother, was foolish enough to welcome her. Pandora unleashed the wicked elements of life, such as sickness, hunger, aging, work, and death, theretofore unknown. French classicists imagined Greek society as situated between animals and the gods. All cooked meat had been sacrificed. This differentiated Greek cuisine from a bestial diet of raw meat and the gods' repast of aromatic smoke. Like human society, sacrificial meals were "in an intermediary position halfway between the raw and the burned, the rotten and the incorruptible, the bestial and the divine:' The same logic applied to marriage. Marital relations lay midway between indiscriminate, beastly promiscuity and the impeccable virtue of Golden Age men . This aspect of Greek sacrificial logic is clear. French classicists thought it unique. They failed to explore other features that are universally linked with other sacrificial systems .

Sacrifice • 169 With their spotlight on alimentary sacrifice, French classicists seldom mentioned any other kind. When they did, their interpretation was oppositional. Thysia was an alimentary sacrifice occurring after a daytime parade to the temple. With its head pointed skyward, men slashed the throat of a white bull bedecked with floral garlands and gilded horns. Men ate its flesh and burned its fat and bones on an altar so that its fragrant smoke could ascend to the gods. Nighttime, nonalimentary sacrifices, or enagismos, followed a procession moving away from the temple. Men slit the throat of a black ram or pig, pointing downward for earthen and underworld gods. Profaned individuals purified themselves by sacrificing blood at the grave of a hero, a mythical human who had dealt with the gods . Only the pure could approach temples. This scenario is oppositional, but neither the gods' behavior nor humans' sacrificial actions wholly fit into the tidy niches that French classicists imposed on them. Recorded examples show "Olympic" sacrifices, those intended for the heavenly gods, directed at the "chthonic" or underworld gods . Zeus, Hermes, and others behaved erratically in ways that were more "chthonic" than Olympian. In one story, Orestes bit off his finger when confronted by the blackened Furies, who then turned white. Alarmed, he burned offerings to their black form (holocaust) and then made Olympic sacrifices to their white manifestation. This variation suggests that sacrificial intent mattered more than the gods. Alimentary sacrifices always united participants in communion. Expiation sacrifices detached them from defilement. The symbolic oppositions of day and night, black and white, and bulls and pigs were quintessentially Greek. However, all sacrificial cultures sought communion and expiation." No sacrifice is representative ofall cultures. However,all include both communion and expiation sacrifices . In Israelite and Nuer sacrifices, they were fused . In the Israelite Passover sacrifice, communion and expiation sacrifices were conjoined, not distinguished like the sacrifices of the Ancient Greeks. Sacrificial lamb's blood averted Yahweh from killing firstborn sons; its flesh was eaten in the communion meal. East African Gusii funeral sacrifices also consolidated communion and expiation rituals. Gusii sacrifices separated the living from the dangers of the dead, before reuniting the living . Men sacrificed a goat, which was roasted with the skin on and eaten. Alimentary sacrifice delineated the patrilineal group of mourners. The meat of a second sacrificial goat was distributed to all households to cement their unity. Finally, a sacrifice was performed at the homes of the sons and grandsons of the deceased." Israelite sacrifices ranged along a continuum from peace offerings (communion) to burnt offerings (neither) to sin offerings (expiation). In each sacrifice, the sponsor placed his hands on the animal's head, killed it before the altar, and drained the blood at its base. Though technically an expiation sacrifice,

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this blood offering accompanied all sacrifices, even joyful communion ones. The more intensely expiatory the sacrifice, the more elaborate was the blood rite. In peace offerings, the kidneys, fat, and gall bladder were burned atop the altar. A portion of the rest was reserved for the priest . The offerer retained the remainder for a festive repast. Burnt offerings were paramount sacrifices . A skinned animal was totally burned on the altar. Sacrificial smoke produced "a pleasing odor for the Lord:' The Lord described these sacrifices as "my food . . . my pleasing odor:' Expiation sacrifices had no alimentary connotations. Israelites burned the same body parts in sin offerings as in peace offerings. The sinner determined which animal was killed and how its blood and body parts were handled. For leaders and most others, men daubed blood on the altar's outer horns. Men of priestly families ate the sacrificial animal's flesh, for only they could absorb the pollution emanating from the animal. Consuming flesh demarcated this alimentary group. Only the funct ion of blood and contagion distinguished peace offerings for priests from this "edible" sin offering. Sin offerings for the whole community and high priests were intensely expiatory. Men showered blood before the sanctuary seven separate times, and smeared it on the horns of the consecrated inner altar. Relieving these sins was most polluting of all; none of this sacrificial beast could be consumed. Everything was removed from the village and completely burned. These sacrificers were as polluted as menstruating women. The red heifer sacrifice was also tremendously expiatory. Men slaughtered the animal outside the village, while the priest moistened the earth with blood in the direction of the altar. Then they wholly burned the red heifer and threw red cedar, a red cloth, and hyssop into the fire. The officiating priest washed his body and clothes but remained unclean as ifhe had touched a menstruating woman. Polluted as well were those who burned the heifer and collected the ashes. The scapegoat received the ultimate expiatory sacrifice. Piled high with everyone's sins, its inordinate pollution disqualified it from being sacrificed. It was driven to the obscure "Azazel" in the wilderness, while another goat substituted as a sin offering. The Israelite Passover sacrifice was distinct from the spectrum of peace, burnt, and sin offerings. Moses channeled this sacrifice from Yahweh when Israelites were slaves in Egypt and intoned them to perform it every year "throughout your generations forever:' The blood of an immaculate male lamb was spread above and on both sides of the door of every male household. This signaled Yahweh to pass over and search elsewhere for Egyptian firstborn sons. The entire lamb, "its head with its legs and its inner parts:' was roasted and consumed."

Sacrifice • 171 Nuer sacrifice also encompassed both communion and expiatory aspects. The sacrificial purpose demarcated communion from expiatory rites, not the manner of performance. They used the same animals for both. The blood received no special handling. Nuer communion sacrifices involved "social segments" such as age groups or lineages. They accompanied rites of passage such as adolescent initiations and marriages. As everywhere else, Nuer communion sacrifices were distributed and consumed by the appropriate kin group. By contrast, normal Nuer expiatory sacrifices benefited individuals, not groups. The Nuer might have feasted, but they never ate the sacrificial animal. However, extreme expiatory sacrifices were different. Men wrestled an ox to the ground and cut it in half lengthwise , a very bloody affair. The sacrificing group devoured the right half, designated "male" and "good:' Unassociated people ingested the left half, which was "female;' "evil;' and "thrown away:' Nuer fathers performed personal sacrifices, while lineage leaders conducted collective sacrifices. Although they did not sacrifice to the dead, "ghosts" of deceased lineage members were present at communion sacrifices. Sacrificial victims were called "cows;' though actual cows were never sacrificed. More often, castrated oxen, sheep, or goats were sacrificed." Omnipresent in all sacrificing cultures was "an association of femaleness with what must be expiated :' Ancient Greeks worried less about menstrual blood but considered childbirth and death contaminating. The blood of childbirth soiled all household members and was "the defilement that estranges men from the gods:' Israelites found nothing more defiling than the blood of menstruation and childbirth. Ezekiel told how the Exile penalized behavior "like the uncleanness of a woman in her impurity:' I now turn to this gendered dimension. The stark ancient Greek example helps clarify the logic behind using sacrifice to create and maintain patriliny. Children and wild animals emerged from their mothers' wombs. Animals had no known fathers. Children born outside marriage had no paternal affiliation. Their utter dependence on women to reproduce impaired intergenerational male lineage continuity. In myths men solved this problem in myriad ways. In reality, it was much more difficult to transcend this barrier to perfect male continuity, not only for those living but also for generation upon generation. Jay explained, "When the crucial intergenerational link is between father and son, for which birth by itself cannot provide sure evidence , sacrificing may be considered essential for the continuity of the social order:' To clearly identify "social and religious paternity" they needed "an act as definite and available to the senses as is birth:' When participating in blood sacrifice cemented membership in patrilineal descent groups, "evidence of 'paternity' is created which is as certain as evidence of maternity, but far more flexible:' In this context, sacrifice did, indeed, accomplish birth more powerfully than women could. 9

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Maintaining Agnation in Patrilineal Societies The emphasis heretofore has been on patrilineal groups, but they were not the only sacrificing societies. Sacrifice also took place in societies that honored women's role in descent. It even underlaid forms of social organization that were not kin based at all, such as the Roman Catholic clergy. Everywhere it occurred, sacrificing underpinned intergenerational male continuity and prevailed over marking continuity through women. Agnation traced descent through men, whereas cognation traced descent through both parents. Neither birth nor begetting delimited descent. Sacrifice did. As Jayexplained, "Agnates are not people biologically related by descent in the male line who occasionally remind themselves of this sacrificially; agnates are instead people who sacrifice together-who know they are agnates because they sacrifice together:' Agnates create the relationship through the ritual. Classic ethnographers were reluctant to recognize this, even as they provided ample evidence of it. Evans-Pritchard wrote of the Nuer, "Agnates are people who share in the flesh of sacrifice" but could not see that sacrificing defined the relationship. The chicken-and-egg question vexed him , as it did others who grappled with ritual. Did the symbolic meaning come first, or did the action? Yethe continually echoed his observation that sacrifice maintained distinct lineages, writing, "A lineage remains an exclusive agnatic group only in ritual situations:' Similarly, Fortes related the Tallensi avowal that "clanship ties are a consequence of sacrificing together; ' even though he rejected their claim. However, he described just that : "The ancestor cult is the calculus of the lineage system, the mechanism by . . . which the progressive internal differentiation of the lineage is ordered and is fitted into the existing structure:' Ancestral genealogies did not accurately chronicle physiological descent. They targeted selective ancestors who signified alliances and group distinctions for ritual attention. Just as women were excluded from these divine lineages, so, too, were other ancestors. Ancestor cults also governed the inheritance of productive property. Just as other human creations, ancestor cults required continual maintenance, which was accomplished by sacrifice. 10 I now examine several examples of the diverse ways that patrilineal societies main tained agnation. Tallensi religion revolved around their ancestor cult. Continuity of the patriline underpinned their social order. Fortes wrote of Tallensi lineages, "Continuity in time is its fundamental quality:' Lineages grew and segmented over time . The founding or apical ancestor symbolized their unity. He stood at the apex of the maximal lineage, the oldest, most comprehensive one. The more ancient the male ancestor, the larger the lineage. If the founding ancestor was a grandfather, the lineage was a minimal one. A man with many sons might found a major lineage segment. As sons married, they segmented the

Sacrifice • 173 lineage. Evans-Pritchard said Nuer lineage segmentation was the polygynous family writ large. This was also true for the Tallensi. Fortes excluded women from his analysis of Tallensi kinship because they married out of their lineages and contributed nothing to them. They could only assemble for sacrifices carried out by men of their natal lineages. They had no rights in the patrilineages into which they married. Women had no descendants and could never sacrifice. And yet, as Fortes noted, "It is the reproductive power of the wives and .. . children that secure the perpetuation of the lineage and the immortality of the ancestors:' Those who physically bore children had no claim to them. Androcentric scholars naturalized this without comment or analysis. It was taken as a given. Corporate Tallensi lineages each possessed a division of farmland and an ancestor shrine. Lineage leaders controlled shrines, regulated sacrifices, and determined access to farmland. A father's authority seemed paramount because he performed sacrifices, but his status rose only with the deaths of his grandfather and father. Sacrifice maintained divisions of lineages, accessory lineages, clans, and subclans. A formulaic division of sacrificial meat identified lineage members' rights to land and formal social relations. Eating meat reflected status . Fortes thought true paternity was always biological, but described many exceptions to this rule. A husband could request another man to act as genitor of his biological children. An adulterous wife's son might gain rights in the lineage of a man's mother's husband. Slaves and children born out of wedlock might be accessory lineage relations, but they could never be adopted outright or attain sacrificial rights because lineage membership was inalienable. The Tallensi recognized cognation that was not corporate or sacrificially maintained. Cognates exercised mutual respect and generosity. Women were so powerless that they could not pollute, so there were no menstrual taboos. Parturition blood was only a problem if a woman gave birth at her natal home . Expiatory sacrifices were then performed to "remove the blood:,ll Fortes examined Tallensi lineage social organization to the near exclusion of religion, which was always core to sacrificial relations. The Lugbara were much like the Tallensi. John Middleton's study of Lugbara religion provides insight into Tallensi religiosity and sacrifice. The Lugbara acknowledged both cognation and agnation. Cognation captured only a few generations. Through sacrifice, they traced agnation to the first human in their cosmology. Like the Tallensi'srituals, sacrifice recreated lineage ties, which the Lugbara affirmed by distributing meat. Lugbara ancestors were concerned with lineage matters. They had two sorts of ancestors : (1) "ghosts:' and (2) collective ancestors who had begotten men. Sacrificial agnation kept accord and warded off disorder and change. Sin offended the ancestors, who

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sent sickness in retaliation. Illness rent the relationship between the living and the dead. Recovering was cause for sacrifice to restore the individual fully to the living. Sacrificing for the dead was pointless. The Lugbara performed sacrifices at "ghost shrines:' A son sacrificed at his father's shrine. When his father died, the son created his own shrine. Lineage segmentation distinguished shrines hierarchically, as did the Tallensi's.Minimal lineages kept shrines within lesser villages and shared shrines with larger lineages. Substantial lineages went to more respected shrines outside villages. The Lugbara did not associate god with their ancestors. God, as the source of evil, death, and change, did not relate to lineage or kinship. God received expiation sacrifices. The Lugbara likened women to grass. "Women bear their children away from their natal lineage homes .. . . Since they own no shrine they own no homes and are not full lineage members:' Women participated neither in their husband's lineage sacrifices nor in their own. Only small girls and postmenopausal women, who did not bleed, could be in their own lineage sacrifice congregation. Most of the time, men denied meat to women who bled during menstruation or childbirth. Sacrificial congregations were composed of (1) agnates who consumed cooked meat with ancestors, and (2) the first group plus affiliated kin and clients who received raw meat. The manner of eating meat defined Lugbara social structure. The distribution of cooked meat delineated the lineage. The dissemination of raw meat indicated links with other lineages. Sisters' sons, who were outside of the sacrificiallineage and did not share in the meat and had no stake in its distribution, slaughtered the animals." Lineages also segmented Nuer social structure, but not like the Tallensi's and Lugbara's social structure. Their monotheistic religion had no ancestor cults. Nuer women enjoyed much greater autonomy. Nuer lineages became corporate groups only in the context of sacrificial ritual. The principle of buth ("to share the meat of sacrifices") organized agnates in lineages throughout time . Rights to participate in sacrifice and eat meat delineated buth. The Nuer also recognized cognation. The principle of mar ("my mother") characterized everyday social relations . Mar included all ties between persons, even fathers and sons as individuals instead of agnates. It embraced long-term affinal relatives, especially if they produced children. Widely diffused mar relations devolved from Nuer social organization. As cattle herders, the Nuer moved frequently to find fresh pasturage. Lineages owned village sites where some members were always present. Often the majority of village residents were linked to the lineage through women, either as offspring or as spouses . When people left the village, their mar relations dissipated . Only buth relations endured.

Sacrifice. 175 The Nuer felt it imperative to have buth descendants. They negotiated many creative social arrangements to ensure that this occurred. Consequently, an individual's father and genitor were not necessarily congruent. Men frequently married women in the name of another lineage member who had died without leaving buth descendants, "to ensure the survival of the dead in their names .... This is the only form of immortality Nuer are interested in:' Such "ghost marriages" accounted for half of Nuer marriages. A man who accommodated a fellow lineage member in this way would have no buth descendants of his own from that marriage, but he knew that someone else would do the same for him. Anyone with enough cattle for bride-wealth could marry a woman, even women who were generally barren and regarded like men . A man acted as her genitor, but she became a father, with children counted as members of her lineage. If a wife bore children with other lovers, the children were still buth descendants of her husband. Paradoxically, agnatic descent traced in part through women , for all children that issued from their wombs became descendants of their husbands regardless of biological paternity. Dinka social relations closely resembled those of the Nuer. Their apportionment of every sacrificial animal reflected "the ordered social relations of the sacrificing group, the members of which are . . . represented in their precise relations to each other in the meat which it provides:' The Dinka parceled out meat in two different ways. In communion sacrifices, an agnatic group shared but did not divide the meat. In personal expiatory sacrifices, men divided the animal by the classifications of people and groups taking part. Division differentiated. Sharing united. Nuer expiatory mortuary sacrifices illustrate their supreme power. A sorry, slovenly man had traveled afar, not to be seen for a long time . Villagers heard he died. They held the mortuary ritual to separate his dangerous spirit from the living. However, they were mistaken. He did not receive a warm homecoming when he returned. Instead, they called him joagh in tegh, "the living ghost:' Villagers explained, "His soul was cut off. His soul went with the soul of the ox together. His flesh alone remains standing:' He lost all kinship rights. People fed him, but not sacrificial meat because the mortuary ritual had erased his buth. 13 Ancient Greeks recognized many gods, earthly heroes with one foot in the heavens, and a cult of the dead, but no ancestor cult. They recognized cognation, but they associated sacrifice only with agnation. Participation in sacrificial cults determined membership in all agnatic groups. Religion molded all important segments of community, which were sacrificing agnatic groups. Families were the most basic unit, but Greeks had no word for "family:' Instead, "one speaks of house and hearth, thus consciously designating the domestic sacrificial site:' Birth did not confer oikos (household) membership. Days after parturition, sacrifice purified the blood of childbirth,

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allowing the father to recognize the child . The corporate genos, an extended family with hereditary priesthood rights reserved for the aristocracy, also delimited its membership by sacrifice. Sacrifice determined membership in the state, tribes, phratries or clans, and demes. Athenian citizenship required phratry attachments, cemented by sacrifice. Annually, phratries celebrated the Apatouria, marked by three days of sacrifice. Sacrifices legitimated newborn sons and brides. Phratry members challenged individual legitimacy by removing sacrifices from the altar. If uncontested, the individual's membership was forever validated. In 509, Kleisthenes tried to defeat cultic power by establishing residential citizenship, enfranchising many noncitizens. Before, sacrificial purity and elite power were preserved by rarely naturalizing aliens. However, agnatic power simply took an innovative turn. Residential demes became new sacrificing agnatic groups. Moving away did not alter membership. Kleisthenes further organized the demes into newly invented tribes and bestowed a fabricated hero ancestor on each. Agnation was cultic rather than physiological , making this possible. Illegitimate sons were barred from participating in everything. If a legitimate son did not exist, law required fathers to adopt one from a properly sacrificing family. The property and dead of the family cult had to be preserved and passed down . Greek state cults sacrificed at ancestral graves and sacred hearths. Agnatic groups competed. Sometimes the state commandeered the cult of a genos and gave access to all citizens . At both the family and state levels, sacrificial meat was allocated in two ways. A small, exclusive group bonded by immediately eating the internal organs. Then a broader group partook of a boiled sacrificial meal. Greek mortuary rituals verified the power of sacrificing, which kept individuals dead even if they turned up alive. The only remedy for ritual death was a special rebirthing ceremony conducted at Delphi,14 Birth did not convey family membership for ancient Romans; ritual did . Several days after birth on dies lustricus ("day of purification") the paterfamilias named and claimed his descendant. Illegitimate sons had no rights. Sacrifice maintained only patrician families."

Sacrifice while Acknowledging Descent through Women Sacrifice existed in some cultures that acknowledged descent through women, but it fused with kinship in ways unlike societies where intergenerational descent from fathers to sons was primary. The Yako of West Africa had both matrilineal and patrilineal groups. Each Yako belonged to two corporate lineages. Both lineages contained men and women. Matrilineage membership

Sacrifice • 177 derived from women, and patriliny descended through men. However, patrilineages alone performed sacrifice." Matrilineages did not mark their distinctiveness by sacrificing and consuming meat. The cultural contexts are necessary to understand the place of sacrifice in such societies. The matrilineal Ashanti of West Africa and the bilateral Hawaiians illustrate this. Animals and humans met their sacrificial ends in many Ashanti venues prior to British conquest in 1896. Ashanti ancestor cults focused only on chiefly ancestors with just the right pedigree. A chief's father 's father also had to be his mother's brother. Within the ancestor cult, patrilineal ties were entwined within what was ostensibly a matrilineal society. The Ashanti, among several West African kingdoms, grew to power and dominance through the tragic slave trade. African societies unfortunate enough to be located near the west coast had little choice but to become slavers or be enslaved themselves. Human sacrifice was not practiced so extensively prior to the slave trade. Neither the Ashanti nor Benin and Dahomey, the other paramount West African slaving societies , would have acquired the massive political and military state power necessary to undergird human sacrifice on such a massive scale. Dahomey and Benin were both patrilineal and pose useful comparisons with the matrilineal Ashanti. Both kingdoms practiced human sacrifice within their ancestor cults. The Ashanti never sacrificed humans in their ancestor cults-not even royal ones. Benin and Dahomey sacrificed more extensively than Ashanti. In all three kingdoms, kings' funerals occasioned the most extensive sacrifice. Even here, Ashanti sacrifices were firmly segregated from the ancestral sanctuaries of the matriliny. 'Kra ("patrilineal souls") were those delegated to escort the king on his journey to the afterlife. Sacrificers dispatched specific kin from within the king's home, taking care not to shed blood, and then gave them a fitting burial. Outsiders such as criminals, slaves,and war captives were sacrificed and discarded. Ofthe three kingdoms, Ashanti sacrifices were most minimalist. Dahomeans regarded the whole kingdom as the king's household writ large. Royal Dahomey funeral sacrifices aimed to recreate this kingdom in the afterlife to benefit the recently deceased king. Sacrificers selected a male and female victim from every trade and craft in every district and village. Apart from funerals, the king sacrificed a slave couple to thank his ancestors for every new day. This took place within the patrilineal ancestor cult. Human sacrifice functioned as a means of social control. In 1848 the Ashanti king was recorded to have said, "If I were to abolish human sacrifice, I should deprive myself of one of the most effectual means of keeping the people in sub jection:' However, Ashanti efforts paled in comparison to those of the Benin and Dahomey.

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Benin militarists resorted to massive human sacrifice as a principal defensive tactic. They tried to repel the British with such a display. A physician recounted the advance on Benin in his diary : "As we neared the city, sacrificed human beings were lying in the path and bush-even in the kings compound the sight and stench of them was awful. Dead and mutilated bodies seemed to be everywhere-by God! may I never see such a sight again:' The British reported nothing like this for skilled Ashanti military strategists, against whom they waged six wars. Dahomey and Benin had prominent social features associated with extensive sacrificing. Both were rigidly and uncompromisingly hierarchical, especially compared with the relatively egalitarian Ashanti. Benin men were hierarchically ranked by birth order, Women were cast in an undifferentiated lump at the bottom. To the Dahomey, all phases of life, lineages and their members, political institutions, and trades and crafts were ranked hierarchically. In contrast, the egalitarian Ashanti equalized community status more. They most sharply distinguished citizens and slaves. Descendants of slave mothers could never escape their status. Sacrifice never legitimized matrilineal slaves or any other outsiders. However, some Ashanti fathers favored slave wives because they gained control over their children. Although slavery in Dahomey and Benin resembled American chattel slavery, some slave children were incorporated into lineages. A father could choose to legitimize his offspring with a slave because such a child "legally stands in no relation whatever to his mother's kin :' In Benin society, slave concubines had status similar to wives. The same term distinguished both servant and wife because "family groupings are conceived of in terms of a master-servant relationship:' Benin and Dahomey were patriarchal monarchies, while nine matrilineal chiefdoms confederated to become the Ashanti. Rapid territorial conquest fueled by trading slaves and gold for European guns and manufactured goods tested the Ashanti alliance, which was unstable even at its zenith . To remedy this, they created a centralized government in the 1700s whose members were not loyal to any matrilineage. Positions in this new administration were inherited patrilineally. When British conquest eliminated these offices, fathers bequeathed only spiritual names and souls, while mothers passed down material wealth and political office. Even in the slave trade bureaucracy, which "unlike the older aristocracy . .. was totally subservient to the king:' matrilineality determined wealth inheritance. "Only skills and not capital tended to accumulate within the patti-group,' keeping its power in check. Revered stools symbolized these political offices. The Ashanti alliance was a unification of stools, with the "Golden Stool" being "the stool of stools:' "revered by the whole people as the shrine of 'the soul of the nation: " The Golden Stool maintained patrilineal associations. "Sons and grandsons of the Golden

Sacrifice • 179 Stool" held political office, occupying "sons' stools:' The stools "were vested in patricentric residential groups:' each of which accumulated "particular administrative skills" and transmitted them "from generation to generation:' The "executioners" carried out death sentences and human sacrifice. The kings whim determined the number to be executed, which could be large. One nineteenth-century observer estimated that there were "two parties of executioners, each upwards of one hundred:' The most massive human sacrifices occurred during the annual meeting of the national council. Central were patrilineal exogamous divisions called ntoro. All leaders came to renew their loyalty to the king. This encouraged fractious groups to lay aside their differences and identify as one group, which was critical to the development of a national Ashanti ideology. During the ritual, the Golden Stool and symbols of the preeminent ntoro were first defiled by profane sacrifice, and then cleansed by proper sacrifice. The executioners sacrificed humans to do the bidding of the ghosts of past kings. The connotations were patrilineal and expressly separate from anything connected with the king's matrilineage, including the royal ancestor sanctuary. Brass pans such as those at the memorial sites of patrilineal deities symbolized deceased kings, not the blackened stools of the matrilineal cults. Sacrifices aided dead kings' patrilineal souls. Colonization abruptly brought human sacrifice to a halt. It also eliminated the patrilineal bureaucracy that directed the violent expansion engendered by the slave trade. Two sorts of sacrifice survived that did not involve human victims, and both still reflected patrilineal concerns. Expiatory sacrifices for personal protection were directed toward patrilineal deities and fetishes. The Ashanti believed their gods reproduced without women. At the dawn of time, the preeminent celestial god bade his sons to descend to earth where they assumed the form of large bodies of water. From these bodies of water issued generations of sons associated with the various ntoro. A priest related, "As a woman gives birth to a child, so may water to a god:' Fetishes and gods were closely related. Some fetishes transformed into gods. All fetishes derived their power from the celestial god. Matrilineal groups had no connections with fetishes. The kunkuma, the most powerful fetish, was never to enter a matrilineal ancestor shrine. The leader of the executioners, all of whom were related patrilineally, was also called kunkuma. Contact with menstrual blood destroyed Ashanti fetishes. Rattray told how menstrual blood "directly or indirectly" would "render useless all supernatural or magico-protective powers possessed by either persons or spirits or objects:' A menstruating woman was "capable of breaking down all barriers which stand between defenseless man and those evil unseen powers which beset him on every side."The kunkuma alone had power to prevail against this threat.

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Fashioned from an old broom, a kunkuma carried all manner of filth that it touched. Secreted within its bristles was a strand doused with menstrual blood. The owner touched "every tabooed object" with the kunkuma. Priests told how the kunkuma "takes on itself every evil" and "can save you:' The kun kuma acted like a magnet to attract pollution and hold it. Jay called it a "moral 'black hole; able to draw down into itself all kinds of sin and sacrilege:' Letting sacrificial human blood flow on the kunkuma made the owner invulnerable to any rancorous ghost seeking retribution. The Ashanti discarded and exiled humans sacrificed in this way. They were expiatory victims who could not serve patrilineal ancestral spirits. Even without human blood, the kunkuma was useful, for it could contend with the evil of the consummate other, which was like menstrual blood. Ashanti ancestor cults were political but had a matrilineal dimension, which differed from those of the Dahomey, Benin, Lugbara, and Tallensi. However, they were not kinship affairs. Only a chief who died in office became a sacrificial ancestor. The chief's office belonged "to the whole community, not to any one lineage:' The man merged with the office and forfeited lineage ties. A white stool symbolized the chief of the ancestor cult. After his death, priests smeared it with sacrificial animal blood and fat, and placed it in the ancestor stool shrine. The "queen mother;' the chief's lineage sister, also had a stool. At death, her stool was retired to a separate stool house, and never received sacrifice. Vegetables, fish, and, rarely, antelope meat might be offered to the queen mother's stool. Throughout the world, cultures considered domestic animals the only proper sacrificial victims. Fish and game, such as antelope, were nonsacrificial creatures. Ancestor cult sacrifices took place at lineage galas, at the enstoolment and death of a chief, and to purify an egregious lineage wrong, such as incest. Ancestor cult sacrifices were always alimentary communion sacrifices, where cooked meat and other victuals were shared. Priests swabbed the stools with sacrificial animal blood and fat. Human blood was forbidden; postmenopausal women had to haul water. The menstrual taboo prevented women from holding political office except "queen mother:' If menstruating, the queen mother could not enter her own stool house . In earlier times, "if any menstrous woman entered ... where the stools were kept she would have been killed instantly:' Sacrificial human blood and menstrual blood had no place in ancestor cult sacrifices. The Ashanti valued chiefly parentage that fused matrilineal and patrilineal descent through patrilateral cross-cousin marriage, which meant that the chief's mother's brother and father's father were the same. The chief embodied his father's soul and name and his mother's blood at once; he was pure, being "someone . .. of the same abusua (blood) and ntoro as an ancestor:' Only this office achieved this unifying principle. Ancestral stool names were most highly

Sacrifice. 181 valued. Women did not bequeath names or souls, only their "blood spirit" or physical substance. When she died, her blood spirit went to the spirit world to await reincarnation through another lineage woman. Patrilateral cross-cousin marriage neatly solved inheritance issues and tidily blended matrilineal and patrilineal descent, which was a rare practice in the world of kinship. 17 Hawaiians counted descent from women as equivalent to descent from men. However, they opposed bilateral genealogical descent with a sacrificial complex that elevated men in a hierarchical political system. Gender polarity "between sexual reproduction ... associated with the feminine pole, and the sacrificial reproduction of social units ... associated with the masculine pole" differentiated genealogical and sacrificial systems. For Hawaiians, sacrifice was "men's childbearing;' and excluded women as fully as men were excluded from really giving birth. Men's childbearing was superior to women's childbearing. Male sacrifice reproduced the social and political order. Sexual reproduction involved the impure blood of menstruation and childbirth. Proximity to women eroded men's power. When segregated, men regained power. Hawaiian conventions governing food consumption illustrated this gender hierarchy. All male eating was sacrificial. Women and men never ate together, and they could not prepare food over the same fire. In their homes there was an eating room for men, one for women, and a mutual sleeping room. Men's eating quarters were sacred, domestic, sacrificial sanctuaries. Only men cooked, because it entailed sacrifice. They used separate ovens for their food and women's food . Women could not eat the most sacred food items, such as coconuts, bananas, and especially pork. Violating food taboos brought the death penalty. Men's ranked status influenced eating privileges. The status of inferior men "approached that of women :' They also could not eat the most sacred foods, which were reserved for "high -ranking men in temples to which male com moners are not admitted any more than women :' Even those admitted to the temples ate alimentary sacrifices according to rank. The higher a man's status, the more intricately sacrificial were his meals. Most boys ate with women. However, elite boys went straight from breast-feeding into the alimentary, sacrificial complex. There was also a social divide between elite men and commoner men. Common men had separate sacrificial eating quarters at home. They were "at best spectators of the state cult, at worst its victims;' but at home they were "domestic chiefs:' Women, who were completely excluded from the sacrificial complex, were constructed as profane, nonmen. Fathers brought boys into domestic, male temples, and priests' skills passed from fathers to sons, but this did not celebrate patriliny. The critical intergenerational connection united kings and male gods. Male childbearing was the

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central metaphor, not patriliny. Men manufactured umbilical cords that symbolized the attachment. Through sacrifice, the king recreated his own divine status, without which the political hierarchy of men could not be maintained. Male gods were also arranged hierarchically, with Ku at the apex. Men sacrificed only to gods who replicated their social status. Only the king sacrificed to Ku. Therefore, "sacrifice ensure[d] that the hierarchy of gods [was] translated into a social hierarchy and reproduce[d] it:' Goddesses were less pure, fewer in number, and more marginal than gods. They represented "typically feminine attributes ... everything that is associated with the begetting of children, beginning with seduction . .. and ending with childbirth:' Elite women made offerings, but men performed sacrifices to goddesses. Men could not sacrifice to sorcery gods, as evil opposites of male deities. Women were impure, so they sacrificed to sorcery gods. Even so, they had to be single or postmenopausal. Sacrificial victims were ranked. Only male animals could be sacrificed in the temples for venerating gods . Coconuts and bananas connoted masculinity. Victims closely associated with the sacrificer were more highly esteemed, with humans, always male, prized above all. Temple hierarchy corresponded to that of deities . Only the king could sacrifice to Ku, and only the king could sacrifice humans. Human sacrifice subsumed all others and benefited the collectivity. Successfully carrying out human sacrifice was the primary signifier of kingship. This conceptual hierarchy organized land rights; as in food preparation, women were almost totally excluded from agricultural production. The king divided land among elite men . They allocated land rights to those beneath them. All men offered first fruits to their immediate superior. The chain of offerings reached the king, who made sacred offerings to the gods. The whole social and political order, and even the relationship of society to the gods, rested on the king. After his death, the sacrificial and political systems collapsed and anarchy reigned. Land rights disappeared because they were vested in the king. There were no clear rules of succession , so it took time to restore order. Sacrifice always determined succession . The jumbled genealogies created by the myriad marriage choices Hawaiian nobility made confused succession. Noble kinship ties were complicated by bilateral descent, marriage between siblings and very close kin, multiple marriages, and polygyny and polyandry. When a king died, numerous potential successors contended for the honor. The victor needed broad-based support and had to successfully sacrifice all other contenders. Killing the contenders was not enough; they had to be sacrificed. Through sacrifice, contenders were "incorporated into the god, reduced to him:' They were both enemies and "close relatives of the victor .. . his

Sacrifice • 183 doubles:' The victor's successfully sacrificing them integrated him into the god and gave him "a divine status:' He became "a divine king:' Hawaiians were concerned with ascent rather than descent. The king provided a literal genealogical link with the gods, rather than intergenerational continuity from fathers to sons. Most Hawaiians traced descent bilaterally, but noble families' marital choices preserved their divine descent through sacrificial and sexual reproduction. The male prerogative of sacrifice ensured sacrificial divinity. Hawaiian nobility practiced endogamy; exogamy would have quickly diluted noble divinity. A new king had sacrificed his brothers, and then married his sisters. Endogamy created a "royal lineage" so drastic that a couple could "produce a child who is a replica of the god as ancestor:' These marriages did not perpetuate inherited divinity; they generated it anew. These intimate noble marital choices were denied to commoners. Sexual reproduction of divine children elevated their status beyond all others. However, sacrificial reproduction ensured that a divine little girl whose heredity trumped all others would not become king. The king's sacrificial powers enabled him to reign over divine genealogy by reproducing himself and the gods without relying on women. "Men's childbearing" required severing an umbilical cord completely divorced from sexual reproduction. The umbilical cord signified the god's birth and symbolized "society itself and the continuity of its life;' and "the king as the 'cord' that mediated between gods and men:' The life of one gave life to the others. For this reason, "the reproduction of the god, the reproduction of society, and that of the king" all took place in the same ritual act. 'Aha (cord) referred to rites the king performed in the temple and some human sacrifices done outside. 'Aha also denoted sacrificial rites done with prayer and to people gathered together. The cord symbolized the king's tie to the gods and the social links created by sacrifice. Kings appropriated a female symbol and completely transformed it to connote sacrificial masculinity. The cord bound together all sacrificially comprised social relations , "that between the king and the god, that between the king and his followers, and that among the followers:' The new king might not have held the highest rank prior to his installation, but that rite superseded all that came before. Divine genealogy might be transmitted sacrificially or sexually, but both were kept strictly segregated. No one inherited the king's cords . They were unknit and plaited into a small container for his bones . Unraveling the king's cords symbolized the undoing of sacrificial bonds. Anarchy ensued until sacrifice established succession. The new king had fresh cords made . The Hawaiian calendar ordered sacrificial celebrations. The year was divided in two sections, each revolving around distinctive sacrifice. Four months focused on Lono, the god of agricultural and human fertility. Then eight months converged on worshiping the supreme Ku.

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During the Lono festival, first-fruit ceremonies occurred and women were able to indulge in sacred foods. Without sacrifice, the distinctions within society ebbed. The high priest stayed away to avoid witnessing the feasting, playing, dancing, and sexual revelry that attended the second phase of the Lono festival. The antithetical practices of human sacrifice and war were prohibited. Then men began sacrificing human beings and sacred foods such as pigs, coconuts, and bananas to reconstitute their male affiliation . Another sacrifice reestablished gender segregation before the largest cycle of sacrifices in which the king reproduced both the god and himself as divine ruler. First, men procured a hard, red, erect tree-obvious masculine characteristics. The tree was transubstantiated to become the god, Ku. They decapitated a man at the tree's base. Later, human sacrifices within the temple expressly avoided spilling blood. Later still, human sacrifices were staged outside the temple. This sequence, moving from impure bloodshed to progressively greater purity, paral leled the transformation of the tree into a bona fide representation of Ku. More sacrifices took place over the next seven days. The tree was birthed and initiated in the same manner as an adolescent boy was. It culminated in repeated installations of the king, because "the hierarchical chain must be constantly renewed :' Then massive sacrificing took place involving hundreds of pigs, bananas, coconuts, and some humans, who were broiled. The communion meal was shared only hierarchically. However, humans and the gods had become too close; expiatory sacrifice separated them, ascending up the hierarchy. Captain Cook stumbled on the Hawaiian Islands in 1778, during the Lono festival. Sahlins speculated that puzzled Hawaiians mistook him for the returning Lono. When Cook returned the following year, Lorio's annual circling of the big island of Hawaii was to commence. Cook did not know this as he prepared to circumnavigate the island in the same direction. When he moored near a shrine to Lono, villagers worshiped him as if he was Lono himself, bringing him produce in abundance and making copious sacrifices to him . Unaccustomed to such veneration, he vowed to return the following year. When his damaged ship forced Cook to return to the island, he dropped anchor at the bay where he had been so generously treated. Unfortunately, Ku had replaced Lono, and Cook was now perceived as a contentious challenger. Hostile Hawaiians sacrificed him to Ku and cooked and sanctified his long bones to become the king's ancestral god. The king bequeathed the right to sacrifice to his son Kiwalao. His nephew, Kamehameha, to whom the king had left his god, Ku-island-snatcher, which symbolized "the warlike side of kingship; ' had other ideas. Kamehameha dispatched Kiwalao on the altar and became the first paramount king of all the Hawaiian Islands. During Kamehameha's reign, British colonization escalated. British manufactured goods became commodities in a secular trade instead of being sacrificed

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to Lono. Hawaiians reprovisioned ships and traded sandalwood with China. Chiefs forced commoners into corvee labor to harvest sandalwood from the rainforests. Commoners called chiefs "sharks on land:' The oppression became intolerable as the chiefs struggled to monopolize trade with Europeans. When commoners starved because they could not work their own gardens, they abandoned the chiefs. Gender relations changed with great consequence. Commoner women were accustomed to having sex with the chiefly class. Children from such unions had access to material goods that bettered their families' lives. This prepared them to seek sex with British seafarers whom early on they perceived as deities. Cook wrote, "No women ... were less reserved . . . they visited us . . . to make a surrender of their persons:' Even during armed confrontations, women braved the seas to swim to British ships. British sailors paid for what they thought was buying sex. They presented mirrors, jewelry, and iron implements such as nails and adzes, coveted by native men . This evolved into another exchange system that was independent of the chiefs and completely divorced from sacrifice. British men welcomed native women to dine as they did on pork, coconuts, and bananas. Women enjoyed the formerly forbidden foods. It undermined the sacrificial definition of their status as women. Commoner men also benefited. Commoner men and women unified, which subverted any allegiances they once had to the chiefs. That the British violated food taboos without dying or being sacrificed increased their power even as it diminished their sanctity. Kamehameha created a trade hub in Honolulu to spare the Hawaiian temples the profane British presence with their secular trade. He busied his male lineage relatives-potential rivals-with tasks away in the temples. He delegated trading responsibilities to his affinal relatives, especially those of his preferred wife, Kaahumanu, who was his most savvy political advisor. His primary wife, Keopuolani, outranked everyone. Kamehameha had sacrificed her father, Kiwalao, whom the previous king had chosen as successor. Her mother was her father's sister. She was divinity incarnate before whom everyone had to prostrate themselves or be killed. Her firstborn son, Liholiho, outranked his father, Kamehameha, who called him "my god:' Kamehameha designated Liholiho as his successor with the right to perform sacrifices. His god Ku-island-snatcher went to his nephew Kekuaokalani. In 1819, when Kamehameha died, his wife, Kaahumanu, claimed that he had appointed her to the new post of "regent:' Liholiho isolated himself for the ten days of anarchy that ensued after his father's death . Cowives Kaahumanu and Keopuolani devised a plan. They urged Liholiho to halt the food taboos. They consumed the forbidden food while he and his younger brother watched. Liholiho was in a bind . He could accede to their demands or ally with his cousin, Kekuaokalani, who surely planned to sacrifice him . He opted to save himself by allying with "his mother and stepmother,

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who would not sacrifice him , but were demanding the end of the sacrificial system:' At Liholihos installation as king, Kaahumanu announced that the deceased king had commanded her to reign alongside the new king. At the banquet, Liholiho ate foods reserved for men and gods with chiefly women. He was uncomfortable, but directed that all consecrated temples and images be destroyed. As Valeri wrote, "Henceforth the hierarchy survived only in its genealogical form its female-centered mode of reproduction. It is no accident . . . that female chiefs played the most important political roles after the abolition of the Old Regime:' Stubbornly gender-blind scholars failed to comprehend the critical roles women played in dismantling the Hawaiian sacrificial complex. By embracing women, Sahlins brought into sharp focus the perplexing dynamic behind the sudden collapse of the Hawaiian state religion. The male chiefly class used the religion to dominate commoners, using sacrifice as a means of social control. As Jay wrote, "Like a dike holding back the sea, the sacr ificial system had kept women from access to political power and prevented that power from being inherited through women. Now the dike was broken:' Descent became truly hereditary, and women rose to the helm . IS The Hawaiian sacrificial complex is among the clearest illustrations of the relationship between life-giving blood and sacrificial blood. Men co-opted the ability to give birth through sacrifice. Stripped of the ability to sacrifice, the male ancestor cults crumbled. The ancient Israelite case is also instructive. The Hebrew Bible was inconsistent about sacrifice. These irregularities led Julius Wellhausen, the nineteenth-century biblical scholar, to surmise th at four authors, not Moses alone, composed the first five books of th e Bible. Each author lived in a different time period and had his own reasons for using disparate oral traditions. None made any pretense to objectivity ; they had pointed reasons for telling stories as they did . Recognizing the possibility of descent through women and the relation of sacrifice to descent clarifies inconsistencies in their accounts. Biblical scholars abbreviate these authors names : Deuteronomy's author was "D"; ''1:' the Yahwist, stemmed from Iahweh, the German spelling of god; "E" came from Elowist; the fourth, "P;' told of the patriarchs. By analyzing details in the narratives, Wellhausen placed 'T' as oldest in the ninth century, "E" next in the eighth century, "D" later in the seventh century, and "P" the most recent in the fifth century. This chronology parallels the development and elaboration of a priesthood among the Israelites. In the early stories of the patriarchs, no priesthood existed; families or clans sacrificed . Next, during the monarchy, a Levite priesthood emerged. Finally, in the theocracy after the exile, a priestly Aaronid descent group supervised the state and the Levites became temple servants.

Sacrifice. 187 Each author's account differed as the priesthood evolved. J and E portrayed joyous communion meals as offerings to Yahweh, with no sin offerings. In P's narrative, expiatory sacrifices predominated; peace offerings were increasingly restricted. As the priesthood transformed into an exclusive descent group, P described how community members shared peace offerings of meat, while the priesthood consumed expiatory sacrifices. This distinguished the priesthood, unifying priests. When the monarchy appointed priests, distinguishing their lineage was not important. After the exile, purity of lineage loomed large for priests turned rulers . P wrote of this postexilic time, and painstakingly tidied up portions of narrative that did not point to unblemished patrilineal descent. P penned "throughout your generations forever;' and left us those interminable chronicles of "begats " I's genealogy in Genesis 4 acknowledged childbearing women . P's genealogy in Genesis 5 mentioned no women at all. J and E were not preoccupied with patrilineal "purity:' They provided tidbits suggestive of matrilineality. Biblical scholars accept the idea of multiple authors, but they have been as gender blind as P in interpreting them. Puzzling facets of stories about the patriarchs have stumped them . "How can we understand the wife/sister stories? Why is Isaac such a shadowy figure?-or why was Rebekah's father so marginal? What is the significance of Isaac's taste for game?-or of Rachel's theft of her father's household gods?" They attribute perplexing parts of stories to errors of transcription. Imagining that matrilineal cultures actually existed clarifies them . When the stories are read focusing on sacrifice and descent, "these passages ... mean exactly what they say:' Israelites faced a dilemma . They did not deny descent through women but sought to maintain untarnished patrilines. One solution to this problem was agnatic endogamy; that is, marrying within the patriline. Although rare, Semites and Arabs have historically preferred men to marry their father's brother's daughters. Descent through women was denied, by refusing to acknowledge it. Names were suppressed and marriages ignored. The patriarch stories portrayed husbands and wives as brothers and sisters three separate times: Abraham and Sarah twice, and Isaac and Rebekah once. This has embarrassed biblical scholars who wanted to construct respectable patriarchs for Victorian audiences . The accounts suggested that these couples were incestuous at worst, liars at best. (Although no one blinked at all the begetting going on with wives' sisters and maidservants.) Justifications given have not clarified the contradictions. Viewing them from the lens of descent and sacrifice resolves them. Jand E mentioned Sarah's barrenness. (Barrenness always signified descent problems.) In P's narrative, God Almighty "blessed" Sarah and made her a "mother of nations" from whom "kings of people shall come:' "Blessing"always

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glossed the divine honoring of descent, but targeting a woman was totally out of character for P, who always constructed the most patriarchal narratives. P gave only this glimpse of Israelites' tracing descent through women. Poor, barren Sarah gave her maid Hagar to Abraham to impregnate. The Egyptian Hagar bore Ishmael , but the birth did not cement patriliny through Abraham. Ishmael was a "father's son:' Ideally, that should have established patriliny. That it did not suggests that Israelites were not fully patrilineal, no matter how much biblical scholars assumed they were. Only Isaac, to whom Sarah later gave birth, was a proper heir because he was patrilineally descended from both his mother and father. E said that Sarah and Abraham had the same father, but different mothers, making them halfsiblings in true agnatic endogamous fashion . Once Isaac was born, Sarah implored Abraham to banish Hagar and Ishmael, which J said he did . E made Abraham more fittingly patriarchal, saying he complied with God, not Sarah. J had the Lord promise Hagar numerous offspring. E could not stand this and had the Lord swear instead to Abraham to honor the slave's son as Abraham's seed by making Ishmael spawn his own nation. While J allowed Isaac to be his mother's and father's son, E reestablished his pure patrilineage through sacrifice . Just in the nick of time, Elohim (God) told Abraham to spare Isaac and sacrifice a ram instead. A conscious, male action completely devoid of women restored Isaac to life, or rebirthed him. Elohim also promised Abraham many descendants. Arabs descended from Ishmael. In Islamic tradition, Abraham came close to sacrificing Ishmael. Then Ishmael, not Isaac, carried forth the patrilineage. Isaac's story almost replayed Abraham's. The lives of father and son were amazingly parallel: both married women classified as patrilineal sisters, both called their wives sisters, both women had belonged to a foreign king's harem, both wives were barren, both had brothers who successfully sired twelve sons (a requisite for prevailing in the patrilineal descent game), and both had an older "father's son" and a younger "mother's son;' making descent lines equivocal. The stories were identical with one exception. Abraham sacrificed to save the patriline. Isaac refused. As Isaac's story unfolded, it revealed the full ramifications of ambiguous descent. Abraham sent a servant to Haran, his homeland, to find Isaac an endogamous bride to prevent him from marrying out of the patriline. He did not want Isaac to go, for matrilineal relatives would claim a "mother's son:' Rebekah's father Bethuel was Abraham's patrilineal nephew, making Rebekah ideal for achieving agnatic endogamy. However, everything J said indicated that Rebekah's household was matrilineal. Laban, Rebekah's brother, replied first, not Bethuel. Rebekah's brother and mother received gifts, not her father. Later, Rebekah's brother and mother asked her to delay her trip. These actions all accord perfectly with matrilineal kinship relations. However, J assumed patrilineality, as did

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all biblical scholars who have tackled the narrative. Though Bethuel was mentioned later, all assumed either that he was dead or that transcription errors had occurred. Recognizing matrilineality makes it comprehensible just as stated . After long being childless, Rebekah bore twin sons, Jacob and Esau. Rebekah favored Jacob with his smooth skin. Isaac loved Esau, who had dense body hair and liked to hunt. Like his father, Esau relished game. In the Bible, as in most of the world, game was inappropriate to sacrifice. Israelites sacrificed only domestic animals. Isaac's and Esaus taste for game indexed the issue of sacrifice. Isaac's refusal to sacrifice nearly led him to lose control of his patrilineage. J then told how a blind and aging Isaac sent Esau to fetch some game for a repast, whereupon Isaac would bless him as his heir. Overhearing this, Rebekah had Jacob prepare two kids and disguise himself with their skins. Isaac thought he felt Esau's bushy hair and blessed the deceptive Jacob. Discovering the ruse enraged Isaac so much that Rebekah sent Jacob away to Haran, taking the descent line with him. Biblical blessings, whether from men or God, always had to do with descent. God's blessings ensured descendants. A father's blessing passed on the family's line of descent. P's story differed from I's, No one deceived Isaac or competed over descent. Everyone loved both sons equally. Isaac cared nothing for game . He sent Jacob away to find a wife. P called Laban the son of Bethuel. For J, he was Rebekah's brother. J left Isaac in crisis, having lost control over descent. P tidied up such disturbing matters in the land of patriarchy. However, P could not resolve Isaac's descendants. P wrote, "These are the generations of Isaac;' and stopped, providing no long list of begats. P said "Abraham begot Isaac"-end of patriline. Rebekah succeeded in transferring Isaac's patriline from his intended heir, Esau, to Jacob, but her matrilineal roots tainted the line. Jacob would have to restore it. When Jacob arrived in Haran, he met Rachel, who took him to Laban, his mother's brother. Laban recognized him immediately as his matrilineal nephew. This clarifies why Abraham had kept Isaac away from Haran. Jacob, "entangled in the local 'matrilinear scene, a sister's son working for his mother's brother, married uxorilocally and avunculocally to his mother's brother's daughters, could not escape for twenty years:' In the face of an apparent victory of descent through women, the contest between an older and younger sibling who carried the line of descent reemerged-only this time they were sisters. Biblical scholars debate whether Laban adopted Jacob because he seemed to become an heir. However, mother's brothers typically treated sister's sons as heirs in a matriliny. Laban's relationship with Jacob simply makes more sense when conceived of as matrilineal. Jacob favored Rachel, but Laban gave him Leah in return for seven years of bride-price service. For Rachel, he would have to serve another seven years.

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With Leah, Jacob fathered six sons, placing him halfway to victory in the patrilineal descent game. Two maidservants each gave birth to two more sons for Jacob. Ten down, two to go. Enter Rachel. Like Sarah and Rebekah, Rachel could not conceive. Barrenness signaled descent conflicts. Finally, Rachel bore Joseph. Jacob now had eleven sons, but in Canaan, Esau already had twelve (sound familiar?). Laban acted the part of authoritarian mother's brother, demanding the preeminence of descent through women-particularly of Jacob's descent from Rebekah. With no mention of any other sister's children, Jacob was a literal godsend for Laban. However, neither J nor E ever mentioned the women's mother or their brothers. Then the work to redeem the patriline began. J told how the Lord commanded Jacob to "return to the land of your fathers;' but most of this story comes from E. Rachel and Leah wanted to leave Haran because their father did not treat them as family. In a matriliny, he would not . E excused Jacob for taking Laban's flocks as patrilineal property. Actually, they were his matrilineal birthright. Rachel's theft of Laban's household gods was more difficult to explain. Grappling with Rachel's theft rivals the wife-sister accounts in terms of historicallongevity. Some claimed the gods would have given Rachel title to the family estate. Some argued that she pilfered them to worship them on the journey. Some thought she confiscated them so Jacob would become the paterfamilias. These competing explanations fail to consider the possibility of legitimate descent through women . Rachel snatched Laban's gods as she embarked on the trip to Canaan. This would have legitimated Joseph as a "mother's son" within her matriliny. Far from making Jacob the paterfamilias, her action relegated him to being an insignificant husband in a matriliny. Es continuing story reinforces this interpretation. Laban chased Jacob. He was irate at the theft of his grandchildren, daughters, and household gods. He did not mention the flocks. No one knew Rachel had stolen the gods, so Jacob told Laban to search for them and the culprit would be killed. Searching turned up nothing. In the meantime, Rachel stowed the gods under a camel saddle and sat on it. When Laban entered, she did not get up, saying, "The way of women is upon me:' Rachel deflected Laban, threatening pollution through her menstrual blood . This premeditated use of menstrual blood to retain a line of descent is without parallel anywhere else in the Bible. Jacob's theft of Isaac'spatriline opposed slaying domestic animals with slaying game. Rachel's sacrificial opposition trumped Jacob's by her use of menstrual blood. Rebekah and Rachel, women from the same matrilineage , behaved in a shocking manner that threatened to upset the whole patrilineal apple cart . Rachel deceived Laban, a mere male

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from a matrilineage, not Jacob, whose patriline would survive through sacrifice. Failing to retrieve his gods, grandchildren, or Jacob, Laban recouped by suggesting a covenant between the two men. They referenced their common patrilineal tie. Because Laban's father was Abraham's brother Nahor, they shared a grandfather. They swore their covenant to Abraham's God . Then Jacob performed his first sacrifice to restore his patrilineage. This transformed Laban from mother's brother to an agnatic brother with whom Jacob sacrificed. Rachel and Jacob had each deceptively stolen a line of descent. Jacob was banished to matrilineal Haran. Rachel stole because she was leaving for patrilineal Canaan. Both lost the descent lines as a consequence, but Jacob regained his through sacrifice. Rachel paid the full penalty. She died giving birth to Jacob's twelfth son. On her deathbed, she named her infant Ben-oni, or "son of my sorrow:' Jacob immediately renamed him Benjamin, meaning "son of the right:' because of Israelite ideas that linked paternal descent with the right side. Despite her attempt to maintain her matriline by stealing Laban'shousehold gods, only Joseph would be a "mother's son:' not Benjamin. This story came mostly from E. In P's rend ition, Jacob went to Haran and married Laban's daughters without conflict. He left peacefully, without theft. He did not sacrifice with Laban, for there was no need. Rachel survived childbirth and they all gathered together with Isaac, who was still alive. The notion that Joseph was a "mother's son" is bolstered by two more bits of evidence contained in later biblical narratives. Jacob sought to reunite with Joseph, who had gone to Egypt. E noted that Jacob again sacrificed before he set out on his journey to Egypt. P related that once Jacob found Joseph, he invoked God Almighty's promise to grant him numerous descendants because he intended to adopt Joseph's two oldest sons, Manasseh and Ephraim. The boys would be Jacob's progeny, but Joseph's other children would remain his own. Note that not even Jacob considered Joseph's children to be part of Jacob'spatrilineage. Jacob claimed to need to comfort him after Rachel's death. However, he adopted them as Leah's sons, disassociating them from the contamination of Rachel's theft, which symbolized her commitment to her matrilineage. This adoption cemented total Israelite patriarchy. As Jacob lay dying, he bestowed blessings on his progeny, and gave further evidence that Joseph was a "mother's son:' Of all of Jacob's twelve sons, only Joseph received the "blessings of the breasts and the womb:' clear symbols of his association with Rachel. Biblical scholars have not questioned why or imagined that his matrilineal affiliation might have been key. The King James version of the Bible, when still being translated in 1611, rendered the next segment of Jacob's Blessing as follows: "The blessings of thy

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father have prevailed above the blessings of my progenitors unto the utmost bound of the everlasting hills: they shall be on the head of Joseph, and on the crown of him that was separate from his brethren:' This encapsulated Jacob's dilemma surrounding Joseph's descent. Translating "progenitors" is problematic. In Hebrew the word was horay, meaning "conceivers:' Elsewhere in the Bible it appeared only in the feminine singular to mean "mother:' In the con tentious passage, it was masculine plural, which, again, puzzled scholars who attributed it to scribal error. In Hebrew, masculine plural glossed a group of men and women. Th is form of "conceivers" can encompass Rachel, Rebekah , Laban, and their entire family. If imagined in this way, the passage would mean "The blessings of (and therefore descent from) your father (Jacob, who restored patriliny by sacrifice) have prevailed over the blessings of (descent from) my conceivers (my mother's family: Laban and his line of descent through mothers) unto the utmost bound of the everlasting hills:' The Haran matriliny from which Sarah, Rebekah, and Rachel hailed posed a dilemma for their patrilineal husbands and for gender-blind scholars since. That scholars would attribute so many passages associated with examples of matriliny to scribal error is stark testimony to "how the situatedness of the interpreter limits the possibilities of interpretation:' 19 The Israelite struggle to sustain patriliny in the face of intermarriage with matrilineal women consistently rested on men who were willing to sacrifice. Whenever descent issues reared, men sacrificed to resolve them. Men such as Isaac and Jacob came perilously close to losing their patriline until they finally sacrificed. Rachel posed the most extreme matrilineal challenge when she deflected Laban by using her real or imagined menstrual blood as a weapon. It worked temporarily, underscoring the powerful opposition of women's life blood and men's co-optation of birthing through sacrifice. Through sacrifice, men gave birth to patrilineages.

Sacrifice without Ritual Killing Sacrifice did not always involve ritually killing animals or humans. People manipulated their bodies with sacrificial intent. This practice was widely distributed cross-culturally. Nowhere does the New Testament suggest that the Eucharist was a sacrifice. It does not recommend a distinctive position such as priesthood for dispensing it. It does not even refer to Christian priests, only pagan and Jewish ones . Nothing like apostolic succession exists anywhere in the New Testament. Men invented the priesthood and the sacrificial Eucharist at particular historical moments. This is worth exploring, especially in light of the role of blood in sacrifice.

Sacrifice • 193 When the "Second Coming" failed to materialize by the second century, the Christian Church faced heresy, schism, and persecution. Maintaining continuity and securing succession emerged as problems. Sacrifice addressed these issues. The Christian sacrifice was the Eucharist. The bishops who administered it grew to be the apostles ' lineal descendants. The Church's social organization evolved into a sacrificing priesthood. To disassociate the priesthood from the laity, the Eucharist became an expiatory sacrifice. Jay explained, "Historians describe changes in eucharistic practice and theology, and .. . changes in Church social organization, but they do not describe them as features of one another:' In fact, both developments were concomitant. In the beginning, the bishop performed the Eucharist on behalf of the congregation. The Bishop of Carthage, Cyprian, instituted changes in the early third century. He equated components of the Eucharist with the body and blood of Christ. He was the first to call a bishop "sacerdos" or "priest:' He also was the first to claim unilineal descent for priests from apostles. When the Roman Empire adopted Christianity as state religion in the fourth century, sacrificing to maintain church hierarchy exploded. Governance of the Roman Empire had always been sacrificial, so Christianity was simply blended into the mix. A religion that originated among urban individuals "became an established sacrificial religion oflandowning extended patrilineal families and agricultural workers:' Priestly terms were applied to church offices. Women who had performed as deaconesses were banished to the laity. The term laity became profane and derogatory. Priestly purity took on ritual significance. Women's reproductive capacity was defined as polluting. A celibate priesthood became an ideal and then a dictate. Women who agreed to be celibate might gain the status of a low-level man ; women could not receive consecrated wafers in an uncovered hand." After the eleventh and twelfth centuries, blood loomed in salvific importance in Christianity. Associated with God and Jesus Christ, blood became a sacred substance associated with male procreative power. Figuratively consuming Jesus Christ's body and blood in the Eucharist ceremony developed into a central feature of worship services. Devout followers, especially women, obsessed about the Eucharist and mimicking Christ's bleeding wounds to commune with him. Christ's broken body symbolized humanity's redemption, and seemed to be under attack. "Deeply concerned with Christ's wounded body, medieval Catholicism projected the threat of corporeal violence onto outsiders: women , heretics, and Jews:' To late medieval theologians, Christ's blood demonstrated the humanation of God. God had literally descended to earth and assumed human form, complete with a body of flesh and blood. Seeing blood at Jesus's circumcision and crucifixion proved he was corporeally real, and not a spiritual apparition. "The

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rendering of the incarnate Christ . . . unmistakably flesh and blood [was] a religious enterprise because it testifie[d] to god's greatest achievement:' Christ's wounded body, death, and resurrection signaled humanity's redemption. The symbolic centrality of Christ's blood endured for centuries, to the present. In the sixth century, the Venerable Bede praised Jesus's blood as "healing against the wound of original sin:' By 1000, Pope Innocent III still praised how humanity had gained access to heaven "whose gate the blood of Christ [had] mercifully opened for his faithful:' Around 1300, Pseudo-Bonaventure wrote, "Today .. . Christ began to shed His consecrated blood for us. . . .Today His precious blood flowed:' By the late 1200s, the Dominican Archbishop of Genoa memorialized how, "On this day he began to shed his blood for us . . . the beginning of our redemption:' Still later in the fifteenth century, a Ciceronian humanist intoned, "His first holy shedding of blood ... pertains to the salvation of mankind and your immortality:' In 1460, Giovanni Antonio Campano extolled, "It would not have been enough for Christ to be born for us had he not begun to shed that divine blood in which our salvation reposes:' And in 1485, Antonio Lollio preached, "We have Jesus . . . who today has chosen to spill his blood for the sake of man whom He created:' The trope was nearly as eternal as everlasting life. The representation of blood blossomed in poems, hymns, art, and Catholic iconography. Every venue accented "the flesh of Christ, ripped open and spilling pulsating streams of insistent, scarlet blood, to . . . feed the .. . hungry soul ," Depictions of "Christ as bleeding victim" abounded: "Christ points with his bleeding hand to the wound on his side; Christ bleeds into a eucharistic chalice; Christ displays and offers the bleeding wound on his right side; Christ's wounds emit a stream of blood ... received by a female figure representing humanity; Christ pours forth his own blood from palm and breast into a chalice . .. to feed humankind:' Catholicism's message of redemption through Christ's sacrifice was expressed through "iconographies of bloodshed.?" This emphasis on visual displays of blood paralleled a heightened consciousness of the physical body's sensat ions and experiences. That God would descend to earth, take on human form , bleed, and die for humanity made the body a powerful, awesome thing. This Christian fixation on torn and spent bodies displaced Roman fears of the polluted dead . The rise of the cult of saints and reverence for relics of Christ evidenced this accentuation of corporeality. Within this corporeal context, the consecrated Eucharist bread (corpus Christi) took on a life of its own. Once the Church confirmed miracles where the Eucharist bread and wine had literally transformed to flesh and blood, devoted followers frenetically adopted the ritual. By 1200 priests displayed the consecrated bread, known as "the host;' for the devout to view as if it were a relic. Using candlelight to make it dimly visible replicated the handling of relics.

Sacrifice • 195 Emphasizing the physicality of Christ's body led people to eschew passive meditation to reenact Christ's ordeal. Women, especially, turned to self-torture and mutilation to commune with Christ. Every day, Elizabeth ofSpalbeck flagellated herself to rehearse Christ's torment. Hagiographers recorded the first examples of stigmata, "the sudden (or miraculous) manifestation of wounds, injuries, or marks resembling those on Christ's body" Both Elizabeth and Mary of Oignies regularly bled from stigmatic wounds. Elizabeth "very clearly... without any simulation or fraud" displayed the five classic stigmata: nail holes in both hands and both feet and a lance wound on the side, "which frequently, and especially on Fridays [the day of Christ's death] , emitted a stream of blood:' These examples were part of a swelling torrent. In the late Middle Ages, women, especially nuns, let blood through selftorture to demonstrate their piety. The Nun's Book reported how "in Advent and Lent, all the sisters . . . hack at themselves cruelly, hostilely lacerating their bodies until the blood flows:' The bodies of female saints revealed stigmata. Even their internal organs, particularly hearts, bore marks of Christ after death. Clare of Montefalcos fellow nuns ripped her heart out, to prove that it displayed the emblem of the crucifixion. Linke summarized, "The suffering female body-the body of a woman in pain-thus emerged in late medieval Catholicism as a . . .vehicle of redemption:' From the late 1100s to the 1500s, women who bled from stigmatic wounds did not consider this self-torture. They became one with Jesus Christ (imitatio Christi) , redeemer of humanity. Opportunities expanded for women within Christianity. Women saints increased, as did convents and monasteries for women, nuns, and itinerant female ministers. These women pursued chaste existences and lived their lives in service to the ministry. Observers claimed that holy women's bodies exuded extraordinary fluids but often stopped menstruating. They fasted incessantly and excreted little. This was counterpoised with their emission of "extraordinary sanguine liquids:' Many had profuse nosebleeds when they consumed the Eucharist. Lutgards hair bled when trimmed. Lidwina of Schiedam did not eat or eliminate, but blood streamed from her ears, nose, and mouth. Columba of Rieti subsisted solely on the Eucharist. Her biographer insisted she was healthy and extolled "her lovely smell, her failure to sweat, the purity of her fingernails , the strength of her limbs and teeth, and the beauty of her countenance:' Columba failed to menstruate, and water flowed straight through her system. When her body was opened in 1501, "a stream of pure living blood" coursed around her lifeless heart. These women harmed their bodies to conjoin with Christ. "Their blood became a healing effluvium that recapitulated the wounded body of Christ:,22 Late medieval Christians emphasized fasting, suffering pain, bleeding wounds, and reenacting the crucifixion to spiritually fuse with Christ. Regularly performing the Eucharist emblemized this fixation. Early Eucharist rituals had

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involved a simple fare of bread and wine modeled after the Last Supper. The Eucharist honored the humanation of God and Christ's crucifixion. Believers feasted on God's flesh and blood. Consuming God created community. As one Easter hymn voiced, "By drinking his rosy blood, we live with God:' Early theologians did not trouble themselves about how Christ could be present in the bread and wine. However, it became the subject of intense debate between the ninth and twelfth centuries. Most sanctioned literal, physical metaphors. In 1215, the Fourth Lateran Council codified that understanding, ruling, "Jesus Christ himself is both priest and sacrifice, and his body and blood are truly contained under the appearance of bread and wine, the bread being transubstantiated into the body and the wine into the blood by the power of God:' At the instant the priest consecrated the bread and wine, "divinity became flesh, assumed a body:' Every bread morsel and every wine drop literally contained the whole of God. Individuals had visions of God's flesh and blood. Devoted followers saw sanctuary crucifixes ooze blood, as if in atonement for their own sins. During mass, women saw Christ with bleeding wounds. Like many, Catherine of Siena tasted blood when she took the Eucharist . Hadewijch, the Flemish mystic, envisioned herself drinking from a chalice of blood. Jane Mary of Maille believed she sipped blood from the chalice. For the Dutch recluse Beatrice of Nazareth, "the Eucharist bec[a]me a cascade of blood, with which the woman's body .. . unite[d] itself' Blood permeated her spiritual visions. She concentrated on Christ's wounds and "saw that all the blood which flowed from those wounds flooded into her heart .. .so that she was washed perfectly clean:' Others envisioned the bread transfigured into bloody flesh. "The physical presence of Christ insistently forced itself upon the senses of believers, experienced . .. not as a phantasm but as a tangible reality (with firm boundaries), a mortal body of flesh and blood:>23 By the 1200s, adoration of the sacrament had taken hold and the cult of the Eucharist's evolution was underway. The Eucharist became the "central liturgical act;' set apart from rites of baptism, confirmation, and marriage. People longed for and feared consuming God . Some ascetic women subsisted on the Eucharist alone. They were emaciated, and became ecstatic once they ate the bread and wine. Some priests took mercy on them and offered communion on a daily basis. As eucharistic devotion blossomed into a full-blown cult, every segment of the ritual assumed great importance. Should one chew God? What if the bread crumbled? Were bits of God falling to the floor? Thomas Aquinas reassured followers that God was literally and totally present in every sacramental bit, but could not be harmed by their actions. . Containers for the consecrated "host" grew more elaborate. They protected the sacrament and allowed the faithful to view it. Candles lit the viewing area

Sacrifice • 197 to avoid leaving the host in the dark. People longed to behold the sacrament. By the 1100s, priests commonly held the host aloft at the moment of consecration. People clamored for a glimpse at this sacred time. Some went from church to church to view the host. Guild members brought charges against a priest for seating them where they could not see the consecration. The cult of the Eucharist became firmly entrenched after 1264 when the feast of Corpus Christi was institutionalized. Initially some worried that a special festival would lessen reverence for Christ's body at mass. After 131 7, it mushroomed. Soon the host was shown apart from mass in the monstrance, a container allowing the "consecrated wafer" to be displayed. In Corpus Christi processions, priests carried the host and left it "exposed on the altar for adoration:' By the 1400s, some feasts concluded "with the exposition and benediction of the blessed sacrament:' So prolific were such processions, especially in central Europe, that the Eucharist had to be legislated back into the church after 1400. Some worried that overexposure would detract from people's devotion in the long run. Celebrations were restricted to the actual day of Corpus Christi in areas where the host had been most frequently exposed, such as Germany, Public exhibition of the chalice containing Christ's blood did not keep pace with displays of the host. The danger of falling crumbs paled in comparison to the specter of spilling Christ's blood on the ground. In fact, the Catholic Church completely withdrew the rite of drinking God's blood by the late 1200s. Thereafter, it remained the province of priests for some time." By the 1200s, blood became a more complicated symbol. As life itself, blood surged through Christ's body and gushed from his lanced side. Blood spot lighted the violence enacted on God . However, when consumed, it cleansed, healed, and purified. Christ's five wounds were engraved on amulets . Pious followers carried pictures of the wounds. The fixation on Christ's wounds paralleled the treatment of his blood as a relic. After the eleventh century, people searched for remnants of Christ's body and blood. Some wondered if crucifixion blood might have been saved. Rumor had it that people had smuggled small vials containing particles of Christ's blood from Palestine to Europe, where the vials had been protected. Believing them to have healing power, pilgrims worshiped them at shrines. The bleeding, wounded body of Christ, literally present in the Eucharist, symbolized not just God incarnate, redeemer of humankind; it signified God under attack, as he had been by Romans (and Jews). For late medieval Christians, the Eucharist expressed a "sense of the wholeness, the inviolability, of Christ's body, and a tremendous fear of rending and breaking.t" As Christ's bloody wounds connoted attack, so did miraculous bleeding wafers point to assault on the church, particularly by Jews and heretics. After the 1100s, stories of bleeding hosts with malevolent overtones burgeoned. Wafers

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turned to flesh and bled as an indictment to expose their desecration. A nun who had mortally sinned kept a host in her mouth, where it transformed into flesh. A woman saved a wafer for later magical use, but it turned to flesh and adhered to the roof of her mouth. A nun who doubted her worthiness hid the host under her veil. Once in her room , she found a lump of bloody flesh. She confessed her misdeed to the local priest, who took the wafer to his church. There it became in turn, a bloody hand, an arm, the bloody face of a man, a lamb, and then bloody flesh. When apprised of these miracles, the nun's abbess took the wafer to the convent for pilgrims to worship. Bleeding wafers always announced transgressions. Miraculous bleeding hosts announced violations of sacramental protocol and present ed tangible proof that God's flesh and blood literally composed the Eucharist. Improper usage violated Christ's body and the consecrated Eucharist offerings. Heretical skepticism about God's presence in Eucharist offerings was met with stories of wafer and wine turned real. A Walldiirn church priest once spilled the chalice, turning the altar cloth crimson. Within the stain appeared an image of Christ on the cross, encircled by eleven representations of his head . A baker woman tittered and wondered how God's body could really be present when she had baked the bread herself. Father Gregory the Great beseeched God for a portent and received a bleeding finger to rebuke her. Another priest who committed a mortal sin told how the Eucharist transformed into flesh and blood as he tried to conduct mass. When he broke the host, he was petrified to find that "immediately blood began to flow copiously ... and the middle part .. .took on the appearance of flesh and became blood-red:' These were among a plethora of Eucharist blood sightings. For late medieval Christians, the Eucharist "rang with the music of song, glowed with light, dissolved on the tongue into flesh, and announced its presence by sanguine visions. Christ appeared again and again in the host and the chalice, as a baby,a glorious youth, or a bleeding and dying man (i.e. the various manifestations of the incarnate God):'26 Stories of bleeding hosts portrayed Jews in two ways. Either they shared blood visions and saw Christianity's virtue or they attacked the transubstantiated body and blood of Chr ist. Stories of Jews who abused hosts mushroomed in the thirteenth century. The typical trope involved Jews who deceptively obtained a consecrated wafer through a female domestic servant or a debtor. Hosts survived a veritable onslaught of weaponry, whereupon the Jews were executed and a chapel was built to revere the miraculous host. Hymns , verses, and processions proliferated to honor them. In one story, Jews threw the wafer into boiling water, which turned scarlet, overflowed the pot, flooded the house , and burst forth into the street, bearing testimony to the attack wrought on it. Before 1350 the cult of the Eucharist and anti-Semitism went hand in hand. Christians executed many Jews for purportedly harming consecrated hosts."

Sacrifice. 199 By the 1200s, regulations governed the handling of hosts. Wafers had to be round, white, and thin and made of unleavened bread, which better stuck to the tongue . Various synods , such as the Canterbury Council of 1213, elaborated on proper storage. The Eucharist should "be reserved in a clean pyx, and consecrated hosts be kept for seven days, and renewed every week on Sunday:' After they received "newly consecrated" hosts, but before they drank "the Lord's blood;' celebrants were to consume old hosts . People worried that chewing or breaking would hurt God's body. It was also unseemly to imagine God's body being digested or excreted. Only those absolved of sin should receive the Eucharist. Violations would incur leprosy, sickness, or death. In late medieval Europe, substances associated with Christ's body, flesh, and blood were restricted from the masses and reserved for religious privilege and status. Priests scrutinized recipients' "purity" more closely in the Eucharist ritual and prohibited menstruating women from participating. Before long, the laity was completely denied access to the chalice. Priests were elevated in status as God's representatives to their flocks. They alone would drink Christ's blood for the entire congregation. The Church withdrew the chalice from the laity because it was too much "democratization of an extraordinarily potent and complex metaphor: blood:' Bread connoted domesticity and nurturing. Blood much more powerfully symbolized life and death.i" Once excluded, pious women expropriated symbolic blood for personal, spiritual fulfillment in their private visions. For poor Mary of Oignies , "the holy wine inebriated her, rejoicing her mind . .. the vitalizing blood purified her by washing:' Being denied felt like dying, and she found intolerable "her thirst for the vivifying blood:' Devoted women realized through fantasy what was denied in reality. Angela ofFoligno delighted in sucking Christ's wounds when he appeared to her. AIda of Siena licked blood from Christ's side. Sometimes apparitions of Christ bled into chalices. Lutgard, the German mystic, envisioned such a bleeding Christ, "and then she sucked such sweetness with her mouth at his breast that she could feel no tribulation:' Catherine of Siena obsessed about Christ's blood when she was denied it. Calling priests "ministers of the blood:' she was awestruck by their power to control access to the chalice. Catherine thought the pope possessed "the keys of the blood" and called him the "vicar of Christ's blood:' Catherine wrote of her sours craving blood, and shouted "Blood, blood" in her death throes. God and Christ seemed human, and they suffered and nourished." God was incarnated in human form, but Christ's humanity derived solely from Mary's body. Female flesh and blood had redeemed the world. One group of female heretics regarded the Eucharist wafer as part of a womb and associated bleeding hosts with placentas. Medieval intellectuals had inherited the Greco- Roman belief that breast milk derived from, and therefore was, blood. Drinking blood directly connoted lactation. Christ's wounds were breasts

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people nursed. Stigmata usually manifested on women's bodies. Only two men ever exhibited stigmata. The dying Christ shared much with women: blood, flesh, suffering, regeneration, and nurturing" Consuming a humanated god connoted cannibalism. Within a group, cannibalism regenerated by recycling the deceased individual's vitality. When women cannibalized, they even more dramatically symbolized the future prospect of immortality. Deceased men would be reborn through women's bodies as in birth. The living and dead were bound together." Christians predominately made blood-libel accusations against Jews, but also against witches and heretics . Implicit were charges of being "antisocial cannibals" who exterminated rather than regenerated. Jews were targeted for supposedly killing Christ (forget about the Roman soldiers) and dramatizing it annually by murdering a Christian boy and draining and collecting his blood for ritual use. Ritual murder was thought to cluster around Christian religious holidays . The fabricated, formulaic story was told and retold until people internalized it as fact. If they were not killed by angry mobs, Jews were tried, often tortured to extract confessions, and executed . During the late Middle Ages, Christians destroyed more than 100,000 people and more than 150 communities to avenge blood-libel accusations. They justified the persecution of European Jews, which had begun in earnest by the eleventh century. In 1144, one of the earliest blood-libel trials revolved around the disappearance of William, a twelve-year-old Norwich boy. Theobald, a local monk who had converted from Judaism, testified that a Jewish elder murdered him for ritual Passover needs . Only the discovery of the boy's unharmed body averted a pogrom against Jewish residents . Even so, young William, henceforth known as the martyr of Norwich, was elevated to sainthood and worshiped at his church. Lacking evidence of murder did not hinder chroniclers from embellishing fictional details of the supposed Jewish thirst for Christian blood. In their quest to relive Christ's murder, the account proclaimed, "The Jews lacerated [the boy's] head with thorns, cru cified him and pierced his side:' A Latin sketch published in 1173 drove the fiction to even greater sensational extremes. It spoke of "nail-marks in both hands and feet" and a "frightful wound in his left side" and declared that "the murderers were Jews:' They tortured William, and then, "since many streams of blood were running down" his body, "they poured boiling water over him" to close the wounds. So William's body was unblemished because boiling water had healed over the wounds. Devout Christians were obviously prepared to believe anything. After the invented plight of poor William, accusations of blood libel against Jews proliferated. The record of pogroms does not do justice to the grisly charges or the devastation wrought upon Jewish communities. William's fabricated plight loomed large in the collective memory of European Christendom

Sacrifice • 201 and colored future indictments. In 1168, Christians charged that "a boy was secretly taken away by Jews"to be "tortured with immense tortures:' In 1171, a servant in Blois, France, told how "he saw a Jew throw a little Christian child, whom the Jews had killed into the river:' Irate Christians burned alive thirtyone Jews. Hugh of Lincoln's story was widely recounted. In 1255, a notable couple was to be married in the town of Lincoln. Many Jewish people attended. Young Hugh, the son of a laundress, had been missing for several weeks. Villagers found his body in a cesspool after the wedding. Christians alleged that he had been crucified. Locals arrested nearly a hundred Jews and hanged nineteen without a trial. Hugh's body was enshrined at his church, like William's. In 1290, the king of England banished all Jewish people from England. The blood imagery prominent in blood-libel accusations paralleled that of the Eucharist. Christ was often portrayed as a child or a lamb. Lifeless, mutilated boys, drained of their blood, substituted for Christ. The stories frequently mentioned containers used to collect blood. Most often the tales recounted how blood was then mixed into unleavened dough used to make matzo. The connection with the Eucharist wafer was unmistakable. "The Jews. .. were pictured as doing in reality what the Christian worshiper was doing in fantasy": killing and consuming. Late medieval Christians reformulated the story of Christ's murder, substituting Hebrew soldiers for Roman ones. "Crucifixion and bloodshed, and .. . the ritual of the Eucharist (with its motifs of blood and cannibalism), provided the root metaphors for anti-Judaic persecution:' Fabricated accusations of the murder of Christians reminded them of God 's time on the cross. Towns and parishes throughout western Europe commemorated and kept alive images of Jewish ritual murder of Christian children and desecration of the Eucharist. Art, prints, tapestries, stained glass windows, and festivals all rehearsed the details of the formulaic contrivances. Public displays were common. A church in Loddon, England, exhibited a tapestry depicting how a trio of Jews stabbed a child in the torso and stood ready to save his blood in a vessel. In a Iudenstein church near Innsbruck, three evil-looking wooden male sculptures encircled the infant sacrificial victim splayed on a stone. An artistic engraving emblazoned on a Frankfurt city gate portrayed a naked toddler's dead body that a group of Jews had ravaged. That such fabrications wreaked such a heavy toll on Jewish populations testifies to the terrible destructive power of blood imagery in constructing the "blood-sucking Jew:,32 Ecclesiastical insistence on the literal transubstantiation of wafer and wine into the body and blood of Christ to be administered solely by a priesthood of unilineal descendants of the apostles remained at the core of Catholic doctrine until Vatican II, held from 1962 to 1965. While appearing on the surface to adhere to traditionalist theology, Vatican II urged the laity to become more

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active and involved in the liturgy. Although Vatican II insisted that the laity and priesthood "differ from one another in essence and not only in degree:' that essence grew increasingly indefinite. Vatican II employed purposefully ambiguous language in hopes of fostering compromise. Even so, such democratization shook the foundations of a centuries-old, exclusively sacrificing priesthood down to its core. This created a rift where some extended Vatican II reforms as far as possible while others recoiled and clung to what the y thought of as tradition. The most outspoken traditionalist, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, abhorred the desacralization embedded in the Vatican II reforms that undermined the Eucharist's sacrificial nature and the priesthood's exclusive power. Justification for their views could not be found in scripture, so they turned to the Council of Trent (1545 to 1563), which first established the sacrificial priesthood and apostolic succession. Waxing nostalgic about the unique, supernatural role of priests during the Eucharist, the archbishop demonstrated an awareness of the power of sacrifice to structure society such as that of the high priests of ancestor cults. As a priest, he said, "You are marked with the sacerdotal character [that 1unites you to the priesthood of our Lord Jesus Christ . . . which the faithful cannot have At your words Jesus Christ will come personally, physically, substantially under the species of the bread and wine:' Lefebvre was aghast at the notion of altering what was for him a transcendent experience: "The Church is essentially priestly because she offers the redemptive Sacrifice. .. .We cannot transform this Sacrifice into a simple commemorative meal ... at which a memory is recalled. . . . To do such a thing would be to destroy the whole of our Religion:' Lefebvreunderstood that "only a sacrifice that can cause what it signifies can order a social world:' The Vatican countenanced Lefebvre for a long time. As their only bishop , he was pivotal for the traditionalists. But in 1988, when he ordained four likeminded bishops, the Vatican excommunicated the lot of them. Hans Kung, the liberal theologian, was the bane of the traditionalists. He stood out among those who eschewed sacrifice. Sociologist William Dinges described how the liturgical reforms of Vatican II were accomplished by "liturgical experts and scholars who provided both the theological rationale for the reforms and the administrative networking and practical know-how for carrying them out:' But professional experts mark modern, industrial states, not sacrificial hierarchies , as traditionalists quickly pointed out. "The new liturgy was simply not formed by saints, homines religiosi . .. but has been worked out by so-called experts:' Traditionalists were also concerned about the potential ordination of women, which Kung advocated. Long viewed as polluting, the specter of women as participants in the liturgy struck at the core of priestly paranoia. Of this threat, Lefebvrewrote, "Only his consecrated hands had been allowed to touch

Sacrifice • 203 the host-now it can be distributed by teen-aged girls:' Michael Davies used two pamphlet covers to illustrate his fears. He depicted the Tridentine Mass with the priest with his back to the congregation holding the host aloft. An equally active, mini-skirted woman stood alongside the priest , facing forward . Curtains replace the altar. Juxtaposing a sacrificing priesthood with pollutant women carried over into the late twentieth century."

Conclusion Sacrificial blood, controlled by men, competed with women's life blood . Women gave birth through the carnality and corporeality of their bodies to mere mortals. Men gave birth to patrilineages, to humans' relationship with the gods, and sometimes to the gods incarnate. Women of blood, that is, those capable of menstruating or giving birth, were explicitly excluded from the sacrificial realm . They could not perform sacrifices or be present on sacrificial occasions . Though most sacrificial cultures were patrilineal, sacrifice also occurred in matrilineal and bilateral societies. Close attention to the specifics of each cultural context is necessary to make sense of what sacrificer s thought they were doing and what they actually did. When considered in this fashion, the juxtaposition of women's blood of physical creation and men's blood of social and spiritual creation is a recurring, pervasive cross-cultural pattern.

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CHAPTER

7

Conclusion The Patterned Heterogeneity ofBloodSymbols and Rituals

"Human cultures are all related by 'descent' . . . the differences we observe today are the cumulative results of some set of historical diversifying processes ." Coevolutionists seek to discover the genetic and cultural mechanisms that gave rise to the dizzying array of cultural forms historically and in todays world. They focus more on accounting for cultural diversity. My survey of blood symbols and rituals has uncovered a vast cultural pat tern. Women, alone among primates, menstruate. In all likelihood this is a product of gene-culture coevolution or dual inheritance. Interpreting and ritualizing men struation formed the foundation for constructions of reproductive physiology. Many, such as sex strike theorist Chris Knight, believe that a blood ideology lay at the heart of the genesis and elaboration of human culture in the Upper Paleolithic . I believe this ideology involved gendered ideas about women's blood and men's blood . My hypothetical story tells of one of the most far-flung examples of cultural continuity in human history. This is to suggest not homogeneity but patterned heterogeneity. The universality of color perception is a primary human genetic trait. Red holds a striking, emotionally charged place. Humans observed red blood to playa central role in reproductive physiology. This shared commonality continually drew human attention to tr y to explain one of life'sgreatest mysterie s. Every human culture joined in this endeavor as ideologies of reproductive blood diffused, evolved, and transformed in patterned fashion across the globe in tandem with human migrations. Before microscopic understandings of reproductive physiology, blood appeared central to the human life cycle. Menarche preceded conception. After conception, menstrual blood disapp eared for months or even years if a woman 205

206 •

Thicker Than Water

practiced total lactation . So the vast majority of cultures inferred that menstrual blood formed fetuses and then transformed into breast milk. Restrictions surrounding menstruation and childbirth reflected the tension between women's blood and men's blood, or the blood of the hunt. They generally governed both men and women . Most commonly, restrictions separated menstruating or parturient women from men. This was not simply an accident or a result of women's oppression. People thought women's blood had the power to interfere with men's normal funct ioning and other productive activities. Where hunting was important, women's blood needed to be kept apart from men and their accouterments lest it thwart their efforts. This responsibility was not women's alone; both men and women observed restrictions for the well-being of the entire community. Observations about the comings and goings of menstrual blood further emphasized the connection of women's blood with creating life. Matrilineal societies especially revered and celebrated women's life-giving capacities. Fertile women who menstruated and gave birth were dist inguished from prepubescent girls and postmenopausal women, who had roles in ceremonies from which fertile women were excluded. Men often envied women's procreative powers . Men dominated blood rituals that sought to culturally replicate or transcend women's natural generative powers. To do this, they created wounds, much as they had in the hunt. However, they interpreted the ceremonial blood shed as life-giving. Men purposefully manipulated flows of vibrant , red blood in both initiation rites and sacrificial rites to dramatize their own superior life-giving capabilities. Specific cultural meanings varied tremendously, but the generalized pattern holds true. Through circumcision or other initiative bloodletting men gave birth to men or patrilines and simultaneously drained away the influence of their mothers' blood. Through blood sacrifice men cemented relations with the gods and created agnatic patrilineages by accomplishing "birth done better" than women. This inversion correlated most strongly with increasing social stratification and hierarchy. Pollution constructions of women's menstrual blood and the blood of childbirth seem to have accompanied the ascension of patriarchy. The texts of all the world's major religions-Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism-share this emphasis. The justification for restricting women rested on their blood, not their ur ine or feces. Adolescent male circumcision and bloodletting and sacrifice were counterpoised with women's blood and childbirth, respectively. Blood was a core symbol. Blood was pivotal in these ritual complexes because of its perceived centrality especially to women's role in the human reproductive life cycle and its vivid redness . The universality of color perception ensured that any bloodshed would draw humans' attent ion. The amazingly complicated symbolic and

Conclusion • 207 ritual constructions surrounding bloodshed graphically illustrate the human tendency to elaborate cultural forms where the epigenetic rules most favor it. Coevolutionists believe that devising theories of cultural evolution is one of the biggest challenges facing anthropology today. Genetic and cultural determinants of some aspects of human behavior should also be of concern to historians. Scholars have rightly rejected older uniIineal theories of cultural stages beginning with primitive, savage, or barbaric cultures. The profound ethnocentrism of classic anthropologists has given the endeavor a bad name . However, sociobiologists' determinism is surely not the answer. Considering the coevolution of genes and culture can generate new insights that historians have not explored . Accounting for the evolution of cultural diversity is one key objective of coevolutionists. My survey suggests the utility of identifying continuities amidst the diversity. Such coherence might tell us as much about what it means to be human as cultural variance . To synthesize blood rituals, I was dependent on the spotty state of the historic and ethnographic literature. If cultural contextualization for a particular blood ritual was available, I always made use of it. When rituals were not interpreted more holistically, the symbolic and ritualistic treatment of blood still fit into very familiar patterns. I did not invent connections that were not provided, though I pointed out some very suggestive omissions from time to time. My survey is not exhaustive. To impose some manageable limits, I omitted blood symbols and rituals that were peripheral to the reproductive life cycle. However, they are related by the same logic. Therapeutic bloodletting has great longevity, and, at its inception, the ancients explicitly linked it to their perception that menstruation was purifying . Bloodletting mimicked what was perceived as the cleansing function of menstruation, even though it lost that original mooring along the way and became downright deadly.' Mortuary ritual, especially draining blood from corpses, ought to lend insight. However, most studies uncritically relate this to the need to prevent rotting, without questioning why bodies should not rot. They are completely mute on whatever symbolic meaning blood might have had. ' Rituals of "blood brotherhood" sought to establish fictive kinship links through an exchange of agnatic blood." "Blood feuding" avenged wrongdoings according to lineage ties. The tension between women's blood and men's blood still lay at their core. The universality of blood symbols and rituals cannot be rendered as a testable hypothesis because the symbolism accorded to blood has so often been overlooked . In the face of the plethora of examples of blood symbols and rituals, readers will surely wonder whether any cultures did not symbolize blood . I chose to relentlessly ferret out those that did, with great success. Searching for their absence would be an exercise in finding rare exceptions that can have

208 • Thicker Than Water

their moment in a different study. The more important lesson is the immense cross-cultural, cross-temporal patterning. The vast world of blood symbols and rituals centering on constructions of women's blood and men's blood deserves to be spotlighted. In today's world, blood most often connotes lineage, descent, heredity, and race. The language of blood continues to be rampant, making it easy to forget that real blood is red and fluid. Many, many peoples, perhaps more than those who think racially today, have conflated literal red liquidity with the special characteristics of a culture or people. Instead of serving merely as a potent metaphor, the viscous blood flowing through human bodies was believed to convey essential attributes . Hence, blood was extensively symbolized and ritualized more than any other organic substance associated with human physicality.

Notes

Chapter 1 I.

2.

3. 4.

5. 6. 7. 8.

Bernard Seeman, The Riverof Life: The Story of Man'sBlood,from Magic to Science(New York: Norton, 1961); Ashley Montague, Man'sMost DangerousMyth (Cleveland: World Publishing Company, 1964); Ashley Montague, "The Myth of Blood," Psychiatry 6, no. I (1943) : 17; and Nancy B. Jay, Throughout Your Generations Forever: Sacrifice, Religion , and Paternity (Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1992) . Brent Berlin and Paul Kay, Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969); F. Ratliff, "On the Psychophysiological Basis of Universal Color Terms," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 120 (1976): 311-30; Gerald H. Jacobs, Comparative Color Vision (New York: Academic Press, 1981); Rodney Needham, Circumstantial Deliveries (Berkeley: Unive rsity of California Press, 1981); Anna Wierzbicka, "T he Meaning of Color Terms : Semantics, Culture, and Cognition," Cognitive Linguistics 1 (1990) : 99-150; Evan Thompson, Color Vision:A Study in CognitiveScienceand the Philosophy of Perception (London and New York: Routledge, 1995); Clyde L. Hardin and Luisa Maffi , eds., Color Categories in Thought and Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Paul Kay, Brent Berlin, Luisa Maffi , and William Merrifield, "Color Naming across Languages," in ColorCategories, 21-56. Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Conceptsof Pollutionand Taboo (New York: Praeger, 1966), 115. Seeman, River of Life, 26,66. Sheila Cosminsky, "Childbirth and Change: A Guatemalan Study," in Ethnographyof Fertility and Birth, ed. Carol P. MacCormack (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1994), 195. Karen Ericksen Paige and Jeffery M. Paige, The Politics of Reproductive Ritual (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), 1-42. Maureen Trudelle Schwarz , Molded in the Image of Changing Woman: Navajo Views on the Human Body and Personhood(Tucson : University of Ar izona Press, 1997), 6. Emile Durkheim, "La Prohibition de l'inceste et ses origines," L'Annee Sociologique I (1897) : 1- 79; William Stephens, The Oedipus Complex: Cross-Cultural Evidence (New York: Free Press, 1962); Frank Young and Alfred Bacdayan, "Menstrual Taboos and Social Rigidity," Ethnology 4 (1965) : 225-40 ; Douglas, Purity and Danger; and Paula Weideger, Menstruation and Menopause: The Physiology and Psychology, the Myth and the Reality (New York: Delta, 1977).

Reo Fortune, Sorcerers of Dobu (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1932); Edward E. Evans -Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic among the Azande (Oxford : Clarendon, 1937); and John Midd leton and Edward Wint er, Witchcraft and Sorceryin East Africa (New York: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1963). 10. Quoted material from Michel Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception, trans . A.M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Vintage Books, 1973); Michel Foucau lt, The History of Sexuality (New York: Vintage Books, 1978); Schwarz, Molded in the Image of 9.

Changing Woman, 7-8. II.

Schwarz, Molded in the Image of Changing Woman, 4.

209

210. Notes to Chapter I 12.

13.

14.

15. 16.

17. 18. 19.

20.

21. 22.

23. 24.

Jane F. Collier and Michelle Z. Rosaldo, "Politics and Gender in Simple Societie s," in Sexual Meanings: Th e Cult ural Construction of Gender and Sexuality, ed. Sherr y B. Ortner and Harriet. Whitehead (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 311: Aletta Biersack , "Bound Blood: Palela 'Conception' Theory Interpreted ," Mankind 14 (1983): 85-100: Anna S. Yeatman, "Introduction: Gend er and Social Life," Social Analysis 15 (1984): 3-10: and Marilyn Strathern, ed., Dealing with Inequality: Analyzing Gender Relations in Melanesia and Beyond (New York: Cambridge University Press , 1987). Walter E.A. Van Beek, "Becoming Human in Dogon, Mali ," in Coming into Ex istence: Birth and Metaphors ofBirth , ed . Goran Aijmer (Goteborg, Sweden: Institute for Advanced Studi es in Social Anthropology, 1992),67. Fitz John Porter Poole, "The Ritual Forging of Identity: Aspects of Person and Self in Bimin Kuskusmin Male Initiation," in Rituals of Manhood: Male Initiation in Papua New Guinea, ed . Gilbert H. Herdt (Berkeley: Un iversity of California Press , 1982), 105. Marten Stol, Birth in Babylonia and the Bible: Its Mediterranean Setting (Groningen, the Netherlands: STYX Publications, 2000) , 78, 82, 109. James Mooney, "Myths of th e Cherokee," in N ineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office , 1900), 255-56: James Adair, Adair's History of the American Indians, 1775, ed. Samuel Cole Williams (New York: Argonaut Press, 1966), 124, 140: Ruth M. Underhill, Red Man's Religion: Beliefs and Practices of the Indians North of Mexico (Chicago : Univer sity of Chicago Pres s, 1965),42 : Charles Hudson, Th e South eastern Indian s (Knox ville: University of Tennessee Press, 1976), 72: Theda Perdue, Cheroke e Wom en : Gender and Culture Chan ge, /700-1835 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998),28-37: and Gregory Evans Dowd , A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity , /745-1815 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992),4-6. Nancy Rose Hunt, A Colonial Lexicon of Birth Ritual, Medicalization, and Mobility in the Congo (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999),223. Seeman , River ofLife, 26-28: Dougla s Starr, Blood :An Epic History ofMedicine and Com me rce (New York: Knopf, 1998), xii. Starr, Blood, xii ; Seeman, River of Life, 51-76 : David Meltz er, ed., Birth : An Anthology of Ancient Texts, Songs, Prayers, and Stor ies (San Francisco: North Point Press , 1981), 138; First quotation from James Hobson Aveling, English Midwives: Their History and Prospect (1872: repr ., London: Elliott , (967); Morris Braud e, Life Begins : Ch ildbirth in Lore and Its Literature (Chicago; Argus Books, 1935): Second and third quotations from Hunt, A Colonial Lexicon, 97, 103: and fourth quotation from Jennifer W. Nourse, Conceiving Spirits: Birth Rituals and Cont ested Identities among l.auj e of Indonesia (Washington, DC : Smithsonian Institution Press, 1999), 114-17. First quotation from E.A. Gaer, "Traditional Customs and Rituals of the Nanai in the Late Ninet eenth and Early Twentieth Centuries," Anthropology and Arch eology of Eurasia 31 (1992-93): 40 : Second quotation from the Bible, an Am erican translation, the Old Testament translated bya group of scholars und er the editorsh ip of I, M. Powis Smith : the New Testament translated by Edgar J. Goodspeed . (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, cI931), Lev. 17:13-14; Third quotation from the Bible, Acts 15:27: Fourth quotation from Al Koran , Sura : 16: Seeman, River ofLife, 35-37; and Starr, Blood, xii. Seeman, River ofLife, 38-39. Michel e Klein, A Tim e to Be Born : Customs and Folklore of Jewish Birth (Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Societ y, 1998), 105: First quotation from Melt zer, Birth , 112: Second quotation from Melville Herskovits, Life in a Haitian Valley (New York and London: Knopf, 1937): and Third quotation from Hunt, A Colonial Lexicon , 7. Nourse, Conceiving Spirits, 98. Quoted material from Uli Linke, Blood and Nation: The European Aesthetics of Race (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 55-62: Reinhard Bendix, Kings or People (Berkeley: Univer sity of California Press, 1978), 23-25 : Jan de Vries, The Study of Religion, trans . R.W. Bolle (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1967): Maurice Bloch, Feudal Society (Chicago: Universit y of Chicago Press, 1961), 123-24, 137-38 : C.H. Bell, "The Call of Blood in th e Medieval German Epic," Modern Language Notes 37 (1922): 1726: Geza Roheirn , War, Crime, and the Covenant (Monticello, NY: Medical Journal Press, 1945), 17; Mary Bouquet, "Family Trees and Th eir Affinities: The Visual Imperative of the Genealogical Diagram," Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, n.s., 2 (1996): 43 -66:

Notes to Chapter 1 • 211 Eleanor Simmons Gr eenhill, "The Ch ild in th e Tree ," Traditio 10 (1954): 323- 7 1; Jack R. Goody, Th e De velopment of th e Family and Marriage in Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni versit y Pre ss, 1983),273; and D. Gifford-Gonza lez, "You Can Hid e, but You Ca n't Run : Repr esentations of Women 's Work in Illustrations of Paleol ithic Life," Visual A nthropo logy Revi ew 9 (1993): 23-2 4. 25. Victor Turn er, T he Forest of Symbols: A spects of Ndem bu Ritual (Ithaca, NY: Corn ell University Press, 1967), 88; Raymond Firth, Sy m bols: Publi c and Privat e (Ithaca, NY: Corn ell University Press , 1973), 59,69,85-86; Henry Clay Trumbull, The Blood Covenant: A Prim itive Rit e and Its Bearing on Scrip ture (New York: Scribner, 1885); Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown , The Andaman Islanders (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1948); First qu otation from Edward Tregear, The Maori-Polyn esian Compa rative Dict ionary (Oo sterhout, N.B., th e Netherla nds: An t hropological Publications 24,1969),557; Edward Shor tland, Tradition s and Superstitions of th e Ne w Ze alanders (Christchu rch : Capper Press , 1986), 101; and Second and third quot ations fro m Robert Briffaul t, Th e M oth ers: A Study of th e Origin s ofSen time nts and In stitutions (New York: Macmillan, 1927), vol. 2, 412-13. 26. Charles James Forb es Smith- Forbe s, British Burma and Its People (London: J. Murray, 1878), 295; James Sibree, The Great Af rican Island: Madaga scar (London : Trubner, 1880), 305; Henry Hope Risley, Tribes and Cas tes of Bengal (Calcutta: printed at the Bengal Secretariat Pre ss, 1892), vol. 1, 243; vol. 2, 222 , 263 ; Sarat Chand ra Roy, The Oraon s of Chot« Nagp ur (Ran chi : publi shed by th e aut hor at th e Bar Library, 1915), 338; John Roscoe, The Bakitara or Banyoro (The First Part of th e Repor t of th e Ma ckie Ethnological Ex pedition to Central Africa) (Cambridge, UK: Un iversit y Pre ss), 108; J. Merolla da Sor rento, "A Voyage to Congo a nd Several Other Count ries," in A General Collectio n of the Best and Most Int erestin g Voyages and Travels in All Parts of th e World; Many of Whi ch Are No w First Tran slat ed into English, ed. John Pink erton (London: Longm an , Hurst, Rees, and Orrne, 1808-14) , vol. 16, 273; Waldemar Bogoras , The Ch ukchee (Publications of the Jesup North Pacifi c Expedition, Vol. 7) (Leiden : E.J. Brill ; New York: G.E. Stechert, 1904) ,361 ; and Briffault, T he Mothers, 415. 27. Ma rja-Liisa Swa ntz, Blood, M ilk , and Death : Body Symbols and th e Power of Regeneration among th e Za ram o of Tanz ania (Westport, CT: Bergin and Ga rvey, 1995), 70,73; Ma ry M. Ca mero n, On th e Edge of the Auspicious: Gender and Cas te in Nepal (Chic ago: Un iversity of Illin ois Press, 1998),236 - 37; Schwarz, Molded in th e Ima ge of Changing Wom an , 129, 174; Alan G. Waxm an , "Navajo Childbir th in Tra nsition," Medical Anthropology 12 (1990) : 190; Walter Baldwin Spencer and F.J. Gillen, The Native Tribes of Central Au strali a (London: Macmill an, 1899), 472; James Dawson , A ustralian A borigines, the Languages and Cust oms of Severa l Tribes of Ab origin es in th e Western Distr ict of Victoria. A us tralia (Melbourne : G. Robertson , 1881); Rose Montei ro, Delagoa Bay, Its Natives and Na tural H istory (London: G. Phillip, 1891),79 ; and Briffaul t, The Mothers, 414. 28. Material quot ed in fir st par agr aph from Jacque s Gelis, History of Ch ildbirth : Fertility, Pregnan cy and Birth in Early Mod ern Europe, t rans. Rosemary Morris (Cambridge: Polit y, 1991), 10-11 ; Remaining quoted mat eri al from Linke , Blood and Na tion, 40-54; Hilderic Friend, Flowers and Flower Lore (New York: John B. Alden, 1889); Hild eric Friend, Flo wers and Flower Lore (New York: Columbia n Publi shing, 1891); Gail Kligma n, The Wedding of th e Dead (Berkeley: Uni versity of California Press, 1988), 102-105; Wendy Don inge r O' Flah erty, Wom en, Androgyn es. and Oth er Mythical Beasts (Chic ago: University of Chicago Press, 180), 345; Janice Delane y, Mar y Jane Lupton, a nd Emily Toth, The Curse: A Cultural Hist ory of Men st ruation (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1976), 130, 149 ; and Keith Spald ing, An Historical Dictionary of Germa n Figurative Usage (Oxford : Basil Blackwell, 1957), vol. 2, 355- 56. 29. Quoted material from Cam eron , On th e Edge of the Auspiciou s, 236 -3 7; Indra Sinh a, T he Great Book ofTantra : Translations and Im agesf rom th e Class ic Ind ian Texts w ith Com me nta ry (Roche ster, VT: Destiny Book s, 1993); Richard Swiderski, Blood Weddings: Th e Kn an aya Christia ns of Kerala (Madras: New Era Publication s, 1988),23, 149; Edwa rd Tuite Dalt on , Descrip tiv e Ethnology of Bengal (Ca lcutta , India: Offi ce of the Super intendent of Govern me nt Printing, 1872), 131, 160, 216, 220, 252, 273,3 17, 321; Willi am Crooke, Th e Pop ular Religion and Folk -lore of No rthern Ind ia (Westminster: A. Constable, 1896) , vol. 2, 29; L.S.S. O'M all ey, "Bengal, Bihar and Ori ssa and Sikkim," in Censu s of India, 1911 (Calcutta, Ind ia: Supe ri ntendent Govern ment Pr inting, 1913), vol. 5,320; John Henry Gray, Chi na: A Histo ry of th e Laws, Manners, and Custo ms of th e People (London: Macmillan, 1878), vol. 1,200, 204 ; Waldemar Jochel son , The Yuk agh ir and the Yukaghirized Tungu s (Publication s of th e Jesup

212. Notes to Chapter 1

30. 31.

32.

33.

34. 35.

36.

North Pacific Expedition} (Leide n: E.j. Brill ; and New York: G.E. Stech ert , 1910), vol. 9, pt . 1, 94; Ma rie Antoinett e Czaplicka, Aboriginal Siberia (Oxford: Clarendon, 1914), 84; "Memoirs of the Malay," Journ al of the Ind ian Archipelago 2 (1848): 359; Henry Hamilton johnston, George Grenfe ll and the Congo (London: Hutchinson, 1908),679; and Briffault, The Mothers, 414-15 . Quoted mat eria l from Klein, A Tim e to Be Born , 33- 34, 92; and Schwarz, Mo lded in the Image ofChanging Woman, 95. William R. Halliday, Greek and Roman Folklore (New York: Cooper Square, 1963), 33; Melt zer, Birth , 58, 191; Migene Gonz ales-Wippler, Sant eria: African Magic in Latin America (New York: julian Press, 1973); Bruce Lincoln, "T he Rape of Persephone," in Em erging from the Chrysalis: Studies in Rituals of Wom en's In itiation , ed . Bruce Lincoln (Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Pres s, 1981), 85; Quoted material from Sylveste r Ntomochukwu Madu and Oluyinka Adejumo, "Nigerian Yoruba Trad itiona l Birth Attendants' Intervention Techn iques Du ring No rmal Childbirth," African Notes 15 (1991): 119-26; and joh n R. Swanton, "Social Condition, Beliefs and Lingu istic Relationship of the Tl ingit Indians," Twenty-sixth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology (Wash ington, DC : U.S. Government Printi ng Office , 1908),429. Quoted material from Hun t, A Colonial Lexi con , 74,97, 109-10 ; Ma nis Kumar Raha, "Birth and Infancy Rites among th e Rabha s,' Bulletin of the Cultural Research Institute 14 (1980): 108; Morris Edward Op ler, "Child hood and Youth in jicarilla Apache Societ y," Publication s of the Frederick Webb Hodge Society Publication Fund 5 (Los Angeles: Southwest Muse um ! Adm inistrator of the Fund, 1946); Klein , A Tim e to Be Born, 101; Ann Warren Turner, Rituals of Birth : From Prehistory to the Present (New York: David McKay, 1978), 13; and Issachar Ben-Ami, "Customs of Pregn anc y and Childbirth among Sephardic and Oriental jews," in New Horizons in Sephardic Studies, ed . Yedida K. Stillman and George K. Zucker (Albany: State Universit y of New York Press, 1993),260. M. Hinrich Lichtenstein, Travels in South ern Afri ca in the Years 1803, 1804, 1805 and 1806 (Cape Town : Van Riebeeck Society, 1812- 15), vol. 1,25 1; Dudley Kidd, Savage Childhood: A StudyofKafir Children (London: A. and C. Black, 1906),31 ; Georg Schweinfurth, The Heart of Africa: Three Years' Travels and Adventures in the Unexplored Regions ofCentral Africa, from 1868 to 1871 (London : Harper, 1874), vol. 2,106; james Frederick Cunningham, Uganda and Its Peoples: Notes on the Protectorat e of Uganda, Especially the Anthropology and Eth nology of Its Indigenous Races (London : Hutchin son , 1905),354; Paul B. Du Chaillu, Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa (Paris: M. Levy Freres , 1863), 109; Samue l White Baker, The Albert N 'yanza, and Explorations of the N ile Sources (London: Macmillan, 1885), vol. 1, 309; Ludwig von Hohnel, Discovery ofLake s Rudolfand Stefanic (Londo n: Longmans, Green, 1894), vol. 1, 102; Plin y, the elder, Th e Histori e of the World: Commonly Called , the Naturall Historie of C. Plinivs Secvndvs, trans . Philemon Holland (London: A. Islip, 1634), 36, 38; Hero dotus, Historiae, ed . Carolus Hude (Oxonii: E Typographeo Clarendoniano, 1912), vol. 4,191 ; vol. 7,69; E.A.T. Wallis Budge, Osir is and the Egyptian Resurrection (New York: Medici Societ y, 1911), vol. 2, 257; and Briffault , The Mothers, 415. Spencer and Gillen , The Native Tribes, 144, 184,28 1,284,370 ,463; and Briffault, The Mothers, 416-17. Turner, Forest of Symbols, 88; Seeman, River of Life, 26-30; Klein, A Time to Be Born, 101; Swant z, Blood, Milk, and Death, 70, 73; Quoted material from Hunt, A Colonia l Lex icon, 74, 97, 109-10; Dalton, Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal , 115,270,272; Edward john Payne, Hist ory of the Ne w World Called America (Oxford : Clarendon, 1892-99), vol. 1, 394; Mary Kingsley, Travels in West Africa (London and New York: Macmillan, 1897), 454 ; Edwin Herbert Gome s, Seventeen Years among the Sea Dyak s of Borneo (London: Seeley, 1911),201; Exodus xi:13, 16;and Numbers iii:13, viii :17. Quoted mat erial from Erns t E. 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Notes to Chapters 1 and 2 • 213 37. Ian Brown, "The Calumet Ceremon y in the Southeast and Its Archaeological Manifestations," American Antiquity 54 (1989): 313; Robert L. Hall, "The Evolution of the Calumet-Pipe," in Prairie A rchaeology: Papers in Honor of David A . Baerris, ed. Guy Gibbon (Minneapolis: Department of Anthropology, University of Minnesota, 1983), University of Minnesota Publications in Anthropology #3; and Robert Hall, "Calumet Ceremonialism, Mourning Ritual, and Mechanisms of Inter-tribal Trade," in Mirror and Metaphor: Ma terial and Social Construction of Reality, ed. Daniel Ingersoll Jr. and Gordon Bronit sky (Lanham, MD: University Press of Ame rica , 1987), 31-42. 38. Seeman, Th e River ofLife; and Jean-Paul Roux, Le Sang: Mythes, Symboles et Realites (Paris : Fayard,1988). 39. William H. Durham, "The Coevolution of Human Biologyand Culture," in Human Behaviour and Adaptation, ed. V. Reynolds and N. Blurton Jones (London: Academic Press, 1978); Charles J. Lumsden and Edward O. Wilson , "Translation of Epigenetic Rules of Individual Behavior into Ethnographic Patterns," Proceedings of the National Academy ofScience 77, no. 7 (1980): 4382-86; Luigi L. Cavalli -Sforza and Marcus W. Feldman, Cultural Transmissi on and Evolution: A Quantitative Approach (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981); Charles J. Lumsden and Edward O. Wilson, Genes, Mind, and Culture: The Coevolutionary Process (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981); Peter J. Richerson and Robert Boyd, "Natural Selection and Culture," BioScience 34 (1984): 430-34; John Merritt Emlen, The Coevolution ofPopulat ion Dynamics and Behavior (New York: Macmillan, 1984); Robert Boyd and Peter J. Richerson , Culture and the Evolutionary Process (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985); Luigi L. Cavalli-Sforza, "Cultural Evolution," American Zoologist 26 (1986): 845-55; Luigi L. Cavalli-Sforza, "Reconstruction of Human Evolution: Bringing Together Genetic, Archeological, and Linguistic Data," Proceedings ofthe National Academy ofSciences 85 (1988): 6002-6006; J. Toobyand L. Cosmides, "Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture, (Part I) ," Ethnology and Sociobiology 10 (1989): 29-49; Pascal Boyer, Tradit ion as Truth and Communication : A Cognitive Descript ion of Traditional Discour se (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); William H. Durham, Coevolution: Genes, Culture, and Human Diversity (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1991); Marcus W. Feldman and Lev A. Zhivotovsky, "Gene-Culture Coevolution: Toward a General Theory of Vertical Transmission," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States 89 (December 15, 1992): 11935-11939; Pascal Boyer, The Naturalness of Religious Ideas: A Cognitive Theory of Religion (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); Terrence W. Deacon, The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain (New York: Norton, 1997); Leslie Paul Thiele , Environmentalism for a New Millennium : The Challenge of Coevolution (New York: Oxford Universit y Press, 1999); and Michael Horace Barnes, Stages of Thought: The Co-evolution ofReligious Thought and Science (New York: Oxford Universit y Press, 2000).

Chapter 2 Donna Haraway, Primate Visions : Gend er, Race and Nature in the World of Modern Science (New York: Routledge , 1989); and Jonathan Marks, What It Mean s to Be 98% Chimpanzee: Apes, People and Their Genes (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002). 2. Charles Darwin, On the Origin ofSpecies (London :Murray, 1859);Charles Darwin, The Descent ofMan , and Selection in Relation to Sex (London : Murray, 1871);Karl Marx, "Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts," in Karl Marx: Early Writings, ed. Tom B. Bottomore (London : Watts , 1963 [1844]); Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo: Some Point s of Agreement between the Lives of Savages and Neurotics (London: Routledge, 1965 [1913]); Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1966); Robin Fox, "In the Beginning: Aspect s of Hominid Behavioral Evolution," Man, n.s., 2 (1967): 420; Robin Fox, Encounter with Anthropology (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973), 52-55; Lionel Tiger and Robin Fox, The Imperial Animal (New York: Holt, 1989), 43-44; Desmond Morris, The Naked Ape Trilogy (London: Cape, 1967); Robert Ardrey, The Territorial Imperative (London: Collin s, 1969); and quoted material from Marshall Sahlins, The Use and Abuse ofBiology: An Anthropological Critique of Sociobiology (London : Tavistock, 1977), 100. 3. Third quotation from Jane Goodall, The Chimpanzees of Gombe : Patterns of Behavior (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1986),299-312,484; Shirley 1.

214. Notes to Chapter 2

4.

5.

6.

C. Strum, Almost Human: A Journ ey into th e Wo rld of Baboons (London: Elm Tree Books, 1987); Claude Marc el Hladik, "Ecology, Diet, and Social Patterning in Old and New World Primat es," in Socioecology and Psychology of Primates, ed. Russell H. Tuttle (The Hague: Mouton, 1975), 26 ; Frances Dahlberg, "Introduction," in Woman the Gath erer, ed . Frances Dahlberg (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press , (981) ; Robert S.O. Harding, "Meat-eating and Hunting in Baboons," in Socioecology and Psychology of Primates, 249,256; Christophe Boesch and Hans Boesch , "Hu nting Behavior of Wild Chimpanzees in the Tai National Park," American Journal of Physical Anthropology 78 (1989) : 547-75; Christophe Boesch , "First Hunters of the Forest," Ne w Scientist 125 (1990) : 1717; First quotation from Glynn Ll. Isaac , "The Food-Sha ring Behavior of Proto -Human Hominids," Scientific American (April 1978); Second quotation from Nicholas G. Blurton-lones, "A Selfish Origin for Human Food Sharing: Tolerated Th eft," Ethology and Psychobiology (1984): 1-3; Hans Kummer, Primate Societies: Group Techniques of Ecological Adaptation (Chicago: Aldine Atherton, (971),59; A. Suzuki, "The Origin of Hominid Hunting: A Primatological Perspective," in Socioecology and Psychology of Primates, 262 -66; William C. McGrew, "Evolutionary Implications of Sex Differences in Chimpanzee Predation and Tool Use," in The Great Apes: Perspectives in Human Evolution , ed. David A. Hamburg and Elizab eth R. McCown (Menlo Park, CA: Benjamin /Cummings, 1979),441-64; William C. McGrew, "The Female Chimpanzee as a Human Evolutionary Prototype," in Woman the Gatherer, 58; Shirley C. Strum, "Processes and Products of Change: Baboon Predatory Behavior at Gilgil , Kenya," in Omnivorous Primates: Hunting and Gath ering in Human Evolution, ed. Geza Teleki and Robert S.O. Harding (New York: Columbia Univ er sit y Press, (981), 131, 276; and Randall L. Susman, "Pygmy Chimpanzees and Common C himpanz ees: Models for the Behavioral Ecology of the Earliest Horninids," in The Evolution ofHuman Behavior: Primate Models, ed . Warren G. Kin zey (Albany: State Universit y of New York Press , 1987),81 -82 . Glynn Ll. Isaac, "The Diet of Early Man: Aspects of Archaeological Evid ence from Lower and Middle Pleistocene Sites in Africa," World Archaeology 21 (1971): 278-99; Glynn Ll. Isaac and Diana Crad er, "To What Extent Were Early Hominids Carnivorous? An Archaeological Perspective," in Omnivorous Primates, 37-103; Glynn Ll. Isaac , "Aspects of Human Evolution," in Evolution from Molecules to Men, ed . D.S. Bendall (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni versity Press, 1983),509 -4 5; Nancy Makepi ece Tanner, On Becoming Human (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni versity Pres s, (981) ; Nanc y Makepiece Tanner, "Gathering by Females: The Chimpanzee Model Revisited and the Gathering Hypothesis," in The Evolution of Human Behavior, 3-27; Owen Lovejoy, "The Origin of Man," Science 21 I (1981): 341-50; Kim Hill, "Hunting and Human Evolution," Journal of Human Evolution II (1982): 521-44; and Sue Taylor Parker, "A Sexual Selection Model for Hominid Evolution," Human Evolution 2 (1987) : 235 -53. Robin Dunbar, Primate Social Systems (London and Sydney: Croom Helm, 1988), 292 322 ; First quotation from Richard Pott s, Early Hominid Activities at Olduvai (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1988), 249 ; lrven Devore, "The Evolution of Social Life," in Horizons of Anthropology, ed. Sol Tax (l.ondon: Allen and Unwin, (965),25 -36; Linda M. Fedigan, "The Changing Role of Women in Mod els of Human Evolution," Annual Review of Anthropology 15 (1986): 25 -66; Brian Hayden et al., "Ecological Determinants of Women's Status among Hunter/Gatherers," Human Evolution I (1986) : 449 -74; Lewis R. Binford "Willow Smoke and Dogs ' Tails : Hunter-Gatherer Settlement Systems and Archaeological Site Formation," American Antiquity 45 (1980): 4-20; Lewis Binford, In Pursuit of the Past: Decoding the Archaeological Record (l.ondon : Thames and Hud son, 1983), 130; K.P. Oakley, "Use of Fire by Neanderthal Man and Hi s Precursors," in Hundert Jahre Neanderthaler, ed. Gustav H .R. Von Koenig swald (K6In: Bohlau-Verlag, 1956), 267-70; John Wym er, The Paleolithic Age (London and Sydney: Croom Helm , 1982); Steven R. Jame s, "Hom in id Use of Fire in the Lower and Middle Pleistocene," Current Anthropology 30 (1989): 1-26; and second quotation from Chris Knight, Blood Relations: M enstruation and the Orig in s of Culture (New Haven , CT: Yale University Press, 1991), 196. Second quotation from Sherwood L. Washburn and David A. Hamburg, "Aggressive Behavior in Old World Monkeys and Apes," in Primate Patt erns, ed. Phyllis Dolhinow (New York: Holt, 1972),277; First quotation from Edmund O. Wilson, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ ersity Press, 1975),547-48; Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, The Woman That Never Evolved (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, (981), 156; Caroline E.G. Tutin and William C. McGrew, "Ch impa nzee Copulatory Behavior," Folia Primatologica 19

Notes to Chapter 2 • 215 (1973): 237-56; Richard W. Wrangham, "Sex Differences in Chimpanzee Dispersion," in The Great Apes: Perspectives in Human Evolution, 481-90; Richard D. Alexander and Katherine M. Noonan, "Concealment of Ovulation, Parental Care, and Human Social Evolution," in Evolutionary Biologyand Human Social Behavior, ed. Napoleon Chagnon and William Irons (North Scituate, MA: Duxbury Press, 1979),436-53; Robin LM. Dunbar, "Deter minants and Evolutionary Consequences of Dominance among Female Gelada Baboons," Behavioural Ecology and Sociobiology 7 (1980): 253-65; Caroline E.G. Tutin and Patrick R. McGinnis, "Ch impanzee Reproduction in the Wild ," in Reproductive Biology of the Great Apes: Comparative and Biomedical Perspectives, ed. Charles E. Graham (New York: Academic Press, 1981),239-64; Charles E. Graham , "Menstrual Cycle Physiology of the Great Apes," in Reproductive Biology of the Great Apes, 286-383; Goodall, Chimpanzees of Gombe, 44387; Alan F. 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216. Notes to Chapter 2 "Olfactory Influences on the Human Menstrual Cycle," Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior 13 (1980) : 737-38; R.L. Doty, "Olfactory Commu nication in Humans-A Review," Chemical Senses and Flavor 6 (1981): 351-76; Winnifred B. Cutler et al., "Human Axillary Secretions Influence Women' s Menstrual Cycles: The Role of Donor Extract from Men," Hormones and Behavior 20 (1986) : 463-73; G. Pr eti et al., "Human Axillary Secretions Influence Women 's Menstrual Cycles: The Role of Donor Extract from Women," Hormones and Behavior20 (1986) : 474-82; H.C. Wilson, "Female Axillary Secretions Influence Women's Menstrual Cycles: A Critique," Hormones and Behavior 21 (1987) : 536-46; C.H . Doehring et al., "A Cycle of Plasma Testosterone in the Human Male," Journalof ClinicalEndocrinology and Metabolism 40 (1975): 492 - 500; Harold Persk y et al., "Reprod uctive Hormone Levels and Sexual Behaviors of Young Couples during the Menstrual Cycle," in Progress in Sexology, ed. Robert Gemme and Connie C. Wheeler (New York: Plenum, 1977), 293-310 ; M.E. Henderson, "Evidence for a Male Menstrual Temperature Cycle and Synchrony with Female Men strual Cycle," New Zealand Medical Journal 84 (1976): 164; and RudolfF. Vollman, The Menstrual Cycle (New York: Knopf, 1977). 9. Donald C. Johansen and Maitland A. Edey, Lucy: The Beginning of Humank ind (St. Albans, Herts: Granada, 1981); L.P. Lalumiere, "The Evolution of Human Bipedalism," Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 292 (1982): 103-107; Neil Roberts, "Pleistocene Environments in Time and Space," in Hominid Evolutionand Community Ecology: Prehistoric Human Adaptation in Biological Perspective, ed. Robert Foley (London: Academic Press, 1984),25-54; Robert Foley, Anoth er Unique Species: Patterns in Human Evolutionary Ecology (Harlow: Longman, 1987), 10, 110-17; and Richard Potts, EarlyHominid Activities at Olduvai (New York: Aidine de Gruyter, 1988). 10. Paul W. Turke, "Effects of Ovulatory Concealment and Synchrony on Protohominid Mating Systems and Parental Roles," Ethology and Sociobiology 5 (1984): 33-44; N. Knowlton, "Reproductive Synchrony, Parental Investment and the Evolutionary Dynamics of Sexual Selection," Animal Behavior 27 (1979) : 1022-33; Hrdy, The Woman That Never Evolved; Lovejoy, "The Origin of Man"; and Hill, "Hunting and Human Evolution." 11. Hans Kummer, Social Organization of Hamadryas Baboons (Basle: Karger, 1968); and Sarah Blaffer Hrdy and Patricia L. Whitten , "Patterning of Sexual Activity," in Primate Societies, 370-84. 12. Turke, "Effects of Ovulatory Concealment"; and Lovejoy, "T he Origin of Man ." 13. Katharine Milton, "The Role of Food -Processing Factors in Primate Food Choice," in

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14.

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Notes to Chapter 2 • 219

20.

21.

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Rattray, Ashanti Law and Institutions (O xford : Oxford Un iversity Press, 1929), 303 ; Isaac Schapera , Th e Khoisan Peoples of Sou th Africa: Bu shm en and Hottento ts (London : Rout ledge, 1930),98-99, 306 ; Victor W. Turner, Schism and Continuity in an African Society: A Study in Ndembu Village Life (M an che ster : Man chester Univer sit y Press, 1957), 14 1, 252; Lorn a Marshall, "Sharing, Talking, and Giving: Relief of Socia l Tensions am ong King Bushmen ," Africa 39 (1961): 236 - 38; Edward Evan Eva ns -Pritc ha rd, Man and Woman among th e Azande (London : Faber and Faber, 1974), 58. 31. Geo rge Taplin, Th e Folklore, Manil ers, Cus toms, and Langua ges of the South Australian Aborigines, Gath ered from Inquiries Made by Authority of South Au stralian Government (Adelaide: E. Spiller, Acting Government Printer , 1879), 52; Lorimer Fison and Alfred W. Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kurn ai (Melbourne: George Rob ertson, 1880), 261-63 ; james Dawson, Au stralian Aborigines (Melbo urne: Robertson , 1881), 22-23 ; Baldwi n Spencer and Francis L Gillen , The Na tive Trib es of Central A us tralia (London: Macm illan, 1899), 204 -206; Robert H . Mathews, "Et h nologica l Note s on t he Abor iginal Tribes of New South Wa les and Victoria ," Royal Society of Ne w South Wales, Journal and Proceedin gs 38 (1904) : 203 -381 ; Baldwin Spen cer and Franci s j. Gi llen, The Northern Tribes of Central A us tralia (London : Macmillan , 1904),226; Ron ald M. Berndt, "Wuradjeri Magic and 'Clever' Men ," Oceania 17, par ts I and 2 (1947): 77, 353; W. Lloyd Warner, A Black Civilization (New York: Harper, 1957), 128; jan e C. Gooda le, "T he T iwi Wom en of Melvi lle Island , Au stralia" (Ph . D. di ss., University of Pennsylvania, 1959; An n Arbor: Univ er sit y Microfilms Internat ional , 1959), 122-23; Alfr ed R. Radcliffe-Brown, Method in Socia l Anth ropology (Bombay: Asia Publishing Ho use, 1960) , 96 ; Claud e Levi-St rauss , Th e Savage Mind (1962; repr., London: Weidenfeld and Nicol son , 1966): 226 ; Roland Robinson, A boriginal Myth s and Legends (Melbourne: Sun Book s, (966), 117- 20, 162-63; Richard A. Gou ld, Yiwara : Foragers of the Australian Desert (London and Sydn ey: Collins, 1969), 17; Catherin e H . Berndt a nd Rona ld M. Berndt, Man , Land and Myth in North Aust ralia (Syd ney: Ure Smit h, 1970),44; Aram A. Yengoyan , "Pitjandjara of Australia," Hum an Relations Area Files (New Haven , CT: Yale

Notes to Chapter 2 • 223

32.

33.

34.

35.

Univers ity Press, 1972), 91; Geza Roheim, Ch ildren of the Desert (New York: Basic Books, 1974),233-34; Mieke Blows, "Eaglehawk an d Crow : Birds, Myths an d Moieties in South East Austra lia," in Australian Abo rigina l Mythology, ed. Lester R. Hiatt (Canberra: Australian In stitute of Aborig inal Studies, 1975), 26- 27, 31-32, 42 footnote; Anne tte Hamilton, "Dual Social Systems : Techno logy, Labour and Women's Secret Rites in the Eastern Western Desert of Austra lia," Oceania 51 (1980): 10; Richard A. Gould, "Comparative Ecology of Food-Sharing in Australia and Northwest California," in Omnivorous Prima tes, 435; Fred R. Myers, Pintupi Coun try, Pintupi Self Sentiment, Place, and Politics among Wester n Desert Aborigines (Washington an d London : Smithso nian Institu tion Press ; Canbe rra: Australian Institute of Abor igina l Studies , 1986), 75; and Alain Testart, "Some Major Problems in the Social Anthropology of Hunter- Gatherers," Current An thropology 29 (1988): 10. Margaret Mead, Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (Londo n: Routledge, 1935), 29,33 -34;Margaret Mead, "T he Mountai n Arapesh, Part 2: Supernaturali sm." Anthropological Papers of the American Museu m of Natura l History 37 (1941): 412, 449; Marga ret Mead , "The Mou ntain Ara pesh, Part 3: Socio-Economic Life." A nthropological Papers of the American Museum of Nat ura l History 40 (1947): 218 footnote; Gottfried Oos terwal, People of the Tor: A Cultural Anthropological Study on the Tribes of the Tor Territory (Northern Ne the rlands New Guinea) (Assen: Royal Van Corcum, 1961), 65; Richa rd F. Salisbury, From Stone to Steel: Economic Consequences of a Technologica l Change in New Gui nea (Melbourne: Universit y of Melbourne Press , 1962),65; Alfred Gell, Me tamorphosis of the Cassowaries: Umeda Society, Language and Ritual (London : Macm illa n, 1975), 109;Paula G. Rubel and Abraham Rosman, Your Own Pigs You May Not Eat: A Comparative Stu dy of New Guinea Societies (Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1978), 13,45,61,287; and Gilbert Lewis, Day ofShining Red: An Essay on Understanding Ritual (Cam bri dge: Cambridge Un iversity Press, 1980), 174. Tim Ingo ld, Hu nters, Pastoralists, and Ranchers (Cambridge: Cambr idge Univer sity Press, 1980), 158; and j.H. Dowling, "Ind ividual Owne rsh ip and the Sha ring of Game in Hu ntin g Societies ," American Anthropologist 70 (1968): 505. First quo tation from William Robertson-Smit h, The Religion of the Semites (London : Black, 1914),274; Second quotation from Malinowsk i, The Sexua l Life ofSavages, 170; Th ird quota tio n from Bronislaw Malinowski, Argonauts ofthe Western Pacific(London : Routledge, 1922), 191; Four th quotatio n from j. Siskind, To Hunt in the Morning (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973): 54;j.F. McLellan, "The Worship of Ani mals and Plants, Part I," Fortnig htly Review 6 (1869), 423; Alfred C. Hadd on, "Presidentia l Address to the Anthropological Section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science," (Belfast: 1902): 7 footnote; Alexan der A. Goldenweiser, "Toternism: An Ana lytica l Study," Journal of American Folklore 23 (1910):258, 265-66; Marcel Mauss, The Gift: Forms and Funct ions of Bx cha nge in Archaic Societies , trans. I. Cunnison (London : Cohen and West, 1954); Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912; repr., New York: Free Press, 1965); Edm und Leach, "Claude Levi-Strauss-Anthropologist and Ph ilosopher," Ne w Left Review 34 (1965): 24; Levi-Strauss, The Savage Mind; Levi-Stra uss, Totemism, 73; Sixth quota tio n from Freder ick W. Hodge, Handbook ofAmerican Ind ians North of Mexico (Wash ington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, Burea u of Amer ican Ethnology 30, 1910), vol. 2, 787-88; john Nichols an d Earl Nyho lm, eds., Ojibwewi-Ikidowina n: An Ojibwe Word Resou rce Book (SI. Paul: Minnesota Archaeo logica l Society, 1979); Right Reverend Bishop Baraga, A Dictiona ry of the Otch ipwe Language, Explained in English (1878; repr., Min neapo lis: Ross an d Haines, 1966),96,3 15; and fifth quotation from Knight, Blood Relatio ns, 108. First quo tation from Andre Leroi-Gourhan, The Art of Prehistoric Man in Wester n Europe (London : Thames and Hud son, 1968),96; Paolo Graz iosi, Palaeo lithic Art (Londo n: Faber and Faber, 1960); Zoi?a? Aleksa ndrovna Abramova, "Palaeolit hic Ar t in the U.S.S.R.," A rctic Anthropology 4 (1967); jose M. Gom ez-Tabanera, Les Statuettes Feminines Paleolithiques di tes 'Venus' (Astur ias: Love-Gijon, 1978); Henri Delporte, llimage de la Femm e dans Cart Prehistorique (Pa ris: Picard, 1979); Clive Gam ble, "Interaction and Alliance in Palaeolithic Societ y," Ma n 17 (1982); Bahn and Vert ut, Im ages ofthe Ice Age; Osbe rt G.S. Crawford, The Ey e Goddess (New York: Macm illan, 1958); Marschak, The Roots ofCivilization, 136,305 ,33 7-38; Marja Gimbutas, Th e God and Goddesse s of Old Europe , 7000-3500 B.C. (London : Thames an d Hudso n, 1974); Marja Gimbutas , The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europ e: My ths and Cult Im ages (London : Tha mes and Hudson, 1982); Marja Gimb utas, The Civilization of the Godd ess: The World ofOld Europe, ed. joan Marler (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco [sic], 1991); Marja Gimbu tas, The Language of the Goddess (San Francisco: Harp erSanF ra ncisco ,

224. Notes to Chapter 2 1989; John E. Pfeiffer, The Creative Explosion: An Inquiry into th e Origins ofArt and Religion (New York: Harper and Row, 1982), 143, 202; Hans Cory, "Sumbwa Birth Figurines," Journal of the Royal Anthropological In stitute 91 (1961); Peter Ucko, "The Interpretation of Prehistoric Figuri nes," Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 92 (1962); Peter Ucko, Anthropomorphic Figurines of Pre-Dynastic Egypt and Neolithic Crete with Comparative Material from the Prehistoric Near East and Mainland Greece (London: Andrew Szmid la.

Royal Anthropological Institute Occasional Paper 24,1968); J.G. Lalanne and J. Bouyssoine, "Le Gisement Paleolithique de Laussel,' L'Anthropologie 50 (1946); Henri Delporte, "L'Abri du Facteu r aTursac,' Gallia Prehistoire 11 (1968); Edith M. Shim kin , "The Upper Paleolithic in North-Ce ntral Eurasia: Evidence and Problems," in Views of the Past : Essays in Old World Prehistory and Paleoanthropology, ed. Leslie G. Freeman (The Hague : Mouton, 1978), 193- 315; N.D. Praslo v, "CArt du Paleolithic Superieur a l'est de L'Europe,' L'Anthropologie 89 (1985): 182- 83; Boris Frolov, "Stone Age Astronomers," Moscow News September 4, 1965; Steven J. Mit hen, "Looking and Learning: Upper Palaeoli thic Art and Information Gathering," Wor ld Archaeology 19 (1988): 297; and remaining quotations from Knigh t, Blood Relations, 365-73.

36. Quoted material from Bronis law Malinowski, "Lunar and Seasona l Calendar in the Trobriands,' Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 62 (1927): 205-206; Bronislaw Malinowski, The Sexual Life of Savages in North -Western Me lanesia, 3rd ed. (London: Routledge, 1932), 201- 202; Jose Guevara, Historia del Paraguay: Rio de la Plata y Tucuman (Buenos Aires : Anales de la Biblioteca Nacional. 1908-1910),5,64; Briffault, The Mot hers, vol. 2, 586-87; Alfred Metraux, Myth s of the Toba and Pilaga Indians of the Gran Chaco (Ph iladelphia : Memoirs of the American Folklore Society 40, 1946),20; John R. Swanton, The Indians of the Southeastern United States (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology 137, 1946), 263- 65; Lorna Mar shall, "The Medicine Dance of the !Kung Bushmen," Africa 39 (1969); Colin Renfrew, Before Civ ilization: The Radiocarbon Revolution and Prehistoric Europe (Harmondsworth : Penguin, 1976), 264-65; Gregory L. Forth, Rindi: An Ethnographic Study ofa Traditional Domain in Eastern Sumba (The Hague : Martinus Mijhoff, 1981),205-208,376-81 ; Hrdy, The Woman That Never Evolved, 155; James Woodburn, "Socia l Dimensions of Death in Four African Hunting and Gathering Societies ," in Death and the Regeneration of Life, ed. Maurice Bloch and Jonathan Parry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 201; Marguerite Iellicoe, "Colour and Cosmo logy among the Nyaturu of Tanzania," Shadow: The Newslett er of the Traditional Cosmology Society 2 (1985): 42-43; E. Lyle, "Cyclical Time as Two Types of Jou rney and Some Implications for Axes of Polarity, Cont exts, and Levels," Shadow 4 (1987): 14-15; and Knight, Blood Relations, 340-41,345-49. 37. First, ninth, thirteenth, and fourteenth quotations from Ernst E. Wreschner, "Red Ochre and Human Evolution: A Case for Discussion," Current Anthropology 21 (1980): 632-33 ; Claude Masset , "Comment," Current A nthropology 21 (1980): 639; Turner, Rituals of Birth, 5; Kenneth B. Tankers ley et aI., "They Have a Rock That Bleeds: Sunrise Red Ochre and Its Early Paleoindian Occurrence at the Hell Gap Site, Wyom ing," Plains Anthropologist 40 (1995): 185- 94; Lewis R. Binford, " 'Red Ochre' Caches from the Michigan Area : A Possible Case of Cultural Drift," in An Archaeological Perspective, ed. Lewis R. Binford and George I. QUimby (New York: Seminar Press, 1972),295-313; Robert F. Ritzenthaler and George I. Quimby , "The Red Ochre Culture of the Upper Great Lakes and Adjacen t Areas," Fieldiana: Anthropology 36 (1962): 243-75; Second, third, and fourth quotations from Leroi-Gourhan, The Art of Prehistoric Man , 40; Fifth quotation from Timothy Taylor, The Prehistory of Sex : Four Million Years of Human Sexual Culture (New York: Bantam Books, 1996), 133-34; Sixth quotation from Weston La Barre, The Ghost Dance: The Origins of Religion (London: Allen and Unwin, 1972), 395; Klein, Man and Culture in the Late Pleistocene, 226; Seventh, eighth, elevent h, and twelfth quota tions from Ralph Bolton, "Comment," Current Anthropology 21 (1980): 635; Tenth quotation from Peter Stephenson, "Comment," Curre nt Anthropology 21 (1980): 640; Turne r, The Forest of Symbols, 172; Victor W. Turner, The Ritual Process (Chicago : Aldine, 1969),53-69; Bahn and Vertut, Images of the lee Age, 69-79; Prederique Audouin and Hugues Plisson , "Les Ocres et Leurs Rernins au Paleolithique en France: Enquete et Expere inces sur Leur Validite Archeologique,' Cahiers du Centre de Recherches Prehistorique 8 (1982): 33-80 ; Karl W. Butzer, "Comment on Wresch ner: Red Ochre and Human Evolution ," Current Anthropology 21 (1980): 635; and Knight, Blood Relations, 438.

Notes to Chapter 2 • 225 Francis E. Williams, Papuans of the Trans-Fly (Oxford : Clarendon, 1936),307-308; E. Lucas Bridges, Uttermost Part of the Earth (New York: Duffon, 1948), 412-13; Mircea Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion (London : Sheed and Ward , 1958), 154-63; Martin Gusinde, The Yamana : The Life and Thought of the Water Nomads of Cape Horn , tr ans. F. Schut ze, 5 vols., Human Relations Area Files (1937; rep r., New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1961), 1238-49; Marcel Griaule, Conversations with Ogotommeli (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965),170; Ian A. Hogbin, Island ofMenstruating Men (London: Chandler, 1970), 101; Robert F. Murphy, "Social Structure and Sex Antagon ism," Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 15 (1973) ; Joan Bamberger, "The Myth of Mat riarchy," in Woman , Culture and Society, ed. Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974), 269-70; Gell, Metamorphosis of the Cassowaries, 172; Thomas Gregor, Mehinaku (Chic ago: University of Chicago Press, 1977),255; Levi-Strauss, Th e Origins of Table Manners, 221-22, 506 ; Gillian Gillison, "Images of Nature in Gim i Thought," in Nature, Culture and Gender, ed. Carol P. MacCormack and Marilyn Strathern (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 143-73; Lewis, Day of Shining Red, 121-23 ; Marla N. Powers, "Menstruation and Reproduction: An Oglala Case," Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 6 (1980) : 57, 60 ; and quoted material from Knight, Blood Relations, 282. 39. Knight, Blood Relations, 282,449 -513; and Taylor, The Prehistory of Sex , 100-105. 40. Gimbutas, The God and Godde sses of Old Europe, 7000-3500 B.C.; Girnbutas, The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe: Myths and Cult Images; Gimbutas, The Civilization of the Goddess ; Girnbutas, The Language of the Goddess ; Philip G. Davis, "The Goddess and the Academy," Academic Qu estions (Canada) 6 (1993) : 49-66; Peter J. Ucko, "Mother Are You There? " in "Can We Interpret Figurines?" Cambridge Archaeological Journal 6 (1996) : 300 -304; Taylor, The Prehistory of Sex , 115-66; Philip G. Davis, Goddess Unmasked: The Rise of Neopagan Feminist Spirituality (Dallas : Spence, 1998) ; and Cynthia Eller, The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory: Why an Invented Past Won 't Give Women a Future (Boston : Beacon, 2000). 41. Second quotation from Indra Sinha , The Great Book ofTantra: Translations and Images from the Classic Indian Text s with Commentary (Rochester, VT: Destiny Books, 1993),24-29,31-37, 48-57; Phillip Vellacott, trans., Euripides: The Bacchae (London: Penguin, 1973); First quotation from Erich Neuman, The Great Mothe r (New York: Pantheon Books, 1963); Indra Sinha, "The Five-Fold Sacrament," Parabola 20 (1995) : 18; Th ird quotation from Susanne Heine, Matriarchs, Goddesses, and Images of God: A Critique of a Feminist Theology (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1989),47; Tikva Fryme r-Kensky , In the Wake of the Godde sses: Women, Culture, and the Biblical Transformation of Pagan Myth (New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1993), 29; Lotte Motz, The Facesof the Goddess (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 12-13; Ralph W. Nicholas, "The Village Mother in Bengal," in Mother Worship : Themes and Variat ions, ed. James J. Preston (Chapel Hill : Univer sity of North Carolina Press , 1982),205-206; and Eller, The Myth ofMatriarchal Prehistory, 103-104; Fourth quotation from Alain Testart, "Essai su r les fondements de la divisioin sexuelle du travail chez les chasseurs-cueilleurs (Paris : Editions de l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 1986): 87. 42. Quoted material from Uli Linke, Blood and Nation : The European A esthetic s of Race (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999),3,6-7,9-10; Uli Linke, "Manhood, Femaleness, and Power: A Cultural Analysis of Prehistoric Images of Reproduction," Society for Comparative Study of Society and History 34 (1992) : 579-620 ; V. Gordon Childe, Th e Aryans: A Study of Indo-European Origins (London : Kegan Paul, 1926); Mar ija Girnbutas, "The Indo-Europeans," American Anthropologist 65 (1963) : 825-36; Mar ija Gimbutas, "Proto-Indo -European Culture," in Indo-European and Indo-Europeans , ed. George Cardona, Henry M. Koenigswald , and Alfred Senn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1970); Albert J. Ammerman and Luigi L. Cavalli-Sforza, The Neolithic Transition and the Genetics ofPopulation in Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984); Colin Renfrew, Problems in European Prehistory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press , 1979); Colin Renfrew, Archaeology and Language (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Colin Renfrew, "They Ride Hor ses Don't They ? Mallory on the Indo-Europeans:' Antiquity 63 (1989) : 843-47; Marija Gimbutas, "Old Europe , 7000-3500 B.C.," Journal ofIndo- European Studies 1 (1973) : 1-20; Marija Gimbutas, "The Kurgan Wave Migration (3400-3200 B.C.) into Europe and theinFollowing of Culture:' Journal University of Near Eastern Renfrew, Problems European Transformation Prehistory (Cambridge: Cambridge Press ,Studies 1979); 8 (1980) : 273-315; Marija Gimbutas, The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe ; Press, J.P. Mallory, Colin Renfrew, Archaeology and Language (New York: Cambridge University 1988); In Search of the"They Indo-Europeans Thames and on Hudson, 1989); Igor M. Diakonov, Colin Renfrew, Ride Hor ses(London: Don't They ? Mallory the Indo-Europeans:' Antiquity 38.

226. Notes to Chapter 2 "On the Original Hom e of th e Speakers of Ind o-Europ ean ," Journal of Ind o-European Studies 13 (1985) : 92-1 74; Paul Friedrich, Language, Con tex t, and th e Imagina tion, A.S. Dil, ed . (Stanfo rd : Stanford University Press, 1979),207-208 ; Tam az V. Gamkrelidz e and Vjaceslav V. Ivanov, "The Ancient Near East and th e Indo-European Qu estion, " Journal ofIndo-Eur opean Studies 13 (1985): 3-48; J.P. Mallory, In Search of th e Ind o-Europ ean s (London: Th ames and Hudson, 1989), 114-42 ; Colin Renfrew, Archaeo logy and Language (New York: Ca mbridge University Press, 1988); and Susan Nacev Skoma l and Edga r C. Polorne, ed., Proto -IndoEu ropean (Wash ingt on, DC: Insti tut e for the Study of Man, 1987). 43. Theodore Thass-Th ienemann, The Int erpretation of Langua ge (New York: Jason Aronson, 1973),312 -13; Weston La Barre, Mu elos: A Ston e Age Sup erstition about Sex ua lity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), 82 ; Gaston Bachelard, The Psychoanalysis of Fire, trans. Ala n C.M. Ross (Boston: Beacon , 1964); Bruno Bett elheim, Sy m bolic Wounds , rev. ed. (New York: Free Press ofClenco e/Colli er Books, 1962), 162; Derek Freeman, "T hunder, Blood, an d the Nicknam ing of God 's Creatures," Psychoana lytic Quarterly 37 (1968) : 353-99; Rodney Needham, "Blood, Thunder, and the Mockery of Anim als," in My th and Cosm os, ed. John Middleton (Gard en City, NY: Natural History Pre ss, 1967),271-85; J.P. Mall ory, In Sea rch of the Indo-Europ ean s, 114- 42; Co lin Renfrew, A rchaeology and Language; Richard Broxto n Onians, T he Or igins of European Thought about the Body, the Mind, the Soul, the World, Time, and Fate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 27 1-72 ; Pau l F. Baum , "Judas's Red Hair," Journal of English and German Philology 21 (1922): 520-29; Jan Gonda, Vedic Ritual, vol. 4, pt. 1 Handbu ch der Oientalisti c, Zw eit e Abteilung: Ind ien (Leiden : E.J. Brill, 1980),97, 275, 434 ; Victo r W. Turne r, "Colour Classification in Nd embu Ritual ," in Anthrological Approaches to th e Study of Religion, ed. Michae l Banton (London: Tavistock, 1965), 59-60, 68 -69, 79- 83; Dennis [, McCa rthy, "The Symboli sm of Blood and Sacrifice ," Journal of Biblical Literature 88 (1969) : 169-72 , 175-76; Dennis J. McCarthy, "Further Notes on the Symbolism of Blood and Sacrific e," Journal of Biblical Literature 92 (1973) : 206 -208; Moses Buttenw ieser, "Blood Revenge and Burial Rites in Anci ent Isra el," Journal of the A me rican Oriental Society 39 (1919): 309- 10, 311. Anci ent Hebrews had prohibitions becaus e blood was sacr ed. See Robertson Smith , The Religion of the Sem ites, 233-34,313- 14,342, 344 , 379; John E. Steinmueller, "Sacrificial Blood in the Bible," Biblica 40 (1959) : 556- 67; First five quot ations from Linke , Blood and Nation, 11-19; Last quotation from Linke , "Manhood, Fema lene ss, and Power," 594-9 7; and Uli Linke, "Blood as Metaphor in ProtoIndo -European," Journal of Indo- Europ ean Studies 13, nos. 3-4 (1985) : 362. 44 . Linke , "Ma nhood, Femaleness, and Power," 595-98; Alan Dundes, "Wet and Dry, the Evil Eye: An Essay on Indo -European and Semitic Wor ldview,' in Int erpreting Folklore, ed. Alan Dundes (Bloom ington: Indiana University Press, 1980) , 93-133; Oni ans, The Origin s of European Thought, 177,256, n. 9; Geoffre y E.R. Lloyd, "The Hot and the Cold , th e Dr y and the Wet in Greek Philo soph y," Journal ofHellenic Studies 84 (1964) : 92-106; Matthew Casalis, "The Dry and the Wet: A Semio logical Analysis of Creation and Flood Myths," Semiotica 17 (1976): 35-36; Martin Schwartz, "Blood in Sogdi an and Old Iranian," Monumentum Georg Morg enstierne 11(Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1982), vol. 8, 189-96; Geoffrey S. Kirk and John E. Raven, The Pre-Socratic Philosoph ers (Ca mbridge: Cambridge University Pr ess, 1957), 234-35; Rudo lph Siegel, Galen's System of Physiology and M edicine (New York : S. Karger, 1968); Friedrich, Language, Context, and the Imagination , 222 , 229 -41 ; Wendy Doninger O'F laherty, Women , A ndrogy nes, and Oth er Mythical Beasts (Chicago: Un iversity of Chicago Press, 1980), 20; Peter J. Bowler, "Prefor mation and Pre -Existence in the Seventeenth Century," Journal of the H istory of Biology 4 (1971): 221-44; and Alan Dundes, "Couvade in Gen esis," in Studies in Aggadah and Jewish Folklore, ed . Issachar Ben-Ami and Joseph Dan (Jerusa lem : Magnes Press , 1983). 45. Second quotation from Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. F.J. Miller (New York: Putnam, 192526), 8, 743; Mircea Eliade, Pattern s in Comparative Religion , trans. Rosema ry Sheed (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1958),271 - 73,281 ,301 ,303; Georg e Lech ler, "T he Tree of Life in Indo-European and Islamic Cult ures," Ars Islamica 4 (1937): 370; Sir James Ge orge Fra zer, Af term ath: A Supplement to the Golden Bough (London : Macmi llan, 1955), 153; Pau l C. Bauschat z, Th e Well and th e Tree (Amh erst: Un iversity of Massachusetts Press, 1982), 5; Edric A.S. Butterworth, The Tree at the Naval of the Earth (Berlin: Walter de Gru yter, 1970), 7- 11, 32, 46 ; Roger Cook, The Tree of Life: Symbol of the Cen ter (London: Thames and Hudson, 1974), 8, 11- 30; Ernest A. Rapp aport, "T he Tre e of Life," Psychoanalytic Rev iew 30 (1943): 263-72; Roberta Frank, Old N orse Court Poetry: The Drottkvaet Stanza

Notes to Chapters 2 and 3 • 227

46 .

(Ithaca, NY: Corn ell Un iversit y Press, 1978), 173-76; Paul Friedrich, Proto -Indo-European Trees (Chicago: Universit y of Chicago, 1970), 156, n. 1; Friedrich, Language, Con tex t, and the Imagination, 85-93; On ians, The Origin s of European Thought, 119, 174- 80 ,216; john Walter Taylor, "Tree Worsh ip," Mankind Quarterly 20 (1979): 85-93 ; Virgil, Ae neid, trans . H.R. Faircl ough, 2 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Universit y Press, 1960), 23-49; Dante Alighieri, Divin a Com m edia. Inf erno, trans. A. Gilbert (Durham, NC: Duke Univer sity Pres, 1969), canto 13.1- 54; Roland Barthes, Mythologies (New York: Noonday Pr ess, 1972), 128-31; Friedrich, Language, Context, and the Imagination, 230-32 ; Henry Alden Bunk er and Bertram D. Lewin, "A Psychoanalytic Notation on the Root GN, KN, CN ," in Psychoanalysis and Culture, ed. Georg e B. Wilbur and Warner Mu ensterberger (New York: Int ernational Unive rsities Press, 1951), 363-67; Thomas S. Ha ll, "Eur ipus, or the Ebb an d Flow of the Blood ," Journal of the History of Biology 8 (1975): 321-50; O'F laherty, Women , Androgy nes, and Other Mythical Beasts, 28-29; Henry Adams Bellows, Edda Saemundar, 2 vols. (New York: American-Scandinavian Foundation, 1923), 7; Mircea Eliade, Imag es and Symbols, trans. Phili p Mairet (New York: Sheed an d Ward, 1961),30,40-43; Mircea Eliade , Shamanism, trans. Willard R. Trask (New York: Bollinger Foundation, 1964),261-64; jack R. Goody, The Development of the Fam ily and Marriage in Europe (Cambridge : Cambridge Un iversity Press, 1983); Third quotation from Abner Cohen, "Political Anthropology," Man 4 (1969) : 221; Uli Linke, "Wome n, Androgynes, and Models of Creation in Norse Myth ology," Journ al of Psychohisto ry 16 (1989) : 231-61 ; First quo tation from Linke , Blood and Nation, 22-23,25 -27; and Linke, "Manhood, Femaleness, and Power," 579-620. O'F laherty, Women , Androgynes, and Othe r Myth ical Beasts , 17, 20, 27, 33, 40, 42 , 47, 53; Onians, The Orig ins ofEuropean , 119, 121; Friedrich, Language, Context, and th e Im agination, 209,212- 16,227,236; Oswald Szernerenyi, "Studies in the Kinship Terminology of the IndoEuropean Lang uag es," Acta lranica (Textes et Mernoires 7, Varia 1977) 16 (1977) : 33-35, 3740,42,65 -67,86-87; Dundes, "Wet and Dry, the Evil Eye," 120- 24 ; Rudolph Siegal, Galen 's System ofPhysiology and Medicine (New York: Rarge r, 1968),232; Sarnvarodaya Tantra 2.23 ; Dundes, "Couvade in Genesi s," 44 -45; Linke, Blood and Nation, 27-34; Linke, "Manhood, Femaleness, and Power," 604 -10; and Linke, "Blood as Metaphor," 354 -56.

Chap ter 3 Robbie E. Davi s-Floyd and Carolyn F. Sargent, eds., Childb irth and A uthoritative Knowledge: Cross-Cultural Perspectives (Berkeley: University of Ca lifornia Pr ess, 1997),3. 2. Faye Ginsburg and Rayna Rapp, "T he Politics of Reproduction ," Annual Review of Anthropology 20 (1991): 323. 3. Brigit te jordan, Birth in Four Cultures: A Crosscultural Inv estigation ofChildbirth in Yucatan , Holland, Sweden and the United States (Montreal: Eden Pres s Women's Pub lications, 1978) ; Robbie E. Davis-Floyd, "The Technologica l Mo del of Birth," Journal of American Folklore 100 (1987) ; Catherine Kohler Riessman, "Wom en and Medicalization: A New Perspec tive," Social Policy 14, no . I (1983) : 3-18; Charles W. Sullivan 1lI, "Childbirth Education and Trad itio nal Beliefs about Preg na ncy and Childbirth," in Herba l and Magical Medicine : Traditiona l Healing Today, ed . james Kirkland (Du rham , NC : Duke Un iversity, 1992) , 170-79; Molly Dougherty, "Southern Midwifery and Organ ized Health Care : System s in Conflict," M edical Anthropologi st 6 (1982) : 113-16; Gertrude Fra ser, AfrO-American Midwives, Biomedicine, and the Stat e (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992); Linda Holm es, "Alabama Granny Midwife ," Journal of the Medica l Society of New Jersey 81 (1984) : 389 -9 1; Sheila Cosmins ky, "Chi ldbirth and Midwifery on a Guatemalan Finca," MedicalAnthropologist 6 (1977) : 69-104; Sheila Cosminsky, "Childbirt h and Change: A Guatemalan Study " in The Ethnography of Fertility and Birth, ed. Carol P. MacCormack (London: Academic Press, 1982): 205-229; Sheila Cosminsky, "Knowledge and Body Concepts of Guate malan Midwiv es," in The Anthropology ofHuman Birth, ed. Ma rgarita Kay (Philadelphia : EA . Davis, 1982),233-52; Carolyn Sargent , "Solitary Confinemen t: Birth Practices among the Bariba,' in The Anthropology of Human Birth, 193- 210; Carolyn Sargent , Maternity, Medicine, and Power: Reproductive Decisions in Urban Benin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989); Carolyn Sargent, "The Politics of Birth : Cu ltura l Dimensions of Pain, Virtue, and Control among the Bariba of Benin ," in Births and Power: Social Change and the Politics of Reprod uction, ed . W. Penn Handw erker (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1990), 69 -81 ; john O'Neil and Patricia A. Kaufert , "Cooptation 1.

228. Notes to Chapter 3 and Control: The Reconstruction of Inuit Birth," Medical Anthropology Quarterly 4 (1990): 427-42 ; john O'Neil and Patricia A. Kaufert, "The Politics of Obstetric Care : The Inuit Experience," in Births and Power, 53-68; Sheila Kitzinger, Women as Mothers: How They See Themselves in Different Cultures (New York: Random House , 1978); Wenda Trevathan, Human Birth : An Evolutionary Perspective (Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter, 1987);

4.

5.

6. 7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

Robbie E. Davis-Floyd and Carolyn F. Sargent , "Introduction: The Anthropology of Birth," in Childbirth and Authoritative Know ledge, 1- 11; Margaret Mead and Niles Newton, "Cultural Patterning of Perinatal Behavior," in Childbearing: Its Social and Psychological Aspects, ed. Stephen Richardso n and Alan Guttmacher (Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1967), 142244; Niles Newton, "Chi ldbirth in Cross-Cultural Perspective," in Modern Perspectives in Psycho-Obstetrics, ed. joh n Howells (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1977); and Niles Newton , "Birth Rituals in Cross-Cultural Perspective: Some Practical Applications," in Being Female : Reproduction, Power and Change , ed. Dana Raphae l (Paris: Mouton, 1975). Quoted material from Stol, Birth in Babylonia and the Bible, 7; Ford, Comparative Study of Human Reproduction, 35; Walter j. Hoffman, "Childbirth and Abortion among the Absaroka (or Crow) and Dakota Indians," European Review of Native American Studies 2 (1988) : 10; Walter E.A. van Beek, "Becoming Human in Dogon, Mali," in Coming into Existence, 49; and Rita E. Montgomery, "A Cross-Cultural Study of Menstruation, Menstrual Taboos, and Related Social Variables," Ethos 2 (1974): 146. Montgomery, "A Cross -Cultural Study of Menstruation," 145-46; and Lesley Dean -jones, Women's Bodies in Classical Greek Science (Oxford : Clarendon, 1994). Quoted material from Gelis, History of Childbirth, 14; and Yvonne Verdier, Facons de Dire, Facons de Faire: La Laveuse, la Couturiere, la Cuisiniere (Paris, Gallimard 1979),60-61. Gelis, History of Childbirth, 43 ; Michele Klein, A Time to Be Born: Customs and Folklore of Jewish Birth (Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society, 1998), 25; and quoted material from Patricia Crawford, "Attitudes towa rds Menstruation in Seventeenth -Century England," Past and Present 91 (1981): 43. Quoted mate rial from Gelis, History ofChildbirth, 16-19,27,31,36-37. Quoted mate rial from Anne Wright, "Attitudes toward Childbeari ng and Menstruat ion among the Navajo," in Anthropology of Human Birth , 389; Montagu, Coming into Being, 166; Wolf Bleek, Sexual Relationships and Birth Control in Ghana : A Case Study of a Rural Town (Amsterdam: Universiteit van Amsterdam, Afdeling Culturele Antropologie, Uitgave 10, 1976); Dominique Meekers, "African Theories of Conception : A Reply to Smith," Socia l Biology 44 (1997) : 291; Ford, Comparative Study of Human Reproduction , 44 -45; Betty Gillam, "Beliefs of the Waipei People about Conception, and Early Child Care," Tropical Doctor 3 (1973): 85-87; Hunt, A Colonial Lexicon, 203; Sullivan, "Ch ildbirth Education and Trad itional Beliefs," 173; Montgomery, "A Cross-Cultural Study of Menstruation," 158; Janet Carsten, "The Process of Childbirth and Becoming Related among Malays in Pu lau Langkawi," in Coming into Existence, 27; Frances Maybelle Cattermole Tally, "From the Mystery of Conception to the Miracle of Birth: An Historical Survey of Beliefs and Rituals Surrounding the Pregnant Woman in Germanic Folk Tradition, Including Modern American Folklore" (PhD diss., Department of Germanic Languages, University of California at Los Angeles, 1978), 58; and Arthur Meyer, Essays on the History of Emb ryology (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford Universi ty Press, 1933). Quo ted material from Bronislaw Malinowski, The Sexual Life of Savages in North-wes tern Melanesia: An Ethnographic Account of Courtship, Marriage, and Fam ily Life among the Nat ives of the Trobriand Islands, British New Guinea (London: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1968), 5; Emily Ahern, "The Power and Pollution of Chinese Women," in Women in Chinese Society, ed. Marge ry Wolf and Roxane Wirke (Stanford, CA: Stanford Univers ity Press, 1975), 196; and Aijmer, Coming into Existence, 11. Quoted material from Barrau d, "Kei Society and the Person ," 219-20; and Julia A. Hecht, "Physical and Social Boundaries in Pukapukan Theories of Disease," in Healing Practices in the South Pacific, ed. Claire D.F. Parsons (Ho nolulu: Institute for Polynesian Studies, University of Hawaii Press, 1985), 152. First quotation from Stol, Birth in Babylonia and the Bible, 14; and second and third quotatio ns from Donn V. Hart, Phya Anuman Rajadhom, and Richar d [. Coughlin, Southeast Asian Birth Customs: Three Studies in Human Reproduction (New Haven, CT: Human Relations Area Files, 1965),8.

Notes to Chapter 3 • 229 Fitz john Porter Poole, "Transforming 'Natural' Womari: Female Ritual Leaders and Gender Ideology among Bimin-Kuskusmin," in Sexual Meanings, 116-65,132; and HauserSchaublin, "Blood," 87-88, 90. 14. Swantz, Blood, Milk, and Death , 71; Audrey I. Richards , "Some Types of Family Structure among st the Central Bantu," in African Systems of Kinship and Marriage , ed. Alfred R. Radcliffe-Brown and Daryl! Forde (London: Oxford Universit y Press, for the International African Institute, 1950),207-51; Marjorie Shostak , Nisa : The Life and Words ofa !Kung Woman (New York: Vint age Books, 1983), 107; Meekers, "African Theories of Conception," 291; jean Comaroff, Body of Power Spirit of Resistance : The Culture and History of a South African People (Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1985), 104; Brian M. du Toit, "Menstruation: Attitudes and Experience ofIndian South Africans ," Ethnology 27 (1988) : 391-406; Robert Sutherland Rattray, Ashanti (Oxford : Clarendon, 1923), 36; Ralph Linton, The Tanala, a Hill Tribe of Madagascar (Chicago : Field Museum of Natural History, 1933), 282 ; V. Ebin, "Interpretations of Infertility: The Aowin People of South-west Ghana," in Ethnography of Fertility and Birth, 147; and Montgomery, "A Cross-Cultural Study of Menstruation," 158. 15. john Morris , Living with Lepcha s: A Book about the Sikkim Himalayas (London : Heinemann, 13.

1938),239. 16. 17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22. 23. 24.

Ernest Beaglehole and Pearl Beaglehole, The Ethnology of Pukapuka (Honolulu, HI: Bernice P. Bishop Museum, 1938),264. First quotation from Marilyn Strath ern , Women in Between : Fem ale Roles in a Male World, Mount Hagen New Guinea (New York: Seminar Press, 1972), 42-43; Aijmer, Coming into Existence , 9; Second quotation from Scaletta , "Childbirth:' 35; Gilbert H. Herdt, ed., Rituals ofManhood: Mal e In itiation in Papua New Guinea (Berkeley: Universit y of California Press, 1982); and Montgomery, "A Cross-Cultural Study of Menstruation:' 158. First quotation from Gilbert H. Herdt, Guard ians of the Flute: Idioms of Ma sculinity (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981), 192; Second quotation from Mauric e Godelier, La Production des Grands Hommes: Pouvoir et Domination Masculine chez les Baruya de Nouvelle-Guinee (Paris : Artheme Fayard, 1982), 101; and Anna S. Meigs, Food, Sex and Pollution : A New Guinea Religion (New Brunswick , Nj : Rutgers University Press, 1984),61. First quotation from Patricia K. Townsend, Traditional Birth Attendants in Papua New Guinea (Boroko, Papua New Guinea : Papua New Guinea Institute of Applied Social and Economic Research for UNICEF, 1986), 12; Mead and Newton, "Cultural Patterning," 167; Ford, Comparative Study of Human Reproduction, 35; Rafael Karsten , "Birth Customs and Ideas of Supernatural Birth among Some Indian Tribes of Eastern Ecuador:' in Contributions to the Sociology of the Indian Tribes of Ecuador, ed. Rafael Karsten , series Acta Academiae Aboensis. Humaniora I: 3 (Abo: Abo Akadern, 1920), 68; juillerat, Children of the Blood , 246; Naomi M. Scaletta, "Childbirth: A Case History from West New Britain, Papua New Guinea:' Oceania 57 (1986) : 35; and Second quotation from Margaret Mead, "The MountainDwelling Arapesh ," in Sex and Temp erament in Three Primitive Societi es (New York: William Morrow, 1935),33. Quoted material from Hauser-Schaublin, "Blood:' 86 ; Poole, "Transforming 'Natural' Woman ," 116-65; Biersack, "Bound Blood:' 85; Maurice God elier, "Social Hierarchies among the Baruya of New Guinea," in Inequality in New Guinea Highlands Societies, ed. Andrew Strathern (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982),3-34; and Dan Ioergensen, "Introduction: The Facts of Life, Papua New Guinea Style:' Mankind 14 (1983) : 1-12. First quotation from Swantz, Blood, Milk, and Death, 71; Second quotation from Gelis, History of Childbirth, 37; Ronald M. Berndt, Sexual Behavior in Western Arnhem Land, no. 16 (New York: Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology, 1951); Montagu, Coming into Being, 119; Hunt, A Colonial Lexicon, 315; and Gillam, "Beliefs of the Waipei People," 85-87. Quoted material from james F. Weiner, "Blood and Skin : The Structural Implications of Sorcery and Procreation Beliefs among the Foi," Ethnos 51 (1986) : 76, 80 -83. Quoted material from Stol, Birth in Babylonia and the Bible, 125-26. Quoted material from Schwarz, Molded in the Image of Changing Woman, 68 -78, 117; Dorothea Leighton and Clyde Kluckhohn, Children of the People: The Navajo Individual and His Development (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1947), I; Flora Bailey, "Some Sex Beliefs and Practices in a Navaho Community: With Comparative Material from Other Navaho Areas:' Papers of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology 40, no. 2 (1950) : 18; Gladys Reichard , Navaho Religion : A Study ofSymbolism (New

230. Notes to Chapter 3

25.

26.

27.

28.

29. 30.

31. 32.

33.

34.

York: Pantheon, 1950),29-30; Gar y Witherspoon, Navaj o Kinship and Marriage (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), 24; and B. Carol Milligan, "Nur sing Care and Beliefs of Expectant Navajo Wom en," American Indian Quarterly 8 (1984) : 86 -89. Quoted material from Mar y Jane Young , "Wo men, Reproduction, and Religion in West ern Pueblo Societ y," Journal ofAmerican Folklore 100 (1987); and Barton Wright, Hopi Kachinas (Flagstaff, AZ: Northland Press, 1977), 56. Quoted material from Aijmer , Coming into Exi stence, 10; Annette Weiner, Inalienable Possessions : Reconfiguring Reciprocity (Berkeley : University of California Press, 1992); Myers, Pintupi Country, Pintupi Self; Annette Wein er, Women of Value, Men of Renown (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1976); Annette Weiner, "Trobriand Kinship from Another View: The Reproductive Power of Wom en and Men," Man 14 (1979) : 328-48 ; Nancy C. Munn, Walbiri Iconography: Graphic Representation and Cultural Symbolism in a Central Australian Society (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Uni versity Press, 1973),21 ,31 ; Mervyn Meggit , Desert People : A Study of th e Walbiri Aborigines of Central Australia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962),272; Ford , Comparative Study of Human Reproduction, 34; and Ginsburg and Rapp, "The Politics of Reproduction," 328 . Quoted material from Charles P. Mountford , Records of the American-Australian SCientific Expedition to Arnhem Land, I, A rt, Myth and Symbolism (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1956), 308 -309; Montagu, Coming into Being, 121-22, 249 ; Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Expedition to Yap Island, Micronesia, The Micrones ians of Yap and Their Depopulation, Report ofthe Peabody Mu seum Exp edition to Yap Island, Micronesia, 1947-48 (Cambridge, MA : Harvard Un iversity, (952) , 182. Walt er Hough, The Hopi Indians (Cedar Rapids , IA: Torch Press , 1915); Don C. Talayesva, Sun Chief The Autobiography of a Hopi Indian, ed . L.W. Simmons (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1942); Alfred R. Radcliffe-Brown, The Andaman Islanders (Cambridge, UK: Uni versity Press , (933) ; Wald emar Bogoras, The Chukchee (New York: AMS Press, 1975); Henri A. Junod, The Life of a South African Tribe (London: Macmillan, 1927) ; Rafael Karsten, The Head-Hunters ofWestern Amazonas (Helsingfors, Finland: Societas Scientiarum Fennica, 1935); Wilfred V. Grig son , The Maria Gonds of Bastar (London: Oxford University Press, 1938); Gelis, History of Childbirth, 81; Robert S. Rattray, Ashanti (Oxford: Clarendon, 1923); and Ford , Comparative Study of Human Reprodu ction , 35 . Quoted material from Maiden and Fa rwell, The Tibetan A rt of Parenting, 31, 32-34, 37. First quoted material from Stol, Birth in Babylonia and the Bible, 14; Samuel S. Kottek, "Embryology in Talmudic and Midrashic Literature," Journal of th e History of Biology 14 (1981): 299-315; Klein , A Time to Be Born , 58-59; Cook and O'Bri en, Blood and Semen ; Second quoted material from Gillam, "Beliefs of the Waip ei People ," 85; and Third quoted material from Ford , Comparative Study of Human Reproduction, 45. Quoted material from Cam eron, On the Edge of the Auspicious, 183-85. Quoted material from Nevill E. Parry, The Lakhers (London: Macmillan, 1932); Edmund R. Leach, "Rethinking Anthropology," in Rethinking Anthropology, ed. Edmund R. Leach (London: Athlone Press, 1958); Aijmer, Coming into Existence, 11; van Beek, "Becoming Human in Dogon," 47-70; Ford, Comparative Study of Human Reproduction, 44 ; Hart et al., Southeast Asian Birth Customs, 8; losiane L. Massard, "The New-Born Malay Child: A Multiple Identity Being," Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 58 (1985) : 72; and Michel Panoff, "Patrifiliation as Ideology and Practice in a Matrilineal Society," Ethnology 15 (1976): 175-88. Angus McLaren, Reproductive Rituals: The Perception of Fertility in England from the Sixteenth Century to the N ineteenth Century (London: Methuen, 1984), 16-17; Lawrence Stone , The Family, Sex , and Marriage in England, 1500-1800 (New York: Harper and Row, 1977); Randolph Trumbach, The Rise of the Egalitarian Family: Aristocratic Kinship and Domestic Relations in Eighteenth-Century England (New York: Academic Press, 1978); Edward Shorter, The Making of the Modern Family (New York: Harper and Row, 1976); and Roy Porter, "Mixed Feelings: The Enlightenment and Sexuality in Eighteent h-Cent ury Britain," in Sexuality in Eighteenth Century England, ed . P.G. Bouce (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1982), 1-27. Quoted material from Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex : Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press , 1990),27,35-43,52 -62,98-108; Danielle Iacquart and Claude Thomasser, Sexuality and Medicine in th e Middle Ages (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Uni versit y Press, 1988), 8-14; R. Howard Bloch, Etymologies and Genealogies:

Notes to Chapter 3 • 231

35.

36.

37.

38.

39. 40.

41. 42 . 43. 44 .

45. 46.

A Literary Anthropology of the Middle Ages (Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1983): Thomas G. Benedek, "Beliefs about Human Sexual Function in the Middle Ages and Renaissance," in Human Sexuality in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, ed. Douglas RadcliffeUmstead (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1978), 108: and G.R. Quaife, Wanton Wenches and Wayward Wives: Peasants and Illicit Sex in Early Seventeenth England (London : Croom Helm, 1979), 172. Quoted material from McLaren, Reproductive Rituals, 22-23, 102-103 : and john Knodel and Etienne Van de Walle, "Lessons from the Past: Policy Implications of Historical Fertility Studies," Population and Development Review 5 (1979) : 227. Elisha P. Renne and Etienne van de Walle, "Introduction," in Regulating Menstruation: Beliefs, Practices , Interpretations, ed. Etienne van de Walle and Elisha P. Renne (Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2001), 3-21: Susan E. Klcpp, "Colds, Worms, and Hysteria: Menstrual Regulation in Eighteenth-Century America," in Regulating Menstruation, 22-38: janet Farrell Brodie, "Menstru al Interventions in the Nineteenth-Century United States," in Regulating Menstruation, 39 -63: and Gigi Santow, "Emmenagogues and Abortifacients in the Twentieth Century: An Issue of Ambiguity," in Regulating Menstruation, 64 -92. Quoted material from Edward Shorter, Women 's Bodies: A Social History of Women 's Encounter with Health, Ill-Health , and Medicine (New Brunswick, N): Transaction Publishers, 1991), 179-88: judith Walzer Leavitt , Brought to Bed: Childbearing in America, 1750 to 1950 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 144-47: Anonymous, A Dictionary of English Plantnames (London: Trubner, 1886), 416: McLaren, Reproductive Rituals, 104: Robert T. Gunther, ed., The Greek Herbal ofDioscorides (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1934),270: The Compleat Herbal or, Family Physician (Manchester: Swindalls, 1787), 11,33 : and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A Midwife's Tale: The Life ofMartha Ballard , Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812 (New York: Knopf, 1900) ,56,259,354,356,357,358. Shorter, Women 's Bodies, 179-88: Wolfgang lochle, "Menses -Inducing Drugs: Their Role in Antique, Medieval and Renaissance Gynecology and Birth Control," Contraception 10 (1974): 425 -39: l.C. Saha et al., "Echolic Properties of Indian Medicinal Plants," Indian journal of Medical Research 49 (1961): 130-51: John H. Morgan, "An Essay on the Causes of the Production of Abortion among Our Negro Population," Nashville journal of Medicine and Surgery 19 (1860) : 120: R. Frank Chandler et al., "Herbal Remedies of the Maritime Indians," journal of Ethnopharmacology 1 (1979) : 62: and George A. Conway and john C. Slocumb, "Plants Used as Abortifacients and Emmenagogues by Spanish New Mexicans," journal ofEthnopharmacology 1 (1979): 62, 253. Shorter, Women's Bodies, 288. Quoted material from lbid ., 50: and Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English, Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers (Old Westbury, NY: Feminist Press, 1973),15 -17. Ford, Comparative Study of Human Reproduction, 46. Aijmer, Coming into Existence, 1, 11. Carsten, "The Process of Childbirth and Becoming Related among Malays," in Coming into Existence, 21, 27, 37,40. Quoted material from Dennis B. McGilvray, "Sexual Power and Fertility in Sri Lanka : Batticaloa Tamils and Moors," in Ethnography of Fertility and Birth, 19, 21: Dennis B. McGilvray, Symbolic Heat: Gender, Health and Worship among the Tamils of South India and Sri Lanka (Boulder: University of Colorado Museum, 1998): and Mcl.aren, Reproductive Rituals, 8. Charlotte Furth, "Concepts of Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Infancy in Ch 'ing Dynasty China," journal ofAsian Studies 46 (1987) : 7-35. The Bible, an American translation, the Old Testament translated by a group of scholars un der the editorship of) . M. Powis Smith: the New Testament translated by Edgar). Goodspeed. (Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, cl931), Lev. 12:2: Stol, Birth in Babylonia and the Bible, 205: Quoted material from Klein, A Time to Be Born, 130,132,143-55,159-60,192-94: Susan Sered, "Husbands, Wives, and Childbirth Rituals ," Ethos 22 (1994) : 201: Rosemary Levy Zumwalt, " 'Let It Go to the Garlic': Evil Eye and the Fertility of Women among the Sephardim," Western Folklore 55 (Fall 1996) : 261-80: and Issachar Ben-Ami, "Customs of Pregnancy and Childbirth among Sephardic and Oriental Jews," in New Horizons in Sephardic Studies, ed. Yedida K. Stillman and George K. Zucker (Albany : State University of New York Press, 1993),261.

232. Notes to Chapter 3 47.

48.

49. 50.

5!.

52. 53. 54.

55. 56. 57. 58. 59.

60.

6!.

First, second, third, fourth , fifth and sixth quotations from Jacques Gelis, History of Childbirth : Fertility, Pregnancy and Birth in Early Modern Europe , trans. Rosemary Morris (Cambridge, MA: Polity, 1991), 11,81-82,97, 161, 165, 169; Mcl.aren, Reproductive Rituals, 33, 57; Beyene, From Menarche to Menopause, 105, 107; Seventh and eighth quotations from Maria Leach, ed ., Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology, and Legend (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1950); Tally, "From th e Myster y of Conception to the Miracle of Birth," 94; Ninth, tenth, and eleventh quotations from Jean Dezeimeris, Les Aphorismes d'Hippocrate Classes Systematiquement et Precede d 'une Introduction Historique (Paris, Crochard, 1836), 453, 457; Twelfth quotation from Henri de Mond eville, Chirurgie (Paris: Alcan, 1893); MarieChristine Pouchelle, The Body and Surgery in the Middle Ages, trans. Rosemary Morris (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutger s Universit y Press, 1990) , 156; Thirteenth quotation from John Jones, The Art and Science ofPreserving Bodie and Soule (London: Bynnernan, 1579), 14; and Klein, A Time to Be Born, 64, 160. First and second quotations from Lev. 12:2-8, as quoted in Stol, Birth in Babylonia and the Bible, 205; Remaining quoted material from Shorter, Women's Bodies, 289-91; Susan K. Roll, "The Old Rite of the Churching of Women after Childbirth," in Wholly Woman, Holy Blood : A Feminist Critique of Purity and Impurity, ed . Kristin De Troyer et al. (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 2003) , 117-41 ; Grietje Dresen, "T he Better Blood: On Sacrifice and the Churching of New Mothers in the Roman Catholic Tradition," in Wholly Woman, Holy Blood, 143-64; Susan K. Roll, "The Churching of Women after Childbirth: An Old Rite Raising New Issues," Questions Liturgiques/Studies in Liturgy 76 (1995): 206 -29; Natalie Knodel , "Reconsidering an Obsolete Rite: The Churching of Women and Feminist Liturgical Theology," Feminist Theology 14 (1997) : 106-25; Georgia Frank, "Menstruation and Motherhood: Christian Attitudes in Late Antiquity," Studiae Historiae Ecclesiasticae 19 (1993) : 185-208 ; Ilana Be'er, "Blood Discharge: On Female 1m/Purity in the Priestly Code and in Biblical Narrative," in A Femini st Companion to Exodus to Deuteronomy, ed . Athalya Brenner (Sheffield : Sheffield Academic Press , 1994), 152-64; and Joanne M. Pierce, " 'Green Women' and Blood Pollution : Some Medieval Rituals for the Churching of Women after Childbirth," Studia Liturgica 29 (1995) : 191-215 . Quoted material from Gaer, "Traditional Customs and Rituals of the Nanai," 44-47. Evdokii I. Rornbandceva, "Some Observations and Customs of the Mansi (Voguls) in Connection with Childbirth," in Popular Beliefs and Folklore Tradition in Siberia, ed . Vilmos Dioszegi (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1960); and Quoted material from Meltzer, Birth : 183.. Harriet Sibisi, as quoted in Helen Callaway , " 'The Most Essentially Female Function of All' : Giving Birth," in Defining Females : The Nature of Women in Society, ed. Shirley Ardener (Oxford: Berg, 1993), 159-60. Meltzer, Birth, 145-48; Mary Smith , Baba of Karo: A Woman of the Moslem Hausa (New York: Praeger, 1964); and Turner, Rituals ofBirth, 18. Sara C. Randall, "Blood Is Hotter than Water : Popular Use of Hot and Cold in Kel Tamashez Illness Management," Social Science Medicine 36 (1993) : 677-79. Quoted material from Megan Biesele, "An Ideal of Unassisted Birth : Hunting, Healing, and Transformation among the Kalahari Iuhoansi," in Childbirth and Authoritative Knowledge , 486 ; Maurice Bloch, "Birth and the Beginning of Social Life among the Zafimaniry of Madagascar," in Coming into Ex istence, 81; Swant z, Blood, Milk, and Death, 73, 137; and Hunt, A Colonial Lexicon, 8,204-205,296-98,315-17. Quoted material from Hunt, A Colonial Lexicon, 204-205,211 ,278,297-98,315-17. Quoted material from Stol, Birth in Babylonia and the Bible, 111-12, 141-45, 177. Al-Utheimeen, Natural Blood of Women, 39-43. Beyerme, From Menarche to Menopause, 107. Manis Kumar Raha , "Birth and Infancy Rites among the Rabhas," Bulletin of the Cultural Research Institute 14 (1980) : 110; Maiden and Farwell, Tibetan Art of Parenting, 76,82; and Anup K. Kapoor and R.R. Prasad, "A Note on Beliefs and Practices Pertaining to Child-Birth among the Bhotias," Spectra ofAnthropological Progress 4 (1982): 36. Quoted material from Cameron, On the Edge of the Auspicious, 259-61 ; and Martha Levitt and Nancy Russell, "Mobili zing for Safe Motherhood in Nepal," World Health 51 (January 1998): 16. First quotation from Maiden and Farwell, Tibetan Art ofParenting, 76; and second quotation fromTownsend, Traditional Birth Attendants, 32.

Notes to Chapter 3 • 233 62. 63.

64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71.

72. 73.

McGilvray, "Sexual Power and Fertility," 51. Quoted material from Nid Anima, Childbirth and Burial Practices among Philipp ine Tribes (Quezon City, Philippines: Omar Publications, 1978),6,7, 13,22 ,28,35; Hart et al., Southeast A sian Birth Customs, 62: Meltzer, Birth , 118, 120-23, 133, 159; Jane Richardson Hanks, Mat ernity and Its Rituals in Bang Chan (Ithaca, NY: Southeast Asia Program, Department of Asian Studies, Cornell University, 1963): Barraud, "Kei Society and the Person," 229: and Patricia J. Kinloch, "Midwives and Midwifery in Western Samoa," in Healing Practices in the South Pacific, ed. Claire D.F. Parson s (Honolulu: Institute for Polynesian Studies , University of Hawaii Press, 1985),208-209; and Massard , "The Newborn Malay Child," 75-78. Hart et al., Southea st A sian Birth Customs, 13-14,59. Donn V. Hart, "From Pregnancy through Birth in a Bisayan Filipino Village," in Southea st Asian Birth Custom s, 53. Anima, Childbirth and Burial Practices, 2, 21, 36. Quoted material from Meltzer, Birth , 118, 122-23: and Hanks, Maternity and Its Rituals in Bang Chan . Meltzer, Birth, 120-22, 133, 159: and Hanks, Maternity and Its Rituals in Bang Chan . Barraud, "Kei Society and the Person ," 220-21. Andrew Mcwilliam,"Case Stud ies in Dual Classificat ion as Process :Ch ildbirth, Headhunting and Circumcision in West Timor," Oceania 65 (1994): 61. Carsten, "The Process of Childb irth," 36. Jennifer W. Nourse , Conceiving Spirits : Birth Rituals and Conte sted Identities among Lauje of Indonesia (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1999),78,86-89, 160. Townsend , Traditional Birth Attendants, 31-32 , 45: Eugene Ogan, "A Note on Nasioi Childbi rth," Journal of Polynesian Society 92 (1983): 102: Mead, "The Mountain-Dwelling Arapesh, ' 33; Claire D.F. Parsons , "Note s on Maori Sickness Knowledge and Healing Practices," in Healing Practices in the South Pacific, 219, 226: Meltzer, Birth, 135-36: Pukui, "Hawaiian Beliefs and Customs" ; Kinloch, "Midwives and Midwifery in Western Samoa," 208-209; Janice M. Morse, "Cultural Variation in Behavioral Response to Parturition: Childbirth in Fiji," Medical Anthropology 12 (1989): 44 , 47, 49: Barbara Luern, "Birth Rituals and the Reception of Newcomers: A Comparative Exploration of Cultural Int egration in Tuvalu and East Java," in Coming into Existence, 96-101: and Gillam, "Beliefs of the Waipei,' 86.

74. 75. 76. 77. 78.

Townsend, Traditional Birth Attendants, 31-32 . Iuillerat, Children ofthe Blood, 250-51. Scaletta, "Childbirth," 38, 43-44. Weiner, "Blood and Skin," 76. Ian Hogbin, Island ofMenstruating Men : Religion in Wogeo, New Guinea (London : Chandler,

79. 80.

Poole, "Transforming 'Natural' Woman ," 129-40: and Hauser-Schaublin, "Blood," 89-90. First quotation from Meltzer, Birth, 133: and second quotation from Mary Kawena Pukui, "Hawaiian Beliefs and Customs during Birth, Infancy, and Child hood," in Occasional Papers of the Bernice P. Bishop Museum , vol. 16, no. 17 (Honolulu, HI: Bishop Museum Press,

1970),92, 137-40.

1942). 81. Kinloch, "Midwives and Midwifery in Western Samoa," 209. 82. Morse , "Cultur al Variation .. .Childbirth in Fiji," 49. 83. L.L. Sample and Albert Mohr, "Wishram Birth and Obstetrics," Ethnology 19 (1980) : 43040 ; Fran z Boas, "Current Beliefs of the Kwakiutl Indians," Journal of American Folklore 45 (1932): 177-260, 202; Jean Malaurie, The Last Kings of Thule , trans. Gwendolen Freeman (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1956), 100: Powers, "Menstruation and Reproduction: An Oglala Case," 61: Hoffman, "Childbirth and Abortion," 10: Schwarz, Molded in the Image of Changing Woman, 138-41; Waxman, "Navajo Childbirth in Transition," 191-92 : Milligan, "Nursing Care and Beliefs of Expectant Navajo Women ," 86: Matilda Cox Stevenson , "The Zuni," in Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1901-2 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1904); and Meltzer, Birth, 158-65. 84. Sample and Mohr, "Wishram Birth and Obstetrics," 430-36. 85. Quoted material from Opler, "Childhood and Youth," 67-69: and Meltzer, Birth , 103, 106107, 189-91.

234 • Notes to Chapters 3 and 4 86.

87. 88.

89. 90. 91.

Quoted material from Schwar z, Molded in th e Image of Changing Woman , 114-15,132,13841; Waxman, "Navajo Childbirth in Transition," 189, 191 -92; and Milligan, "Nursing Care and Beliefs of Expectant Navajo Women ," 86. Stevenson, "The Zuni"; Quoted material from Meltzer, Birth , 158-65, quotation 159. Robert Franklin and Pamela Bunte, "Animals and Humans, Sex and Death : Toward a Symbolic Analysis of Four Southern Numic Rituals," Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology 18 (1996): 178-203. Anne C. Larme, "Environment, Vulnerability, and Gend er in Andean Ethnorncdicine," Social Science and Med icine 47 (1998): 1005-15 . Karsten, "Birth Customs and Idea s," 59, 62. Her skovits, Life in a Haitian Valley, 108-14 .

Chapter 4 1.

Robert Schomburg, "On the Nati ves of Guiana," Journal of th e Ethnological Society of London 1 (1844): 253-76 ; Frank W. Young, Initiation Ceremonies: A Cross-Cultural Study of Status Dramatization (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965); Bruno Bettelheim, Symbolic Wounds , rev. ed . (New York: Free Press ofClencoe/Collier Books, 1962); Paul B. Roscoe, " 'Initiation' in Cross -Cultural Perspect ive," in Gender Rituals: Female Initiation in Melanesia, ed. Nancy C. Lutkehaus and Paul B. Roscoe (New York: Routledge, 1995),219-20; Marilyn Strathern, "Making Incomplete," in Carv ed Flesh/ Cast Selves: Gendered Symbols and Social Practices, ed. Vigdis Broch-Due, Ingrid Rudie, and Tone Bleie (Providence : Berg, 1993),41-51; john W.M. Whiting, Richard Kluckhohn, and Albert Anthony, "Th e Function of Male Initiation Ceremonies at Puberty," in Readings in Social Psychology, ed . Eleanor E. Maccoby, Theodore M. Newcomb, and Eugene L. Hartley (New York: Holt, 1958), 359-70; Alice Schlegel and Herbert Barry III, "Adolescent Initiation Ceremonies: A Cross-Cultural Code, " Ethnology 18 (1979): 199-210; Mauric e Leenhardt, Do Kamo : Person and Myth in the Melanesian World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979); Philip L. Newman and David I. Boyd, "The Making of Men : Ritual and Meaning in Awa Male Initiation," in Rituals of Manhood: Male Initiation in Papua New Guin ea, ed. Gilbert H. Herdt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982),239-85; Donald Tuzin , Th e Voice of the Tambaran : Truth and Illusion in Ilahita Arapesh Religion (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980); Thomas Maschio, "Mythic 1mages and Objects of Myth in Rauto Female Puberty Ritual ," in Gender Rituals, 131-61 ; and Brigitta Hauser-Schaublin, "Puberty Rites, Women's Naven, and Initiation: Women's Rituals of Transition in Abelam and Iatrnul Culture," in Gend er Rituals, 33-53. 2. Arnold Van Gennep, The Rites of Passage, trans. Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffee (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960); Radcliffe-Brown , The Andaman Islanders, 276; jean S. La Fontaine, Initiation (New York: Penguin Books, 1985); Mari e Bonaparte, Female Sexuality, trans. john Rodker (New York: International Uni versiti es Press, 1953); C.D. Daly, "The Psycho -Ciological Origins of Circumcision," Interna tional Journal of Psychoanalysis 31 (1950): 217-36; Th eodor Reik, Ritual: Four Psycho-Analytic Studies (New York: Farrar, Strauss, 1946); Geza Roheim , The Eternal One s of the Dream (New York: International Universities Press , 1969); Lester R. Hiatt, "Secret Pseudo -Procreation Rites among the Australian Aborigines," in A nthropology in Oceania: Essays Presented to Ian Hogbin , ed . Lester R. Hiatt and Chandra jayawardena (San Franci sco: Chandler, 1971),77-88; Quoted material from Edward Norbeck, Donald E. Walker, and Mimi Cohen, "Th e Interpretation of Data : Puberty Rites," American Anthropologist 64 (1962): 482; john G. Kennedy, "Circumcision and Excision in Egyptian Nubia," Man n.s., 5 (1970): 189-90; Robert F. Murphy, "Social Structure and Sex Antagonism," Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 15 (1959): 97; Roger M. Keesing, "Introduction," in Rituals ofManhood , 1-43; and Bruce Lincoln, Emergingfrom the Chrysalis: Studies in Rituals of Women 's Init iation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981). 3. Van Gennep, The Rites of Passage, 66 . 4. Quoted material from Peter Rigby, "The Structural Context of Girls' Puberty Rites," Man, n.s., 2 (1967): 434; Audrey Richards, Chisungu: A Girls' Initiation Ceremony among the Bemba of Zambia (London: Tavistock, 1956), 52; David Levinson and Martin I. Malone, Toward Explaining Human Culture (New Haven , CT : Human Relations Area Files Press, 1980); Ladislav Holy, "Introduction: Description, Generalization and Comparison: Two

Notes to Chapter 4 • 235 Paradigms," in Comparative Anthropology, ed. Ladislav Holy (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987), 1-21; Rodney Needham, "Remarks on the Analysis of Kinship and Marriage," in Rethinking Kinship and Marriage, ed . Rodney Needham (London: Tavistock, 1971), 1-34; David M. Schneider, "The Meaning of Incest," Journal of the Polynesian Society 85 (1976): 4; David M. Schneider, A Critique of the Study of Kinship (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press , 1984); Malcolm Crick, Explorations in Language and Meaning: Toward a Semantic Anthropology (London: Malaby, 1976); Claude Levi-Strauss, Totemism (Boston : Beacon, 1963); Lamont Lindstrom, Cargo Cult: Strange Stories of Desirefrom Melanesia and Beyond (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press , 1993); Nancy McDowell, "A Note on Cargo Cults and Cultural Constructions of Change," Pacific Studies II (1988): 121-34 ; Lorraine Sexton, "Marriage as the Model for a New Initiation Ritual ," in Gender Rituals, 205-16; Schlegel and Barry, "Adolescent Initiation Ceremonies," 698; Alan A. Morinis, "The Ritual Experience: Pain and the Transformation of Consciousness in Ordeals of Initiation," Ethos 13, no . 2 (1985): 163; Ruth Benedict, Patterns of Culture (Boston : Houghton Mifflin, 1959), 25; Gilbert H. Herdt, The Sambia: Ritual and Gender in New Guinea (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1987), 101-69; Persi Diaconis and Frederick Mosteller, "Methods for Studying Coincidences," Journal of the American Statistical Association 84 (1989): 853-61 ; Martyn Hammersley and Paul Atkinson, Ethnography: Principles in Practice (New York: Tavistock, 1983),7; Robert F. Murphy, The Dialecticsof SocialLife:Alarms and Excursions in Anthropological Theory (New York: Basic Books, 1971),85, 101;Emily Schul z and Robert H. Lavenda, Cultural Anthropology:A Perspective on the Human Condition (St. Paul, MN: West, 1990),52; Anthony Giddens, Studies in Social and Political Theory (New York: Basic Books, 1977),80-90; and Anthony Giddens, The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984),343-47. 5. Quoted material from Joan Jacobs Brumberg, " 'Something Happens to Girls' : Menarche and the Emergence of the Modern American Hygienic Imperative," Journal of the History of Sexuality 4 (1993): 102; Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Fasting Girls: The Emergence of Anorexia Nervosa as a Modern Disease (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988); and Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routl edge, 1991). 6. Beyenne , FromMenarche to Menopause, 104,107; and Helen Callaway, " 'The Most Essentially Female Function of All' : Giving Birth," in Defining Females: The Nature of Women in Society, ed. Shirley Ardener (Oxford: Berg, 1993), 160. 7. Jean S. La Fontaine, "Ritualization of Women's Life Crises in Bugisu,' in The Interpretation of Ritual, ed. Jean S. La Fontaine (London: Tavistock, 1972); Callaway, "'The Most Essentially Female Function of All,''' 157;and quoted material from Ian Hogbin, Island ofMenstruating Men: Religion in Wogeo, New Guinea (London: Chandler, 1970),89-90, 125-36. 8. Quoted material from Cameron, On the Edgeof the Auspicious, 245-51; and Dougla s, Purity

and Danger. 9. Quoted material from Narendra Nath Bhattacharyya, Indian Puberty Rites (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 1980), 20-38, 42-44; Indira Barua, "Menarche in North -East Indian Communities: Some Bio-Social Aspects," South Asian Anthropologist 17 (1996): 65-72; Judith Modell, "Female Sexuality, Mockery, and a Challenge to Fate: A Reint erpretation of South Nayar Talikettukalyanarn,' in Sexual Meanings; Bruce Lincoln, "Talikettukalyanarn: The Marriage of Opposites," in Emerging from the Chrysalis, 7-16 ; Bruce Lincoln, "On the Nature of Women's Initiations," in Emergingfrom the Chrysalis, 104105; Kathleen Gough, "Tiyyar: North Kerala,' in Matrilineal Kinship, ed . David M. Schneider and Kathleen Gough (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961); Kathleen Gough, "The Nayars and the Definition of Marriage," Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 89 (1959): 23-24; E. Kathleen Gough, "Female Initiation Rites on the Malabar Coast," Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 85 (1955): 45-80; M.S.A. Rao, Social Change in Malabar (Bombay: Popular Press, 1957), 79f, 86, 93; A. Aiyappan, "Meaning of the Tali Rite," Bulletin of the Rama Varma Research Institute (1942); M.D. Raghavan, "Talikettu Kalyanarn,' Man in India 9 (1929); E. Valentine Daniel, Fluid Signs: Being a Person the Tamil Way (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 182-223 ; Lawrence A. Babb, The Divine: Hierarchy: Popular Hinduism in Central India (New York: Columbia University Press , 1975); Brenda E.I'. Beck, "Colour and Heat in South Indian Ritual," Man 4 (1969): 553-72 ; and Brenda E.F. Beck, "The Symbolic Merger of Body, Space, and Cosmos in Hindu Tamil Nadu, ' Contributions to Indian Sociology 10 (1976): 213-43.

236 • Notes to Chapter 4 10. 11.

12.

13.

14.

15. 16.

17. 18. 19.

20. 21.

22.

23.

24. 25.

Rober t J. Forn aro , "Modern ization and Midwives : The Daya of Egypt," Man and Life II (1985): 21. Geoffrey Gorer, Himalayan Village: A n A ccoun t of the Lepchas ofSikkim (London: M. Joseph , 1938), 175; First quot ation from Erne st Beaglehol e and Pearl Beaglehole, The Ethnology of Pukapuka (Honolulu, HI : Bernice P. Bishop Mus eum, 1938), 279; Reo Fortune, Ma nus Religion: An Eth nological Study of the Manu s Natives of the A dm iralty Islands (Philadelphia: American Phil osophical Societ y, 1935), 82; Mont agu , Com ing into Being, 115;and second and third quotations from Warner, A Black Civilizati on, 76, 580. Quoted material from Harold E. Dri ver, "Cultu re Element Distributions: XVI; Girls' Puberty Rites in Western No rth Amer ica ," Un iversity of California Publications in Anthropological Records 6 (1941-42) : 51; Harold Dri ver and S.H. Riesenb erg, "Hoof Rattle s and Girls ' Puberty Rites in North and South Ame rica," Indiana Un iversity Publications in Anthropology and Lingui stics, Memoi r 4 (1950): 1- 31; Leslie Spier, "Klamath Ethnography," Univer sity of California Publications in American Archaeology and Eth nology 30 (1930): 68-71, 314-25 ; and Cor a Du Bois, "Girls' Adolesc ence Observances in North America" (PhD diss ., Department of Anthropology, University of Califo rn ia at Berkeley, 1932). Quoted material from Mau reen Tru delle Schwarz, Molded in th e Imag e of Chan ging Woman: Navaj o Views on the Human Body and Personhood (Tucson : University of Ar izona Press, 1997), 23- 24, 173- 229; Bruce Lincoln , "Kinaa lda : Becoming the Goddess," in Emerg ingfrom the Ch rysalis, 17-33; and Bruce Lincoln , "Women's Init iation among the Navaho: Myth, Rite and Meaning," Paideuma 23 (1977): 255-63. Robert Franklin and Pamela Bunte, "Animals and Human s, Sex and Death: Toward a Symbolic Analysis of Four South ern Numic Ritu als," Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology 18 (1996): 178-86. Powers, "Menstru ation and Reproduction : An Oglala Case," 54-65. Quoted material from Bruc e Lincoln , "Festa da s Mocas Novas: The Cosmic Tour," in Eme rging f rom the Chrysalis, 50- 70; Curt Nim uendaju, The Tukuna (Berkeley: Univ ersity of California Press, 1952), 73- 92; Harold Schultz, "Tukuna Maidens Come of Age," National Geographic 116 (1959): 628-49; Gera rdo Reichel-Dolmatoff, Amazonian Cosm os: Th e Sexua l and Religio us Symbolism of the Tukun a Indian s (Chicago: Unive rsity of Chicago Pres s, 1968); and Claude Levi-Strauss, The Raw and the Cooked (New York: Harper and Row, 1969), 159f. Swantz, Blood , Milk, and Death, 35-79. Richards, Chisungu, 28-36 , 57- I l l, 120-24, 140-45. First, second , third, fourth, and sixth quotations fro m Peter Sarpong, Girls' N ubility Rites in A shanti (Tema : Ghana Publishing, 1977), 1-91 ; and fifth quo tation from Kofi Antubam, Ghana's Heritage ofCulture (Leipzig: Koeh ler and Amelang, 1963),43-55,82. Terence E. Hays and Patricia H. Hays, "O pposition and Complementarity of th e Sexes in Ndumba Ini tiation," in Ritual s of Manh ood, 222-28 . Elizabeth Faithorn, "T he Concept of Pollution among th e Kafe of th e Papu a New Guinea Highlands, " in Toward an A nthropology of Wom en, ed. Rayna R. Reiter (New York: Monthly Review Press , 1975), 127- 40. Margaret Mead, "Adolescence in Prim itive and Modern Societ y, in Th e New Generation : The Int imate Problem s ofMod ern Parent s and Children, ed. Victor Fra ncis Calverton and Samu el Schmalhausen (New York: Macau lay, 1930), 169- 88; and quot ed material from Brurnberg, " 'Som eth ing Happens to Girls,' " 104. Quoted material from William W. Bliss, Woman, and Her Thirty Years' Pilgrimage (Bost on : B.B. Russell, 1870),32 ; and Louis e Lander, Imag es ofBleeding: M enstruation as Ideology (New York : Orlando Press, 1988):.10-2 5. Judith Walzer Leavitt , Brought to Bed: Childbearing in A m erica, 1750-1950 (New York: Oxford Universi ty Press, 1986). Henry P. Bowditch , "The Growth of Childre n," Ma ssachus etts State Board of Health , Eighth Annual Report (Januar y 1877): 284; George Engelma nn, "The Americ an Girl of Toda y," Transact ions of the American Gynecological Society 25 (1900): 8- 44 ; James M. Tanner, Growth at Adolescence (Oxford : Blackwell Scientific Public ations, 1962); P.E. Brown , "The Age at Mena rche ," Briti sh Journal of Preventive and Social Medicine 29 (1966): 9-14; Leona Zacharias, Richard Wurtman, and Marti n Schat zoff, "Sexual Maturation in Contemporary Girls ," American Journal ofObstetr ics and Gy necology 108 (1970): 833-46; Mar ion E. Mar esh, "A Fort y-five Year Investigation for Secular Changes in Physical Maturation," American Journal of Physical Anthropology 36 (1972) : 103-109 ; Short, "The Evolution of Human

Notes to Chapter 4 • 237

26.

Reproduction"; Leona Zacharias, William Rand , and Richard Wurtman, "A Prospective Study of Sexual Development and Growth: The Statistics of Menarche," Obstetrical and Gynecological Survey 31 (1976): 336; Grace Wyshak and Rose E. Frisch , "Evidence for a Secular Trend in Age at Menarche," New England journal of Medicine 36 (1982) : 1033-35; Rose E. Frisch and R. Revelle, "Height and Weight at Menarche and a Hypothesis of Critic al Body Weights and Adolescent Events," Science 169 (1970) : 397-99; Rose E. Frisch , "A Method of Prediction of Age of Menarche from Height and Weight at Ages 9 through 13 Years," Pediatr ics 53 (1974): 384-90; JayBelsky, Laurence Steinberg, and Patrici a Draper, "Childhood Experience, Interpersonal Development, and Reproductive Strateg y: An Evolutionary Theory of Socialization," Child Development 62 (1991): 647-70; and quot ed material from Brumberg, " 'Something Happens to Girls,' " 105. Quoted material from Brumberg, " 'Something Happens to Girls,''' 109; Constance Nathanson, Dangerous Passage: The Social Control of Sexuality in Women's Adolescence (Philad ephia : Temple University Press, 1991); and Maris Vinovskis and Susan Juster, "Adolescence in Nineteenth-Century America," in Encyclopedia ofAdolescence, ed. Richard Lester, Anne C. Petersen, and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, 2 vols. (New York: Garland, 1991), vol. 2,698-707.

Third quotation from John H. Kellogg, Plain Facts for Old and Young (Burlington, IA: I.F. Segner, 1889), 183; First quotation from George L. Austin , Perils ofAmerican Womanhood, or a Doctor's Talk with Maiden , Wife and Mother (Boston : Lee and Shepard, 1883), 150; Second quotation from Robert Barnes, "Lumleian Lectures : The Convulsive Diseases of Women ," The Lancet 1 (1873): 514; Patrica Vertinsky, "Exercise, Physical Capability, and the Eternally Wounded Woman in Late Nineteenth Century North America," journal of Sport History 14 (1987) : 17-18,20-21; Fourth, fifth, and sixth quotations from Thomas E. Addis Emmet , The Principles and Practice of Gynecology (Philadelphia: H.C. Lea, 1879), 21; Seventh and eighth quotations from G. Stanley Hall, Adolescence (New York: D. Appleton, 1904), 1,618, 639; Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, "Sex in Mind and Education: A Reply," Fortnightly Review 15 (1874): 503; Mary Putnam Jacobi, The Question of Rest for Women during Menstruation (New York: Putnam, 1877); Clelia Mosher, "Normal Menstruation and Some of the Factors Modifying It," johns Hopkins Hospital Bulletin (April, May, June 1901); Henry Ling Taylor, "Exercise as Remedy," Popular Science Monthly 48 (March 1896) : 626; and Barbara Ehrenreich and Deidre English , For Her Own Good: 150 Years of the Experts' Advice to Women (New York: Doubleday, 1979), 134. 28. Edward H. Clarke, Sex in Education or a Fair Chance for the Girls (Boston : J.R. Osgood , 1873); T.S. Clouston, "Female Education from a Medical Point of View," Popular Science Monthly 24 (December 1883): 322-33; Kellogg, Plain Factsf or Old and Young, 83; and quoted material from Vertinsky, "Exercise, Physical Capability, and the Eternally Wounded Woman," 19. 29. Helen P. Kennedy, "Effects of High School Work upon Girls during Adolescence," Pedagogical Sem inary 3 (June 1896): 469-82; Clelia Duel Mosher, The Mosh er Surv ey: Sexual Attitudes of Forty -f ive Victorian Women, ed. James Mahood and Christian Wenburg (New York: Arno Press, 1980) ; A. Louise Brush, "Attitudes, Emotional and Physical Symptoms Commonly Associated with Menstruation in One Hundred Women," American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 8 (1938) : 286 -301; Carney Landis et al., Sex in Development (New York: Hoeber, 1940) ; Natalie Shainess, "A Re-evaluation of Some Aspects of Femininity through a Study of Menstruation: A Preliminary Report," Comprehen sive Psychiatry 2 (1961): 20-26; W.G. Shipman, "Age at Menarche and Adult Personality," Archives of General Psychiatry 10 (1964) : 155-59; Frances Y. Dunham, "Timing and Sources of Information about, and Attitudes toward Menstruation among College Females," Journal of Genetic Psychology 117 (1970) : 205-17; Research and Forecasts, Inc ., Summary ofSurv ey Results : Tampax , Inc. (New York: Research and Forecasts, Inc ., 1961); David P. Pillemer et al., "Flashbulb Memories of Menarche and Adult Menstrual Distress," Journal of Adoles cence 10 (1987) : 187-99; Jeanne Brooks-Gunn and Diane Ruble, "Menarche: The Interaction of Physiological, Cultural, and Social Factors," in The Menstrual Cycle: A Synthesis of Interdisciplinary Research, ed. Alice Dan , Effie A. Graham, and Carol P. Beecher (New York: Springer, 1980); Edward Tilt, On the Preservat ion of the Health of Women at Critical Periods ofLife (London: Churchill, 1851); Hall, Adolescence, 481; Brumberg, "'Something Happens to Girls,''' 106; First quotation from Clarke , Sex in Education; and second quotation from Burt Wilder, What Young People Should Know: The Reproductive Function in Man and the Lower Animals (Boston : Estes and

27.

Lauriat, 1875), 168.

238 • Notes to Chapter 4 30.

31.

32.

33.

34.

35.

36.

37.

38.

First quotation from Mrs. E.R. Shepherd, For Girls: A Special Physiology (New York: Fowler and Wells, 1884),9-10; Kennedy, "Effects of High School Work ," 472-73; and Remaining quotations from Mosher, Th e Mo sher Survey. Quoted material from Hall , Adolescence, 480; Crawford, "Att itudes to Menstruation in Seventeenth-Century England," 47-73; Vern Bullough and Martha Voight, "Women, Menstruation, and Nineteenth-Century Medicine," Bulletin of th e History of Medicine 47 (1973) : 66-82; Elaine Showalter and English Showalter, "Victorian Women and Menstruation," Victorian Studies 14 (1970) : 83 -91 ; Harvey Graham, Eternal Eve: The Mysteries of Birth and the Cu stoms That Surround It (London: Hutchinson , 1960); Ronald O. Valdiserri, "Men struation and Medical Th eor y: An Historical Overview," Journal of the American Medi cal Women 's Association 38 (1983): 66 -70; and Victor Cornelius Medvei , A History ofEndocrinology (Boston: MTp Press, 1982). George Naphey, The Physical Life of Women (Philadelphia: E. Hannaford, 1870); John Cowan, Science of a New Life (New York: Cowan, 1871); Shepherd, For Girls ; Wilder, What Young People Should Know; and Winfield Scott Hall, Daughter, Mother, and Father : A Story for Girls (Chicago: American Medical Association Pre ss, 1913). First, third, and fourth quotations from Corinne Azen Krause, Grandmothers, Mothers, and Daughters: An Oral History ofEthnicity, Mental Health, and Continuity of Thre e Generations ofJewish, Italian, and Slavic American Women (New York: Institute on Pluralism and Group Identity, 1978),55 -59; Second and fifth quotations from Mavis Hiltunen Biesanz , ed., Mavis Helmi : A Finnish American Girlhood (St. Cloud, MN : North Star Press of St. Cloud, 1989), 179,185; and Brumberg," 'So met hing Happens to Girl s,''' 118-19 . Final quotation from Kotex ad verti sement in Good Housekeeping 80 (1925) : 190; Roland Marchand, Advertising th e American Dream : Making Way for Modernity, 1920-1940 (Berkeley : Universit y of California Press, 1985); and Ann Trenernan, "Cashing in on the Curse: Advertising and the Menstrual Taboo," in The Femal e Gaze: Women as Viewers of Popular Culture, ed. Lorraine Gamman and Margaret Marshment (Seattle: Real Comet Press, 1989), 153-65; Most quotations from Brumberg, " 'Something Happens to Girls,' " 124-25. "Marjorie May's Twelfth Birthday," Parents ' Magazine 14 (February 1939): 49; Last quota tion from Kimberly-Clark ad verti sement, "Do You Scare Her to Death?" Parents' Magazine (1946); Kimberly-Clark advertisement, "Do You Scare Her to Death?" Ladies Home Journal (1946) ; Kimberly-Clark adv ertisement, "Do You Scare Her to Death? "Good Housekeeping (1946); and first quotation from Brumberg, "'Something Happens to Girls ,''' 124-25. A Young Girl 's Diary: With a Letter by Sigmund Freud, trans . Eden Paul and Cedar Paul (New York: T. Seltzer, 1921); Kathy Peiss, Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turnof-the-Century New York (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986); Erica Carter, "Alice in the Consumer Wonderland," in Gender and Generation, ed . Angela McRobbie and Mica Nava (London: Macmillan, 1984), 185-214; Wendy Chapkis, Beauty Secrets : Women and the Politics ofAppearance (Boston : South End Press, 1986); Leslie G. Roman and Linda ChristianSmith, Becoming Feminine: Th e Politics of Popular Culture (New York: Falmer Pres s, 1988); Bernard Barber and Lyle S. Lobel, "Fashion in Women's Clothes and the American Social System," in Class, Status, and Power: A Reader in Social Stratification , ed, Reinhard Bendix and Seymour Martin Lipset (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1953),323 -32; Roland Barthes, The Fashion System, trans. Matthew Ward and Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983); Joanne Finkelstein, The Fashioned Self (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988); and quoted material from Brumberg, " 'Som ething Happens to Girls ,' " 125-27. Susan Feldman, ed., African Myths and Tales (New York: Dell, 1963); First quotation from Meltzer, Birth, 9-10; Second and third quotations from Ahmed Shandall, "Circumcision and Infibulation of Females : A General Consideration of the Problem and a Clinical Study of the Complications in Sudanese Women ," Sudan Medical [ournal S (1967) : 178; Fourth quotations from Otto Meinardus, "Mythological, Historical, and Sociological Aspects of the Practice of Female Circumcision among the Egypt ians," Acta Ethnographica: Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 16 (1967) : 388 -89; Marie Bassili Assaad, Female Circumcision in Egypt: Current Research and Social 1mplications (Cairo: American Univ ersity in Cairo, Social Research Centre, 1979), 14; and Christiana Oware Knudsen, The Falling Dawadawa Tree: Femal e Circum cision in Developing Ghana (Hejbj erg, Denmark: Intervention Pres s, 1994), 196-99. Virginia Lee Barnes-Dean, "Clitoridectomy and Infibulation," Cultural Survival Quarterly 9 (1985): 28; A.H . Taba, "Female Circumcision," Magazin e of the World Health Organization (1979) : 8-13; Meinardus, "Mythological, Historical, and Sociological Aspects," 387-97; Peter

Notes to Chapter 4 • 239

39.

40.

Remondino, History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present (Philadelphia: EA . Davis , 1891); Mahmoud Karim and Roshdi Ammar, Female Circumcision and Sexual Desire (Cairo: Ain Shamis University Press, 1965); Azim Mustafa, "Female Circumcision and Infibulation in Sudan," Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology 173 (1966) : 305 ; and Asthma EI Dareer, Woman , Why Do You Weep : Circumcision and Its Consequences (London: Zed Press, 1982), iii. First quotation from Nawal El Saadawi, The Hidden Faces of Eve: Women in the Arab World (London: Zed Press, 1980), 39; Second and third quotations from Assaad, Female Circumcision, 9-10; Raqiya Haji Dualeh, Sisters in Affliction: Circumcision and Infibulation of Women in Africa (London: Zed Press, 1982); and Mustafa, "Female Circumcision," 302. First quotation from El Dareer, Woman, Why Do You Weep? 1-65; Efua Dorkenoo, Cutting the Rose: Female Genital Mutilation : The Practice and Its Prevention (London: Minority Rights Group, 1994), 4-27; Lois S. Bibbings, "Female Circumcision : Mutilation or Modification," in Law and Body Politics: Regulating the Female Body, ed. Io Bridgeman and Susan Milius (Brookfield: Aldershot, 1995), 152-53; Richard Winter, "Girls' Circumcision in the Sudan," in Kinship, Social Change, and Evolution: Proceedings of a Symposium Held in Honour of Walter Dostal, ed. Andre Gingrich et al. (Horn: Verlag Ferdinand Berger and Sohne, 1989), 155-57; Belkis Wolde Giorgis, Female Circumcision in Africa (Addis Ababa : United Nations, Economic Commission for Africa, African Training and Research Centre for Women, and Association of African Women for Research and Development, 1981), 25-33; Shandall, "Circumcision and Infibulation," 186-94; Taba, "Female Circumcision," 10; Asim Zaki Mustafa, "Cultural Practices and Anemia in Nigeria," Nutritional Review 34 (1976); Allan Worsle y, "Infibulation and Female Circumcision: A Study of a Little Known Custom," Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology 70 (1964) : 687; Charles Bowesman, Surgery and Clinical Pathology in the Tropics (London: Livingston, 1960),546-47; J.A. Verzin, "Sequelae of Female Circumcision," Tropical Doctor (October 1975), 163-69; Robert A. Myers et al., "Circumcision: Its Nature and Practice among Some Ethnic Groups in Southern Nigeria," Social Science Medicine 21, no . 5 (1985) : 581-88; Dallas Browne, "Christian Missionaries, Western Feminists, and the Kikuyu Clitoridectomy Controversy," in The Politics of Culture, ed. Brett Williams (Washington, DC : Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991); Lynda R. Day, "Rites and Reason : Precolonial Education and Its Relevance to the Current Production and Transmission of Knowledge," in Women and Education in Sub-Saharan Africa: Power, Opportunities, and Constraints, ed . Marianne Bloch, Josephine A. Bcoku -Betts, and B. Robert Tabachnick (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1998), 49-72; Francisca lsi Omorodion and Robert A. Myers, "Reasons for Female Circumcision among Some Ethnic Groups in Bendel State, Nigeria," African Study Monographs 9 (1989): 199; Francisca lsi Omorodion, "The Nature and Practice of Female Circumcision among the Ubiaja People of Bendel State Nigeria," West African Journal of Archaeology 21 (1991): 180; Pia Grassivaro Gallo and Franco Viviani, "Female Circumcision in Somalia," The Mankind Quarterly 29 (1988) : 169; Canon Ephantus Mwaniki Josiah, Female Circumcision (Nairobi: Uzima Press, 1990), 1-2; Boddy, "Womb as Oasis : The Symbolic Context of Pharaonic Circumcision in Rural Northern Sudan," American Ethnologist 9 (1982): 688; Second quotation from Rose Hayes, "Female Genital Mutilation, Fertility Control, Women's Roles, and the Patrilineage in Modern Sudan," American Ethnologist 2 (1975): 622; Sondra Hale, "A Question of Subjects: The 'Female Circumcision' Controversy and the Politics of Knowledge," Ufahamu 22, no. 3 (1994): 29; Boddy, Wombs and Alien Spirits : Women, Men, and the Zag-r Cult in Northern Sudan (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989); Janice Boddy, "Violence Embodied? Circumcision, Gender Politics, and Cultural Aesthetics," in Rethinking Violence against Women, ed . R. Emerson Dobash and Russell P. Dobash (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998), 77-110; Ellen Gruenbaum, "The Cultural Debate over Female Circumcision: The Sudanese Are Arguing This One out for Themselves," Medical Anthropology Quarterly 10 (1996) : 45575; John G. Kennedy, "Circumcision and Excision in Egyptian Nubia," Man 5 (1970) : 180-83; Anke Van der Kwaak, "Female Circumcision and Gender Identity: A Questionable Alliance?" Social Science and Medicine 35 (1992) : 777-87; Christine Walley, "Searching for 'Voices': Feminism, Anthropology, and the Global Debate over Female Genital Operations," Cultural Anthropology 12 (1997): 410-18; Melissa Parker, "Rethinking Female Circumcision," Africa 4 (1995): 510; Sandra D. Lane and Robert A. Rubenstein, "Judging the Other: Responding to Traditional Female Genital Surgeries," Hastings Center Report 26 (1996) : 33; Hamid Rushwan et al., Female Circumcision in the Sudan: Prevalence , Complications, Attitudes and Changes

240 • Notes to Chapter 4

41.

42.

43.

44.

45.

46. 47.

(Khartoum: Faculty of Medicine, University of Khartoum, 1983),92-93; Ellen Gruenbaum, The Female Circumcision Controversy: An Anthropological Perspective (Philadelphia: Univers ity of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), 7-8; and Nahid Toubia, Female Genital Mutilation : A Call for Global Action (1993; 2nd ed., New York: Women, Ink, 1995),25,34. Fran P. Hosken, "Female Genital Mutil ation and Human Rights," Feminist Issues (Summer 1981): 11; Fran Hosken, The Hosken Report: Genital and Sexual Mutilation of Females, 3rd rev. ed. (Lexington, MA: Women's International Network News, 1982), 24; Mary Daly, "African Genital Mutilation: The Unspeakable Atrocities," in Gyn lEcology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism (Boston : Beacon Press, 1978); Bronwyn Winter, "Women, the Law, and Cultural Relativism in France: The Case of Excision," Signs 19 (1994): 964; Melvin Konner, "Mutilated in the Name of Tradition," New York Times Book Review, April 15, 1990,5; Daniel Gordon, "Female Circumcision and Genital Operations in Egypt and the Sudan : A Dilemma for Medical Anthropology," Medical Anthropology Quarterly 5 (1991): 3-14 ; Alice Walker, Possessing the Secret of Joy (New York: Harcourt Brace jovanovich, 1992); Alice Walker and Pratibha Parmar, Warrior Marks : Female Genital Mutilations and the Sexual Blinding of Women (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1993); Browne, "Christian Missionaries, Western Feminists, and the Kikuyu "; Nancy Scheper-Hughes, "Virgin Territory: The Male Discovery of the Clitoris," Medical Anthropology Quarterly 5 (1991): 26-27; Gruenbaum, "The Cultural Debate "; Day, "Rites and Reason ," 5-66; and Hale, "A Question of Subjects," 29. Quoted material from Awa Thiam, La Parole Aux Negresses (Paris : De Noel-Gonthier, 1978), 91; Giorgis, Female Circumcision , 9; Meinardus, "Mythological, Historical, and Sociological Aspects," 393; and Knudsen, The Falling Dawadawa Tree, 52-55, 70-72 , 75-77 , 95-96, 99101, 134-36. Fourth, fifth, sixth , and seventh quotations from janice Boddy, "Spirits and Selves in Northern Sudan : The Cultural Therapeutics of Possession and Trance," American Ethnologist 15 (1988): 7; janice Boddy, "Spirit Possession and Gender Complementarity: Za?r in Rural Northern Sudan," in Gender in Cross-Cultural Perspective, ed. Caroline Brettell and Carolyn F. Sargent (Upper Saddle River, N]: Prentice Hall, 2001), 397-409; janice Boddy, "Spirit Possession Revisited : Beyond Instrumentality," Annual Review of Anthropology 23 (1994): 407-34; Tenth and eleventh quotations from Heather Bell, "Midwifery Training and Female Circumcision in the Inter-War Anglo-Egyptian Sudan," Journal ofAfrican History 39 (1998): 295; Susan M. Kenyon, Five Women of Sennar: Culture and Change in Central Sudan (Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, 2004); Megan Vaughan, Curing Their Ills: Colonial Power and African Illness (Stanford: Stanford Univer sity Press, 1991),56,66-71; First , second, and third quotations from Boddy, "Womb as Oasis ," 682-98; Eighth and ninth quotations from Boddy, Wombs and Alien Spirits, 100-106, 248-50; Carol Summers, "Intimate Colonialism: The Imperial Production of Reproduction in Uganda , 1907-1925," Signs 16 (1991): 799-807; and Ellen Gruenbaum, "Reproductive Ritual and Social Reproduction: Female Circumcision and the Subordination of Women in Sudan ," in Economy and Class in Sudan , ed. Norman O'Neill and jay O'Brien (Aldershot, UK: Avebury, 1988),309. Quoted material from john G. Kennedy, "Circumcision and Excision in Egyptian Nubia," Man 5 (1970): 180-83; and john G. Kennedy, "Mushahara: A Nubian Concept of Supernatural Danger and the Theory of Taboo," American Anthropologist 69 (1967): 685-702. Browne, "Christian Missionaries," 267; Quoted material from jean Davison, Voices from the Mutira : Change in the Lives ofRural Kikuyu Women , 1910-1995 (Boulder, CO : Lynne Rienner, 1996), 6; Corinne Kratz, Affecting Performance: Meaning, Movement, and Experience in Okiek Women's Initiation (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Inst itution Press, 1994),95; Veena Das, Critical Events (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 178; Lynn M, Thomas, "Imperial Concerns and 'Women's Affairs': State Efforts to Regulate Clitoridectomy and Eradicate Abortion in Meru, Kenya, 1910-1950," Journal ofAfrican History 39 (1990): 12426; Granville St. j. Orde Browne, "Circumcision Ceremonies among the Amwimbe," Man 79 (1913): 138; and Granville St. j. Orde Browne, "Circumcision Ceremony in Chuka," Man 39 (1915):65-68. Gruenbaum, The Female Circumcision Controversy, 55-56. Hildegarda L. Kiwasila, Traditional Practices Affecting Women 's Health : The Case of Female Circumcision among the Wavidunda of Kidodi in Kilosa District, Morogoro Region (Dar es Salaam , Tanzania: Women 's Research and Documentation Project, Final Report, 1998), 84-99.

Notes to Chapter 4 • 241 48.

Max Weber, Ancient Judaism, trans. and ed. Hans H. Gerth and Don Martindale (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1952),92; James B. Prichard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1955),326; Roland De Vaux, Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions (New York: McGraw-Hili, 1965),46; Erich Isaac, "Circumcision as a Covenant Rite," Anthropos 59 (1964): 449-53; The Bible, an American translation, the Old Testament translated by a group of scholars under the editorship of]. M. Powis Smith ; the New Testament translated by Edgar J. Goodspeed. (Chicago : The University of Chicago press, cI93l), Ier, 9:24-2 ; Julian Morgenstern, Rites ofBirth, Marriage , Death and Kindred Occasions among the Semites (New York: Ktav, 1973); Jack M. Sasson, "Circumcision in the Ancient Near East," Journal of Biblical Literature 85 (1966): 473-76; Abdu'r-Razzaq, Circumcision in Islam, 12; Paysach J. Krohn, Bris Milah/Circumcision-The Covenant of Abraham: A Compendium of Laws, Rituals, and Customs from Birth to Bris, Anthologizedfrom Talmudic, and Traditional Sources (Brooklyn, NY: Mesorah Publications, 1985), 21-31; Marvin Fox, "The Sign of the Covenant: Circumcision in the Light of the Priestly B ot Etilogies," RB 81 (1974): 557-96 ; Hans Kosmala , "The 'Bloody Husband,''' Vetus Testamentum 12 (1962): 1427; Asher Asher, The Jewish Rite of Circumcision, with the Prayers and Laws Appertaining Thereto (London: Philip Valentine, 1873); Edwin O. James, "Initiatory Rituals," in Myth and Ritual: Essays on the Myth and Ritual of the Hebrews in Relation to the Culture Pattern of the Ancient East, ed . Samuel H. Hooke (London: Oxford University Press, 1933), 147-71; Ernest Kennaway, "Some Biological Aspects of Iewish Ritual," Man 57 (1957): 65-72; Eugene J. Cohen, Guide to Ritual Circumcision and Redemption ofthe First-Born Son (New York: Ktav Publishing, 1984); Brad H. Boxman, "The Significance of Brit Milah in Reform Judaism" (PhD diss., Hebrew Union College, 1986); Sander Gilman, Sexuality, An Illustrated History : Representing the Sexual in Medicine and Culture from the Middle Ages to the Age of AIDS (New York: John Wiley, 1989),41-42,79,157,255,258,265; Melvin R. Lansky and Benjamin Kilborne, "Circumcision and Biblical Narrative," in Essays in Honor of A. Irving Hallowell, ed. L. Bryce Boyer and Ruth M. Boyer (Hillsdale: Analytic Press, Psychoanalytic Study of Society, 1991),vol. 16,249 -64; Sander L. Gilman, "Male Sexuality and Contemporary Jewish Literature in German: The Damaged Body as the Image of the Damaged Soul," Genders 16 (1993): 113-40; Harvey E. Goldberg, "Cambridge in the Land of Canaan: Descent, Alliance, Circumcision, and Instruction in the Bible," Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society 24 (1996): 9-34; Emil G. Hirsch et al., "Circumcision" (2002), www.JewishEnclycopedia.com; Quoted material from Klein, A Time to Be Born, 173; Avrohom Yechezkel Bloch, Origins of Jewish Customs: The Jewish Child (New York: Z. Berman Books, 1980), 22-25; Elliot R. Wolfson , "Circumcision, Vision of God, and Textual Interpretation: From Midrashic Trope to Mystical Symbol," History of Religions 27 (1987): 195; Elliot R. Wolfson , "Circumcision and the Divine Name," Jewish Quarterly Review 78 (1987): 99; Walther Eichrodt, Theology of the Old Testament (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1961), vol. I, 138, n. 3; Herbert Chanan Brichto, "On Slaughter and Sacrifice, Blood and Atonement," Hebrew Union College Annual47 (1976): 19-55; Julian Morgenstern, "The 'Bloody Husband' (Exod . 4:24-26) Once Again," Hebrew Union College Annual34 (1963): 39; Stanley F. Chyet and Norman B. Mirshy, "Reflections on Circumcision as Sacrifice," in Berit Milah in the Reform Context, ed. Lewis M. Barth (New York: Central Conference of American Rabbis, 1990), 59-68; Nancy Jay, "Sacrifice as Remedy for Having Been Born of Women," in Immaculate and Powerful, ed . Clarissa W. Atkinson et al. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1985), 283-309; Nancy Jay, "Sacrifice , Descent, and the Patriarchs," Vetus Testamentum 38 (1988): 52-70; and Jay, Throughout Your Generations Forever, 94-111. 49. Seventh, eighth, and fourteenth quotations from Lawrence A. Hoffman, Covenant of Blood : Circumcision and Gender in Rabbinic Judaism (Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1996), 23-25, 34, 71-72, 96-110, 211; Daniel Boyarin, "'This We Know to Be the Carnal Israel': Circumcision and the Erotic Life of God and Israel," Critical Inquiry 18 (1992): 495; Daniel Boyarin, Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Rabbinic Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); Judith Romney Wegner, Chattel or Person (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 155-56; Ross Shepard Kraemer, Her Share of the Blessing (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992),99-105,117-23; Bernadette J. Brooten, Women Leaders in the Ancient Synagogue : Inscriptional Evidence and Background Issues (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1982); Ross Shepard Kraemer, "A New Inscription from Malta and the Question of Women Elders in the Diaspora Jewish Communities," Harvard Theological Review 78 (1985): 431-38 ; Leonie

242 • Notes to Chapter 4

50.

51.

J. Arc he r, "Bou nd by Blood : C irc u mcisio n a nd Me nstr ua l Tab oo in Pos t- Exilic Jud ai sm ," in Af ter Eve, ed . Janet M a rtin Sos k ice (London: Co ll ins Ma rs ha ll Pic kering, 1990) , 38-61; judith Baskin, "T he Sep ar ation of Women in Rabbinic judaism ," in Wom en, Religion , and Social Cha nge, ed . Yvo nne Yazbe ck Ha ddad and Ell iso n Bank s Fin dl y (Albany: State University of New York Pre ss, 198 5), 8-9; Seco nd, third, fourth , a nd fifth quotation s from Howa rd EilbergSchwa rtz, Th e Savage in Judaism : A n Anthrop ology of Isra elite Religion and A ncient Judai sm (Bloo m ingto n: Indiana U nivers ity Press, 1990) , 14 1- 76, 180 ; jerome H . Ne yre y, " T he Idea of Purit y in Mark 's Gos pe l," in Wom en, Religion, and Social Cha nge, 91-105; Rahel Wasserfall, "Menstr uatio n and Identity: The M ean ing of Ni dda h fo r Mo ro ccan Women Immigrants to Isr ael," in People of th e Body: Jews and Jud aism fro m an Embo died Perspectiv e, ed . Ho ward Eilb erg -Schwart z (Albany: State Un ive rs it y of New Yo rk Pre ss, 1992); Da vid P. Wright, The Dispo sal of Impurity (At lanta, GA: Scholars Pre ss, 1987), 179 -21 9; Meli ssa Llewelyn -Davie s, "Wo me n, Warriors and Patr iar ch s," in Sex ua l Me anings; Firs t quotation fr om G old berg, "C am brid ge in th e Land of Ca naa n," 26 ; Jacob Ne us ne r, Th e Idea ofPurity in A ncient Judaism (Leiden : E.j. Brill , 1973); Me na he m Har an , "Seet h ing a Kid in Its Mother's Milk," Journa l of Jewish Studies 30 (1979) : 23- 35; Jacob Mi lgrom, "Yo u Sha ll No t Boil a Kid in It s Mother's Milk," Bible Review I (1985) : 48 - 55; Sixth quota tion from the Bible , an Am er ican translation , th e Old Testament tra ns lat ed by a group of schola rs under the editorsh ip of J. M . Powis Smith; th e Ne w Testa me n t translat ed by Edgar I. G oods peed. (Chicago: T he Univer sit y of C hicago pr ess, cl931) , Ezek . 16:3- 7; Nint h quotation fr om Jay, "Sacrifice as Remedy"; Nancy Jay, "Sacr ifice, Descent, and the Patriarchs"; Jay, Throughout Your Generations Forever, 94 I ll ; Klein , A Tim e to Be Born , 173; Jam es E. Peron , "C irc u m cisio n: Then and No w," Many Blessings 3 (2000) : 41-42; Tenth , eleve nt h, tw elfth, a nd thirt eenth qu ot at ion s from Michel de Monta ign e, Travel Journ al, t ra ns . Don ald Fra me (San Francisco : North Point Press, 1983) , 80-83, as quoted in Jam es A. Boon, "C irc ums cr ibi ng C ircu mcis io n /U nci rcu m cis io n : An Essay amidst the Hi st ory of Difficu lt Descript ion ," in Imp licit Und erstandings: Observing, Reporting and Reflecting on the Encounters betwe en Europea ns and Other People in the Early Modern Era, ed . Stua rt B. Schwa rtz (Cambridge: Ca m brid ge Uni ver sit y Pr ess, 1994) , 573; Rernondino, History of Circumcision, 157; james A. Boon, Oth er Tribes, Oth er Scrib es: Sy m bolic Anthropology in the Compa rative St udy of Cultures, Histor ies, Religions, and Text s (New Yo rk: Ca mb rid ge Un ivers ity Pre ss, 1977 ), ch ap . 2; and John M . Efro n, M edi cine and the German Jews: A Histo ry (New Haven , CT: Yale Un ivers it y Press, 2001), 131-32 ,22 5-27, 229 -30. Bhattacharyya, Indian Pube rty Rites, 45 -4 6; Ewa A. C hy lins ki, "Ritua lis m of Fa mi ly Life in Soviet Central Asia: T he Sun na t (Circumci sion )," in Cultu ral Change and Contin uity in Central A sia , ed . Shirin Akin er (London : Kegan Pa u l In ternational , 1991), 160-70; Abu Bakr Abd u'r-Razza q, Circum cision in Islam (London: Dar Al Taq wa, 1998), I I, 18, 21-22 ; Abu Sahlieh Aldeeb and Sam i Awad, To M utilate in th e Na me of [ehova or A llah: Legiti m ization of Male an d Fem ale Circum cision (Ams terd am: M idd le East Research As so ciates, Occasional Paper no . 21, 1994) ; Nnko Soo ri et al., " The Populari zat ion of Mal e C ircu mcis ion in Africa : Changing Practices among the Suku ma of Ta nz an ia," Afri can A nth rop ology 4 (1997): 68 -79; Sarpong, Girls' N ubility Rite s, 12; Knudsen , Th e Falling Dawadawa Tree, 29, 49,62-63 ,67,73 , 89, 92-93, 95, 97, 102, 109, 134 , 142; Fir st quotation from Abdelwahab Bouhdiba, Sexuality in Islam, tran s. Alan Sheridan (London : Rou tledge Kcgan Paul , 1985), 48 ; and Second quota tion fro m Deepak Mehta , "C ircu mcision, Bod y and Co m m u n ity," Contributions to Ind ian Sociology, n .s., 30 (1996 ): 215-43. Firs t and seco nd quotation s from Pet er just , "Me n , Women and Mukanda: A Trans fo r m at ion al Analysis of C ircumcision among Two We st Ce ntr al African Tribes," African Social Research 13 (1972) : 191- 93; T hird, fourth , and fifth quotations from William C. Willoughby, "N otes on the Init iation Ceremo n ies of th e Becwana,' Journ al of th e Royal Anthropological Institute 39 (1909) : 295-314; jean Comaroff, Body of Power, Spi rit of Resistance, 85-11 4 ; Eig ht h and ninth quotat ion s from Max Gluckm a n, " T he Role of the Sexes in Wiko Circ u m cisio n Ceremonies," in Social Structu re: Studies Presen ted to A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, ed . M eyer Fortes (London : O xford at the C la rendo n Press , 1949) , 147- 50 ; A.N .N. Ngxa m ngx a, "T he Fu nction of Circumcision among th e Xhosa -spea k ing Tr ibes in Hi storical Per sp ective," in Man : Anthropological Essays Present ed to O.P. Raum , ed . E.j. De lag er (C ape Town: C. Struik, 1971): 187; Sam son M. G u ma, "So m e Aspects of Circumcision in Basutoland,' African Studies 24 (1965) : 242, 244 , 247; La Fontain e, "Rituali zation of Wom en 's Life C r ises in Bugisu", Call awa y, " 'T he Mo st Esse ntially Fema le Fun cti on of All ,' '' 157- 58; A.R .W. C rosse-U pco tt,

Notes to Chapt er 4 • 243

52.

53.

"Ma le Ci rcumcision among th e Ngindo," Journ al of th e Royal Anthropological In stitute of Great Britain and Ireland 89 (1959): 169-89; Gerhard Kubik , "Boys' Circumcisio n School of th e Yao, Ma lawi, Southeast Africa," Ethnologic 9 (1979): 13; Sixth and sevent h quotat ion s from Thomas Johnston , "Secret Ini tiation Songs of th e Shan gana-Tsonga Ci rcumcisio n Rite: A Textual a nd Musical Anal ysis," Journal ofAmerican Folklore 87 (1974): 330, 331- 32; Philip Mayer, " 'Traditional ' Manhood Initiation in a n Indu st rial City: Th e Afr ican View," in Man , 11 ; Orde-Browne , "T he Circumc ision Ceremony in Chuka,' 65-68 ; C.A . Wheelwright , "N ative Circumci sion Lodges in th e Zoutpansberg District," Journal of the Anthropological In stitute ofGreat Britain and Ireland 35 (1905): 251- 55; author unknown, "Initiation Poles at Tribal Schoo ls," Bantu 17 (1970) : 23-2 7; Wern er Eiselen , Init iation Rit es of the Bam asem ola (Kaapstad, Stellenbosch en Bloemfon tein : Nasionale Pers. Bepe rk, 1932); Andreas Kronenberg, "Ny imang Circumcision," Sudan Notes and Records 39 (1958): 79- 84 ; Paul Mercier, "The Social Role of Circumcision among th e Besorube,' American Anthropologist , n.s., 53 (1951): 326-37; and tenth qu ot ation from Paul Bohannan , "Circumcision am ong th e Tiv," Man 54 (1954): 2-6. Seco nd quo tation from Roger M. Keesing, "Intr oduct ion," in Ritua ls ofManh ood, 5- 13; First quot ation from Michael R. Allen, Male Cults and Secret Initiation s in M elan esia (Victoria: Melbourne Univ ersity Pre ss, 1967), 31, 38, 58,61 ,63, 68,86-87,91 ; Poole, "T he Ritual Forging of Identity"; Eighth a nd ninth quot ati on s from Philip L. Newman and David J. Boyd, "T he Mak ing of Men: Ritu al a nd Meaning in Awa Male Initi ation," in Ritual s of M anhood, 239 77; Eleventh a nd twelfth qu ot ation s from Deborah B. Gewe rt z, "The Fath er Who Bore Me: The Role of Tsambunwuro during Chambri Initiation Ceremonies," in Rituals of M anho od, 287, 317-19; Donald F. Tuzin, "Ritual Violence among th e Ilahita Arapesh," in Ritu als of Manh ood , 337-3 8; Gre gor y Bateson , Naven (Stanfo rd : Stan ford University Press, 1958); Third , fourth, fifth , and sixth qu ota tion s from Hogb in, The Island of M enstruating M en , 86 124 ; Tenth quo tation from Hays a nd Hays, "Opposition a nd Complementarity of the Sexes in Ndumba Initiation"; Ronald M. Berndt, Ex cess and Restrain t: Social Con trol among a New Gui nea M ountain People (Chic ago: University of Chicago Press, 1962); Kenneth E. Read , Th e High Valley (New York: Scribner's, 1965); a nd Shirle y Lindenbaum, "A Wife Is the Hand of Man ," in Man and Wom an in th e Ne w Guinea Highlan ds, ed. Paula Brown and Georgeda Buchbin der (Was hington, DC: Ame rica n Anthropological Association, 1976), 54 -62. I use th e term "sem en ingesti ng" ins tead of th e co mmonly used term "ritual male homo sexu ality," or RHS, which I believe is a misnomer. The initiators in th ese rituals had het ero sexual ma r riages and were not homosex uals. Semen in gestion occurred only during in itiat ion rit es. The term "bi sexuali ty" is not even warranted in such cases. See Second, third , and four th qu ot ations from Mich ael Allen , "Male Cults Revisited : The Politi cs of Blood ver sus Seme n," Oceania 68 (1998) : 189-203 ; First quot ati on from Levi-St rauss, The Eleme ntary Structures of Kinsh ip ; Jan van Baal, "The Cult of the Bull-roar er in Australia and Sout hern New Guinea," Bijdragen tot de Taal -, Lan d-, en Volke nd unde 119 (1963) : 201-14 ; Jan van Baal, Dema , Description and Analysis of M arind -anim Culture (T he Hagu e: Martinus Nijhoff, 196 6); Jan van Baal, "The Dialectic s of Sex in Mar ind-an im Culture," in Ritualized Homo sex uality in Mel anesia, ed. Gi lber t H. Herdt (Berkeley: University of Ca lifo rn ia Press, 1984); Gilbert H. Herdt, "Fetis h and Fantasy in Sambia Initiation," in Rituals of M anhood, 44-98; Da ryl K. Feil, Th e Evolution of Highl an d Ne w Guinea Societies (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer sity Press, 1987); Sh irley Lindenbaum, "Varia tions on a Sociosexu al Theme in Melane sia," in Ritualiz ed Homosexuality; Bruce M. Knauft, South Coast Ne w Guin ea Cultures (Cambridge: Ca mbridge Universit y Press, 1993); Mauric e God elier, "Social Hiera rchi es amo ng the Bar uya of New Gui nea," in Inequ ality in New Guinea Highlands Societies, ed . Andrew J. St rat hern (Cambrid ge: Ca mbr idge Univers ity Press, 1982),3-34; Mau rice Go delier, The Maki ng of Great M en: Male Domination and Power am ong the Ne w Gui nea Baru ya (Cambridge: Ca mbridge Univers ity Pre ss, 1986) ; Maur ice Godelier, "A Unfinished Atte mpt at Reconstructin g the Socia l Pro cesses which May Have Prompted the Tra nsformation of Great-Men Soc ieties into Big Men Societ ies," in Big Men and Great Men : Person ifications of Power in Melan esia, ed . Maurice God elier a nd Marilyn St rathern (Cambridge: Ca mbridge Unive rsity Press, 1991); Dan Jorgen sen , "Big Men , Great Men a nd Wom en : Altern ative Logics of Ge nder Difference," in Big Men and Great Men; Raymond C. Kelly, "Witchcraft and Sexual Relations: An Explorat ion in the Social and Sem an tic Implicat ion s of a Str uct ure of Belief," in Man and Wom an in th e New Guinea Highl ands, 36 - 54; Raymond C. Kelly, Etoro Social Structure (Ann Arbo r: Univers ity of Mich igan Press, 1977); Edward L. Schieffelin, The Sor row of the Lonely

244. Notes to Chapters 4 and 5 and the Burning of the Dancers (New York: SI. Martin's Press, 1976); Edward L. Schieffelin, "The Bau'a Ceremonial Hunting Lodge: An Alternative to Initiation," in Rituals ofManhood, 155-200; Arve Sorum, "The Seeds of Power : Patterns in Bedamini Male Initiation," Social Analysis 10 (1982): 42-62; Arve Sorum, "Growth and Decay : Bedamini Notions of Sexuality," in Ritualized Homosexuality; Michael Wood, "Karnula Social Structure and Ritual" (PhD diss ., Macq uarie University, NSW, Australia, 1982); Thomas M. Ernst, "Onabasulu Male Homosexuality: Cosmology, Affect and Prescribed Ma le Homosexual Activity among the Onabasulu of South Papua Plateau," Oceania 62 (1991): I-ll; Maurice Godelier, The Making of Great Men : Male Domination and Power among the Guinea Baruya (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press , 1986); Iadran Mimica, "Omalyce: An Ethnography of the Ikwaye View of the Cosmos" (PhD d iss., Australian National University, Canberra, 1981); Herdt, Guardians of the Flute, 223-27; Gilbert H. Herdt, "Sarnbia Nose-Bleeding Rites and Ma le Proximity to Women," Ethos 10 (1982): 189-23 1; Jean Guiart, "Native Society in the New Hebrides: The Big Nambas of Northern Malekula ," Mankind 4 (1953): 439-46; an d Andrew McWilliam, "Case Studies in Dual Classification as Process: Childbirth, Headhunting and Circumcision in West Timor," Oceania 65 (1994): 6-70. 54. Awang Hasmadi Awang Mois, "Selako Circumcision," Sarawak Museum journal 29 (1981): 64; and Quoted material from Adolph B. Brewster, "Circumcision in Noikoro, Noemalu and Mboumbudho," journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 49 (1919): 310. 55. Quoted material from John E. Caw te, "Why We Slit the Penis," in The Psychology of Aboriginal Australians, ed . George E. Kearney, Philip R. de Lacey, and Graham R. Davidson (Sydney : John Wiley , 1973): 384-88; John E. Cawte, N. Djagamara, and Murray J. Barrett, "The Meaning of Subincision of the Urethra to Aboriginal Australians," British journa l of Med ical Psychology 39 (1966): 245 -53; Richard Owens, "Marsupalia," in The Cyclopaedia of A natomy and Physiology, ed . Rober t Bent ley Todd (London : Longman, Brown , Green, Longrnans, and Roberts, 1835- 1859), vol. 3, 257-330; Philip Singer and Daniel E. Desole , "The Australian Subincis ion Ceremony Reconsidered: Vaginal Envy or Kangaroo Bifid Peni s Envy," American Anthropologist, n .s., 69 (1967): 355-58; Dennis Gray, "A Reviva l of the Law: The Probable Spread of Initiation Circumcision to the Coast of Western Australia," Ocean ia 48 (1978): 197; and Montagu, Coming into Being, 312-25.

Chap ter 5 Ina Warriner, "Demography, Amenorrhea, and Fertility," in Regulating Menstruation : Beliefs, Practices, Interpretations, ed . Etienne van de Walle and Elisha P. Renne (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 113-40. 2. Q uoted material from Louise Lander, Images of Bleeding: Menstruation as Ideo logy (New York: Orlando Press, 1988), 171; Elizabeth Fisher , Woman 's Creation : Sexual Evolution and the Shaping of Society (Garden City, NY: Anchor PresslDoubleday, 1979); and Robert A. Hinde, Biological Bases of Human Social Behavior (New York: McGraw-H ill, 1974). 3. Elsimar M. Coutinho, with Sheldon J. Segal, Is Menstruation Obsolete? How Suppressing Men st ruation Can Help Women Who Sufferfrom Anemia, Endometriosis, or PMS (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 64- 66, 109- 10; Timothy Taylor, The Prehistory of Sex : Four M illion Years of Human Sexual Culture (New York: Bantam Books , 1996), 19-51; Lander, Images of Bleeding, 163-69; Donna Haraway, Primate Visions : Gender, Race and Nature in the World of Modern Science (New York: Routledge, 1989); Donna Haraway, "Pr imatology Is Politics by Other Means," in Feminist Approaches to Science, ed. Ruth Bleier (New York: Pergamon Press, 1986); Linda Marie Fedigan, Primate Parad igms : Sex Roles and Socia l Bonds (Montreal: Ede n Press, 1982); and Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, The Woman That Never Evolved (Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press , 1981). 4. Roger V. Short, "The Evolution of Human Reproduction," Proceedings of the Roya l Society of London, B: Biological Sciences 195 (1976): 3, 9-18; Egon Diczfalusy and Ulf Borell, eds., Con trol of Human Fertility (New York: Wiley In terscie nce Division, 1971); Barba ra B. Harrell, "Lacta tion and Men struation in Cultural Perspective," American Anthropologist 83 (1981): 801, 803; Robert V. Wells, "Women's Lives Transformed: Demographic and Fami ly Patterns in America, 1600-1970 ," in Women of America: A History, ed. Carol Ruth Berk in l.

Notes to Chapter 5 • 245

5. 6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17. 18. 19.

20. 21. 22.

and Mary Beth Norton (Boston : Houghton Mifflin, 1979), 18,27 ; and June Sochen, Herstory: A Womans View ofAmerican History (New York: Alfred, 1974),35. Clellan Stearns Ford, A Comparative Study of Human Reproduction (New Haven : Yale University Press, 1945), 14-19. Quoted matieral from Pliny, Natural History, trans. Philemon Holland, VII : 64ff., XVII : 266, XXVlII: 38, 44, 65, 67, 73, 77, 81, 82, 84, 85; Etienne van de Walle, "Menst ru al Catharsis and the Greek Physician," in Regulating Menstruation, 3-21; Lesley Dean-Jones, Women's Bodies in Classical Greek Science (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994); and Elisha P. Renne and Etienne van de Walle, "Introduction," in Regulating Menstruation, xix. Leviticus 15:19-28; and Nahmonides as quoted in Beth S. Wenger, "Mitzvah and Medicine: Gender, Assimilation, and the Scientific Defense of 'Family Purity,' " jewish Social Studies 5 (1999): 176. Halliday, Greek and Roman Folklore, 41-44; Frazer, The Golden Bough, abridged ed. (London: Macmillan, 1945),606; and Renne and van de Walle, "Introduction," in Regulating Menstruation, xxviii-xxix. Bhattacharyya, Indian Puberty Rites, 9, 13-17; Quoted material from Manu, 1II: 239; IV: 40; Vyasa Samhita , II: 37-40; vrddhana; rt-smrti , VlII: 203; Variiha Purana, CXLII; Viiyu, VlII: 42, 84-85; Brahmanda, VlII: 82-84; Mahabharata, I: 122. David I. Macht and Dorothy S. Lubin, "A Phyto-Pharmacological Study of Menstrual Toxin," journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics 22 (1924): 414-15; M.F. AshleyMontague, "Physiology and the Origins of the Menstrual Prohibitions," Quarterly Review of Biology 15 (1940): 211-20; Michio Kitahara, "Menstrual Taboos and the Importance of Hunting," American Anthropologist 84 (1982): 901-903; and Mary C. Nunley, "Response of Deer to Human Blood Odor," American Anthropologist 83 (1981): 630-34. Ford, Comparative Study ofHuman Reproduction, 17-18; and Rita E. Montgomery, "A CrossCultural Study of Menstruation, Menstrual Taboos, and Related Social Variables," Ethos 2 (1974): 137-70. William N. Stephens, "A Cross-Cultural Study of Menstrual Taboos," Genetic Psychology Monographs 64 (1961): 385-416; and Montgomery, "A Cross-Cultural Study of Menstruation." Omar R. Ehrenfels, Mother Right in India (London: Oxford University Press, 1941), 109, fn. 15; Douglas, Purity and Danger ; and Young and Bacdayan, "Menstr ual Taboos and Social Rigidity," 225-40. First quotation from Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1971), 42; Second quotation from Annie Leclerc, Parole de Femme (Paris: Grasset, 1974),48-49; and third quotation from Emily Martin, The Woman in the Body: A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction (Boston: Beacon, 1987), Ill. Thomas Buckley and Alma Gottlieb, eds., Blood Magic: The Anthropology of Menstruation (Berkeley : University of California Press, 1988); Lara Owen, Her Blood Is Gold: Reclaiming the Power of Menstruation (London: Aquarian/Thorsons, 1993); Judy Grahn, Blood, Bread , and Roses: How Menstruation Created the World (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993; Bettelheim, Symbolic Wounds; and Douglas, Purity and Danger. Quoted material from Sally Price, "The Curse's Blessing (False Sense of Harmony in Ethnography)," Frontiers 14 (1994): 123-43; Buckley and Gottlieb, Blood Magic, 6 -14 ; Faye Ginsburg, "When the Subject Is Women: Encounters with Syrian Jewish Women," journal of American Folklore 100 (1987): 540-41. Grigson, The Maria Gonds ofBastar, 263. Roheirn, The Eternal Ones of the Dream, 234. Perdue, Cherokee Women, 28-37; John Swanton, "Myths and Tales of the Southeastern Indians," Bulletin of the Bureau of American Ethnology 88 (1929): 15-16; Mooney, "Myths of the Cherokee," 244-45; Gudmund Hatt, "The Corn Mother in America and Indonesia," Anthropos 46 (1951): 853-914; Jack F. Kilpatrick and Anna G. Kilpatrick, Friends of Thunder: Folktales of the Oklahoma Cherokees (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1964), 46; and Dowd , Spirited Resistance, 6-9. Quoted material from Ben-Ami, "Customs of Pregnancy and Childbirth," 255; and Iuillerat, Children of the Blood , 258-59, 263-64. Klein, A Time to Be Born , 114; and Beyene, From Menarche to Menopause, 105. Hunt, A Colonial Lexicon, 189,318.

246. Notes to Chapter 5 23.

Fir st and third quotations from Hauser -Schaublin, "Blood," 98; Second qu otation from Fitz John Por ter Pool e, "Symbols of Substa nce: Bimin-Kuskusmin Models of Procreation, Death, and Per sonhood," Mank ind 14 (1984) : 191-215; Poole, "TransformingNatural' Woman," 135 ; Fit z John Porter Pool e, "Ta m an : Ideological and Sociological Configurations of 'Witchcraft' among Bimin-Kuskusmin ," Social A nalysis 8 (1981): 58-76; Dorothy Ayers Counts and David R. Counts, "Father 's Water Equal s Mother' s Milk: T he Conception of Parentage in Kaliai, We st Ne w Britain," M ankind 14 (1983) : 46 - 56 ; Mart y Ze len ietz, "Sorce ry and Social Change: An Introduction," Social Analysis 8 (1981): 3-14; Raymond C . Kelly, "Witchcraft and Sexual Relations: An Exploration in th e Soci al and Semantic Implications of the Structure of Belief," in M en and Wom en in the New Guinea Highlands, 36-53; and Lindenbaum, Kuru Sorcery. 24 . Klein, A Time to Be Born, 193; a nd James Axt ell, ed., Th e Indian Peoples ofEastern A m erica: A Documentary Histo ry of th e Sexe s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981). 25. Cameron, On the Edge of the A uspici ous, 249. 26. Bhattacharyya , Indian Puberty Rites, 29; Cameron, On the Edge of the Au spiciou s, 246 - 51; Quoted material fro m Shayekh Muhammed bin Salih Al-Utheirneen, Natural Blood of Wom en, tran s. Saleh S. As -Sa leh (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia: Dar Al-Bukha ri for Pub lication and Distribution, Mini stry of Isla m ic Affa irs, Endowments, Da'Wah and Guidance with the Co -operation of Ibrahim Bin Abdu l Aziz Al-Brahim Welfare Esta blish m ent, 1417H, 1994) , 4-23; and Beyene, From Menarche to Menopau se, 107. 27. Klein, A Time to Be Born , 40 ; and Al-Uthcim een , Natural Blood of Women , 6, 24-25, 40 . 28 . Firs t quotation from Klein , A Time to Be Born, 7, 85, 192; Rach el Biale, Women and Jewish Law: An Exploration of Women 's Issu es in Halakhic Sources (N ew York: Schocken Book s, 1984) , 147- 74; Ruth Tsoffar, "Read ing It, Naming It, and Talking It: The Karaite Niddah, 'Ada a nd the Language of Men struat ion ," in Folklore Int erpreted: Essays in Honor of Alan Dundes, ed. Reg ina Bendix and Rosemary Levy Zu m wa lt (New York : Garland, 1995), 385 ; Seventh and eighth quotation s from Weng er, "M itzv ah a nd Medicine," 177- 79; David Miller, T he Secret of the Jew (San Franci sco : Da vid Mill er,1930), 6 1; Second , third , fourth, and fifth quotations from Simon Baumberg, Th e Gold en Chain: A Treatment of th e Religious Laws of Menstruation and Purification from a Scientific Point of View (London: Williams, Lea, 1929), 89; Sixt h quo tat io n from Jacob Smithline, "Scien tific Aspec ts of Sexual Purification," Jew ish Forum 13 (1930): 227; a nd G insbu rg, "W hen th e Subj ect Is Women ," 540 - 46. 29. Al-Utheirn een , Natural Blood of Wom en, 28-30, 30. Stol, Birth in Babylonia and th e Bible, 7; Ca me ro n, On the Edge of the Auspicious, 248 -51 ; and Bhattacharyya, Indian Puberty Rites, 31-41, 56. 31. First quotation from Leviticus 12:2; Stol, Birth in Babylonia and th e Bible, 205 ; Beyenne, From Menarche to Menopau se, 106; Melt zer, Birth, 103-103; Klein , A Time to Be Born, 193; an d second quotation from George Thom son , Studies in A ncient Greek Society, l Il.ondon: Lawrenc e and Wi shart, (949),209. 32. Opler, "Chi ldhood and Youth "; Morris Edwa rd Op ler, Myths and Tales of the licari lla Ap ache Indians (Lincoln: Uni versity of Ne b ras ka Press, 1994), 67- 69. 33. Hunt , A Colon ial Lex icon, 204 -205 , 318. 34, Gael', "Trad it ion al Cu stom s and Rituals of the Na na i," 43. 35. Wr ight, "Att itudes toward Ch ild be ar ing and Men struation among the Navajo," 389. 36. Witherspoon, Language and Art in th e Navajo Univ erse. 37. Wright, "Attitudes toward Childbearing and Men struation among the Navajo," 390 . 38. Powers, "Menstruation and Reproduction: An Og lala Ca se," 60 . 39, Kilpatrick a nd Kilpat rick , Friend s of Thunder; George Lankford , Native American Legends (Little Rock ; August Ho use, 1987), 148 -51; Paula Gunn Allen, Grandmothers of the Light: A M edicine Woman 's Sour cebook (Bo ston: Beacon Pre ss, 1991), 66 -70; Quoted materia l from Am elia Rector Bell, "Sepa rate Peop le: Speak ing of C ree k Men and Women," American Anthropologist 92 (1990) : 332-45; Jean-Bernard Bossu , Travels in the Interior of North America, 1751-1762, tran s. and ed. Seymour Feiler (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press , (962), 171; Joh n R. Swa nton , Source Mat erial for the Social Cerem onial Life of th e Choctaw Indians (Washington , DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, Bureau of Americ an Ethnology Bulletin 88 , (931) ; and Patric ia Galloway, "W here Have All the Men strua l Huts Gone? The Invisibil ity of Menstrua l Seclusion in the Late Prehistoric Southeast," in Women in Prehistory: North American and Mesoamerica, ed. Ch er yl Claassen and Rosemary A. Joyce (Philadelphia: Uni ver sit y of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), 55- 58. 40 . du Toit, "Menstruation : Attit ud es a nd Experience of Indian Sout h Africans," 391-406 ,

Notes to Chapter 5 • 247 41. Weiner, "Blood and Skin," 70-7 4, 77-79 . 42. Iuille rat, Children of the Blood, 53,79- 82, 206- 20, 243, 252-64, 264,357-5 9,402-403. 43. Cook and O'Bri en , Blood and Semen. 44 . Kaj Arhe m, Milk, Meat and Blood:Diet as a CulturalCode among the PastoralMasai (Uppsa la, Sweden: Uppsa la Universitet Repro centralen , HSC, 1987). 45. Remaining quoted material from Susan j. Rasmu ssen, "Lack of Prayer: Ritua l Restr ict ions, Social Experience, and th e Anthropology of Menstruation among the Tuareg," American Ethnologist 18, no . 4 (1991): 754-77: and first quotation from Alma Gottlieb, "Menst rual Cosmology among the Beng of Ivor y Coa st," in Blood Magic: The Anthropology of Menstruation, ed. Th om as Buckley and Alm a Gottlieb (Berkeley: Un iversity of Ca lifornia Press, 1988), 55. 46. Aristotl e, On the Generation of Animal s, tran s. A.L. Peck (London : Heineman n, 1943), 2, 4, 185: Firs t quot ation from Cajus Plin ius Secundus, Natural History, trans. H. Rackham (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961), Book 7,549; Vertinsky, "Exercise, Physical Capa bility, and the Eterna lly Wounded Woman," 11- 12; C. Frederi c Fluhman, Menstrual Disorders, Pathology, Diagnosis and Treatment (Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders, 1939), 19; john Friend , Emmenologia, tra ns. Th om as Dale (London: T. Cox, 1729), 19,67;Soranu s, Gyn ecology, tra ns. Owsei Tem kin (Baltimore: john s Hopkins University Press, 1956), 23: Second quotation from Willi am Smellie, A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Midwifery, 5th ed . (London: New Sydenham Societ y, 1766); Frit z Vosselmann, "La Menstruation, Legend es, Coutumes, et Superstit ions" (PhD dis s., Faculte de medecine et de pharmacie de Lyon, 1935), 16-1 7; Th ird quotation from Regnier de Graaf, Histoire Anatomique des Parties Genitales:de I' homm e et de la Femme, qui Servent a la Generation: avec un Traite du suc Pancreatique, des Clisteres et de l'usage du Syphon (Bille: E.j.G. Konig, 1699); All quoted descriptive labels for menstru ation fro m Crawford, "Atti tudes to Menstruation in Seventeenth- Centu ry," 49-5 2: and fift h and last quotation from john jon es, The Arte and Science of Preserving Bodie and Soule in Healthe (Lond on : Henr ie Bynnernan, 1579), 14. 47. First quotation from Henry Manning, A Treatise on Female Diseases (London: printed for R. Baldwin , 1771),66: Second quotation from Lazare Riviere, et aI., The Practice of Physick (Londo n: printed by Peter Cole and Ed ward Cole, 1661),420; james Drake , Anthrapologia Nove: Or, a New System of Ana tomy, 2 vols. (London : pr inted for W. Inn ys, 1707), 78; Sixth quotat ion fro m Tho mas N. Tender, Sin and Conf ession on the Eve of the Reformation (Pri nceton, N]: Pr inceton University Press, 1977), 166: Seventh and eighth quotations from Claude Qu illet , Callipaedia: Or, the Art of Getting Beautiful Children. A Poem, tr an s. N. Rowe (London : printed for A. Bell, j . Darby, et al., 1720),53 - 54; and thi rd, fourth, and fifth quot ations fro m Crawford, "Att itudes to Menstrua tion in Seventeenth- Cent ury England ," 52- 65. 48. Chr istopher Merret, The Accomplisht Physician, the Honest Apothecary, and the Skilful Chyrurgeon (London : Royal College of Physicians, 1670), 37: Second and th ird quot ations fro m Samuel Purchas, Micracosmus: Or, the Historie of Man (London: printed by Willi am Sta nsby for Henry Fetherstone, 1619),62 7; Fourth quotation from jame s Pr imrose, Popular Errours: Or, the Errours of the People in Physick, trans. Robert Wittie (London: printed by W. Wilson for Nicholas Bourn e, 1651), 385- 86; and Fir st, sixth, and seventh quotation s from Crawford, "Attitudes to Menstruation in Sevent eenth- Century England," 68- 71. 49. Second quotation from Willi am Buchan, Domestic Medicine: Or, the Family Physician (Philadelphia : john Dunlap, 1772), 328: Third and fourth quo tations from Samuel K. jennings, The Married Lady's Companion (New York: Lorenzo Dow, 1808), 38, 49; Ma ry P. Ryan, Womanh ood in America: From Colonial Times to the Present (New York: Franklin Watt s, 1983),27-2 9,71-78; Ann D. Gordon, Mari jo Buhle, an d Nan cy E. Shrorn, "Women in American Society: An Historical Contribution," Radical Am erica 5 (1971): 3, 21-2 3; Sara M. Evans, Born for Liberty: A History of Women in Am erica (New York: Free Press, 1989): Fifth and sixth quotations from William Pott s Dewees, A Treatise on the Diseases of Females (Phila delphia: H.C. Carey and I. Lea, 1826), 113-14: Thomas Ewell, Letter to Ladies, Detailing Important Information Concerning Themselvesand Infants (Philadelph ia: W. Brown, 181 7), 17: Anthony A. Benezet, The Family Physician (Cincin nati: W. Hill Wood ward , 1826), 74: Seventh quotation from Marc Colombat de I'Iser e, A Treatise on the Diseases and Special Hygiene of Females, trans. Charles D. Meigs (Philadelphia: Lea and Blan chard , 1845), 479: Eight h quotation fro m Kellogg, Plain Facts f or Old and Young, 82-83; and first quot ation from Lander, Images of Bleeding, 10- 25.

248. Notes to Chapter 5 john Power, Essays on the Female Economy (London : Burgess and Hill, 1831); First quotation from Robert Lee, "Diseases of th e Ovarian," in The Cyclopcedia of Practical Medicine, ed . john Forbes, john Conolly, and Alexander Tweed ie (London: Sherwood, Gilbert, and Piper, 1833-35), 225; Charles Negrier, Recherches Anatomiques et Physiologiques sur les Ovaires dans Eespece Humain (Paris: Bechet et Labe, 1840); Fou rth quotation from Pelix-Archirnede Pouchet, Theone Positive de Eovulation Spontanee et de la Fecondation des Mammiferes et de Eespece Humaine (Paris : j.B. Bailhere, 1847), 227; john Fa rley and Gerald Green, "Science, Politics and Spontaneous Generation in Nineteenth Century France: The Pasteru-Pouchet Debate," Bulletin of the History of Medicine 48 (1974): 161-98; Fifth quotation from Augustus Gardiner, The Causesand Curative Treatment of Sterility, with a Preliminary Statement of the Physiology of Generation (New York: De Witt and Davenport, 1856), 17; Sixth quotation from Duncan cited in Francis H.A . Marshall, The Physiology of Reproduction(New York: Longmans, Green, 1910), 5; Eighth and ninth quotations from Walter Heape, "The Menstruation of Semnopithecus entellus," Philosophical Transactions 185, no . 1 (1894); Tenth and eleventh quotations from Havelock Ellis, Man and Woman: A Study of Human Secondary Sexual Characteristics(London: W. Scott , 1904),284, 293; Eduard F.W. Pfluger, Ueberdie Bedeutung and Ursache der Menstruation (Berlin : Hirschwald, 1865); I. Williams, Obstetrical journal of Britain and Ireland 3 (1875-76) : 496; Twelft h quotation from W. Stephenson, American journal of Obstetrics 15 (1882): 287-94 ; Thirteenth quotation from Hall, Adolescence, 487; Mary Putnam jacobi, The Question of Restfor Women During Menstruation; Mary Putnam jacobi, "Hysterical Fever," Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 15 (1890): 373-88; john Goodman, "The Cyclica l Theory of Menstruation," Amer ican Journal of Obstetrics II (1878): 3-44 ; A.F.A. King, "A New Basis for Uterine Pathology," American Journal of Obstetrics 8 (1875): 242-43; Fourteenth quotation from Augustus Kingsley Gardner, Conjugal Sins: Against the Lawsof Lifeand Health and Their Effects upon the Father, Mother and Child (New York: ).S. Redfiel d, 1870), 17, 145-46; Fifteenth quotation from Cowan, The Science of New Life; Seventeenth quo tat ion from Bliss, Woman and Her Thirty Year Pilgrimage; Ely Van De Worke r, "New Basis for Uterine Pathology," American Journal of Obstetrics 8 (1875-76) : 24243; Edward Tilt, The Changeof Life in Health and Disease, 4th ed . (New York: Bermingham, 1882), 16, 39, 94-95; Tilt , On the Preservation of the Health of Women; P. Severin Icard, La Femme Pendant la Periode Menstruelle (Paris: Alcan, 1890); Richard Leonardo, History of Gynecology (New York: Froben, 1944); F.B. Robinson, New YorkMedical journal 53 (1891): 73, 273; Emil Novak, Menstruation and Its Disorders (New York: D. Appleton , 1921); Twentieth quotation from New York Times, March 28,1912; Ryan , Womanhood in America, 12- 13, 110, 113-19, 134-42; Gordon, Buhle , and Shrom, "Women in American Society," 3, 25-28; Evans, Bornfor Liberty; Sixteenth quotation from Smith-Rosenberg, "Puberty to Menopause," 183; Eighteenth and nineteenth quotations from Vertinsky, "Exercise, Physica l Capability, and the Eternally Wounded Woman ," 12-13 ; Third quotation from Lander, Images of Bleeding, 26; and second and seventh quotations from Laqueur, Making Sex, 213-27. 51. Clarke, Sex in Education, 37-38; First and tenth quotations from jules Miche let, I:Amour (New York: Rudd and Carleton, 1859),48; Second quotation from Albert Hayes, Physiologyof Women (Bosto n : Peabody Medical Institute, 1869),84-85; Third quotation from Edward W. jenks, "Historical Sketch of American Gynecology," in A System of Gynecology by American Authors, ed. Matthew D. Mann (Philadelphia : Lea Brothers , 1887), 1-45; Fourth quotation and quotes about women 's "tax" and sacrifice from Herbert Spencer, Education: Intellectual, Moral and Physical (London: Williams and Norga te, 1861), 179; Louise Michele Newman, ed ., Men's Ideas/Women's Realities: PopularScience, 1870- 1915 (New York: Pergamon, 1985), I-II ; john S. Haller and Robin M. Haller, The Physician and Sexuality in Victorian Ame rica (Urbana: Uni versity of Illinoi s Pres s, 1974); Robert C. Bannister, Social Darwinism: Science and Myth in Anglo-American Thought (Philadelphia: Temp le Uni versit y Press, 1979); Susan Sleet h Mosedale, "Science Corrupted: Victorian Biologists Consider the Woman Question," journal of the History of Biology 11 (1978): 9; j.S. jewell, "Influence of Our Present Civili zation in the Production of Nervous and Mental Energy," Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease I (Jan uary 1874): 70-73; Anita Clair Fellman and Michael Fellman, Making Sense of Self: Medical Advice Literature in Late Nineteenth Century America (Philadelph ia: Unive rsity of Philadelphia Press, 1981), 70-71; Sixth quotation from Clouston, "Female Education"; Ben Barker-Benfield, "The Spermatic Economy: A Nineteenth Century View of Sexuality," FeministStudies 1 (1972): 45-74 ; Robert Ultzman, The Neuroses of the Genito-Urinary System in the Male, with Sterility and Impotence, trans. Gard ner W. Allen (Philadelphia: F.A. Davis,

50.

Notes to Chapter 5 • 249

52.

1890), 11; Gail Pat Parsons, "Equal Treatment for All: American Medical Remedies for Male Sexual Problems, 1850-1900," Journal of the History of Medicine 32 (January 1977) : 55-71 : G.B.H. Swayze, "Spermatorrhea," Medical Surgery Report 33 (1875), 61: Joseph W. Howe, Excessive Venery, Masturbation and Continence (New York: Bermingham, 1883), 63 -66; Seventh quotation from A. Hughes Bennett, "Hygiene in the Education of Women ," Popular Science Monthly 16 (February 1880): 521; Eighth quotation from Walter C. Taylor, A Physician's Counsels to Woman in Health and Disease (Springfield: W.J. Holland, 1871); Ehrenreich and English, Complaints and Disorders, 21; Ninth quotation from Tilt, The Lancet 11 (1862) : 450 ; Lorna Duffin, "The Conspicuous Consumptive: Woman as an Invalid," in Th e Nineteenth Century Woman : Her Cultural and Physical World, ed. Sara Delamont and Lorna Duffin (London : Croom Helm , 1978), 32; Eleventh quotation from Max Runge, Das Weib in Seiner Geshlechtliche Eigenart (Berlin: J. Springer, 1900), 3; Twelfth quotation from Hall, Adolescence, vol. 1, 472, 478: J. McGrigor Allan , "On the Real Differences in the Minds of Men and Women," Anthropological Review 7 (1869): cxcvii; Leavitt, Brought to Bed, 66-68 ; and Vertinsky, "Exercise, Physical Capability, and the Eternally Wounded Woman," 14-17. First, second, and third quotations from William Goodell, Lessons in Gynecology (Philadelphia: EA. Davis, 1891),348-50; Fourth quotation from Lawson Tait, The Pathology and Treatment of Diseases of the Ovaries (New York: William Wood , 1883), 91; Sixth and fourteenth quotation from Kellogg, Plain Facts, 83; Seventh quotation from Henry Maudsley, "Sex in Mind and Education," Fortnightly Review 15 (1874): 475: Clarke, Sex in Education; Clouston, "Female Education," 322-33: Silas Weir Mitchell , Lectures on Diseases of the Nervous System Especially in Women (Philadelphia: Lea Brothers, 1885), 15; Ellen Bassuk, "The Rest Cure: Repetition or Resolution of Victorian Women 's Conflicts," Poetics Today 6 (1985) : 245 -57; Eighth quotation from Julia Ward Howe, Sex and Education: A Reply to Dr. Clarke 's Sex in Education (Boston : Roberts Brothers, 1874),8, 15, 18-19; Quoted safeguards from Vassar doctor from Alida C. Avery, "Testimony from Colleges (Vassar, 1873)," in Sex and Education, 193; Walter LeConte Stevens, The Admission of Women to Universities (New York: Press of S.W. Green 's Son, 1883); Association of Collegiate Alumnae, Health Statistics of Women College Graduates (Boston: Wright and Potter, 1885): Leta Stetter Hollingworth, Functional Periodicity: An Experimental Study of the Mental and Motor Abilities of Women during Menstruation (New York: Columbia University, 1914); John Dewey, "Health and Sex in Higher Education," Popular Science Monthly 29 (March 1886): 606 -15; Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, "Sex in Mind and Education, a Reply," Fortnightly Review 15 (1874): 503 : Clelia Mosher, "Normal Menstruation and Some of the Factors Modifying It," Johns Hopkins Hospital Bulletin (April-May, June 1901); Tenth quotation from Alice B. Stockham, Tokology, a Bookfor Every Woman (Boston : George M. Smith, 1886),257: Eleventh and twelfth quotations from Jacobi, The Question ofRest, 1-2 ,227: Taylor, "Exercise as Remedy," 626; Thirteenth quotation from Clouston, "Female Education," 320 ; lohn.H . Kellogg, Ladies Guide to Health and Disease (Des Moines : W. D. Condit & Company, 1883), 188: Fifteenth quotation from Alice B. Tweedy, "Homely Gymnastics," Popular Science Monthly 40 (February 1892); Sharon O'Brien, "Tornboyism and Adolescent Conflict: Three Nineteenth -Century Case Studies," in Woman 's Being, Woman 's Place: Female Identity and Vocation in American History, ed. Mary Kelley (Boston : G.K., 1979),351-72; Ehrenreich and English , For Her Own Good, 134; M.G. Van Rensselaer, "The Waste of Women's Intellectual Force," Forum (1892) : 616: Robert P. Hudson, "The Biography of Disease: Lessons from Chlorosis," Bulletin of the History of Medicine 51 (1977) : 440-63; A. Clair Siddall, "Chlorosis: Etiology Reconsidered," Bulletin of the History ofMedicine 56 (1982) : 254-60: T. Clifford Allbutt, "Chlorosis," in A System of Medicine, ed. T. Clifford Allbutt (New York: Macmillan, 1905); R. Lawson Tait, Disorders of Women (Philadelphia: Lea, 1889); Joan Jacobs Brumberg, "Chlorotic Girls 1870-1920 : A Historical Perspective on Female Adolescence ," in Women and Health in America, ed. Judith Walzer Leavitt (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984), 188: Nineteenth quotation from Grant Allen, "Plain Words about the Woman Question," Popular Science Monthly 36 (December 1889): Twentieth quotation from George J. Engelman, "The American Girl of Today: The Influence of Modern Education on Functional Development," American Gynecological Society 25 (1900) : 8-45; Twenty-first quotation from John Ellis, Deterioration of Puritan Stock and Its Causes (New York: John Ellis, 1884): Quoted "Heroalogy" and "Mansour" descriptors and eighte enth quotation from Hall, Adolescence, vol. 1,478,507-508, 609 ; Maudsley, "Sex in Mind ," 468 ; Martha Carey Thomas, "Present Tendencies in Women's College and Universit y Education," in The Woman Movement: Feminism in the United State s

250. Notes to Chapter 5

53.

54.

55.

and England, ed . Willi am L. O' Neill (Chic ago: Qu andrangl e Book s, 1969), 170; Cha rles E. Rosenberg, "Science and Ame rica n Social Thought," in Scien ce and Society in th e Un ited States, ed . David D. Van Tassel a nd Michael G. Hall (Illinoi s: Dorsey Press , 1966), 139; Lander, Image s of Bleedin g, 103-16; and seventeent h, eighteent h, twent y-second, a nd twen tyt hird quotations from Vertin sky, "Exerc ise, Physical Ca pabi lity, and the Eternally Wounded Wom an ," 21-24, 44 . Lynn W his ant and Leonard S. Zegans, "A Stud y of Att itude s towa rd Menarche in White Middle-Class Am eric an Adol escent Girl s," A me rican journal of Psychiatry 132 (1975) : 80914; Lynn Whisant, Leona rd S. Zegan s, and Elizab eth Brett, "Implicit Mess ages Concern ing Menstruation in Commercial Ed ucational Materials Prepa red for Young Adolescent Girl s," A me rican journal of Psychiatry 132 (1975): 8 15- 20; Brook s-Gunn and Roble, "Me narche"; She pherd , For Girls, 129-30; Mar y Wood -Allen , What a Young Woman Ought to Kn ow (Philadelphia: Vir Publi shing Compa ny, 1905), 149; Em ma Fran ces Angell Dr ake , What a Young Wife Ought to Know (Phil ad elphia : Vir Publi shing Compa ny, 1908), 194-95; Georges Viga rello , Con cepts of Cleanliness: Changing Attitudes in France since th e M iddl e Ages (Cambridge : Cambridge Un iver sit y Pr ess, 1988), 202 -209; Richard L. Bushman a nd Claud ia Bushman, "The Early Hi story of Clea nliness in America," journal of A m erican History 74 (1988) : 1213-38 ; Nancy Tome s, "The Private Side of Public Health: Sani tar y Scienc e, Domestic Hygiene, and th e Ger m T heo ry, 1870-1900," Bull etin of th e H istory of Medicin e 64 (1990) : 509 - 39; jos eph H. Gr eer, T he W holesome Woman (Chicago: Athe na eum , 1902), 172; Vern Bullough, "Tech nology a nd Fema le Sexua lit y and Physiolog y: Some Implications," journal of Sex Research 16 (1980): 59-7 1; Fred E.H . Schroeder, "Fem in ine Hygiene , Fashion, and th e Emancipation of Ame rica n Women," A me rican Studies 17 (1976): 101-11 ; Delaney, Lupton, and Toth , The Cu rse; and Quoted mat eria l quot ed in joan jacob s Brumberg, "'Some th ing Happen s to Girl s': Mena rche and t he Emergence of the Modern America n Hygienic Imperative," jo urnal of th e History ofSex uali ty 4 (1993): 112-14, 117-18 , 120-21. C.F. Hodge, "Ins t ruct io n in Socia l Hygiene in th e Public Schools," School Science and Math ematics 11 (1911): 304; Emil Novak, Men st ruation and li s Disorders (New York: D. Appl eton, 1921), 108; Bryan Stro ng, "Ide as of th e Earl y Sex Edu cation Movement in Am erica, 1890- 1920," Histo ry of Edu cation Qu art erly 12 (1972) : 129- 61; 1,0 Ree Cave, "Domestic Scienc e as an Oppo rtunit y for Sex Ed ucation," Bull etin of th e Kan sas Sta te Board of Health 16 (April 1920): 67-72; Benjam in Gruenb erg , High Schools and Sex Ed ucation: A Manual of Suggestions on Educat ion Related to Sex (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Offic e, 1922); Allan Brandt, No Ivlagic Bull et: A Social History of Ven ereal Disease in the Unit ed States (New York: O xford Universit y Pres s, 1985); john Burnham, "The Progressive Era Revolution in American Attitudes to ward s Sex," journal of Ameri can History 59 (1973): 885-908; David Pivar , Purity Crusa de: Sex ual Morality and Social Control, 1868 -1900 (We stport, CT: Greenwood , 1973); and Quoted ma terial from Brurnberg, "'Some th ing Happen s to Girls,''' 122-23. Linda L.Da rga .Su zanne Klaucnberg, and Kar en P.Davis, "TheCultura l Model of th eMenstrual Cycle," M ichigan Ac ad em ician 13 (1981): 475-83; First, seco nd , and th ird quotatio ns from M.j. Daly, "Phys ica l and Psycho logica l Development of the Adol escen t Fema le," Clinical Obstetri cs and Gy necology 9 (1966) : 711-2 1; Kath arina Dalton, "Effect of Men struation on Schoo lgirl s' Weekly Work ," British M edical journal I (1960): 326-28; Katharina Dalt on, Th e Premenstrual Syndrom e (Springfield , IL: c.c. Thomas, 1964); Kathar ina Dalton, "The Influence of Mother's Men struation on Her Ch ild," Proceedings of th e Roya l Socie ty of Med icine 59 (1974): 1014-16; R.H . Tuch, "The Relationship between a Mother's Men strual Stat us an d Her Respon se to Illness in Her Chi ld," Psychosom atic M ed icine 37 (1975): 388 -94; R.E. Whitehead, "Wome n Pilots ," journal of Aviation M edicin e 5 (1934) : 47-49; Fourth quo tation from D.S. lanowsk y, R. Gorney, and B. Kelley, "The Curs e- Vicissit udes and Vari atio ns of the Female Fertil ity Cycle, Part II, Evolutionary Aspects," Psychosoma tics 7 (1966) : 283 -87; Fifth qu otation from Th e Saturday Even ing Post, ja nua ry IS, 1966; L.M. Moore and j.L. Barker, "Mont hly Variation s in Mu scular Efficiency in Women ," A m erican journal of Physiology 64 (1923) : 405-1 5; L.M. Moore a nd C. R. Cooper "Monthly Va riations in Ca rd io -Vascula r Acti vities and in Respiratory Rate in Woman ," A m erican journal ofPhysiology 64 (1923) : 416-23 ; E M. Henry, "Stimulus Co mplexity, Movement Co mplexity, Age and Sex in Relation to Reaction Latency and Speed in Limb Movements," Research Quarterly of th e Am erican A ssocia tion for Health , Physical Education, and Recreation 32 (1961): 353-66; W.R. Pierson and A. Lockhart, "Effect of Men struation on Simp le Reaction and Moveme nt Time," Briti sh Medical journal I

Notes to Chapter 5 • 251

56.

57.

58.

59.

(1963) : 796-97; M .B. Parl ee, "T he Premenstrua l Synd rome," Psychological Bu lletin 80 (1973): 454-55; M.B. Parl ee, "Stereo ty pic Beliefs about Men struat ion : A Meth od ologic al No te on th e Moos Men strua l Dist ress Questionna ire and Some New Data ," Psycho somatic M edici ne 36 (1974): 229- 40 ; B. Som me r, "T he Effect of Mens t rua t ion on Co gn itive a nd Per ceptual Mot or Beh avior : A Review," Psychosom atic Me dicine 35 (1973): 515- 34 ; and six t h, seven t h, a nd eighth quotations from Lander, Im ages of Bleeding, 58-77. Secon d qu ot ation from Ge rma ine Greer, The Fem ale Eunuch (New York : McG raw-Hill , 1971), 43; Lorraine Rothman, "Men st ru al Ext ract ion- Procedures," Qu est: A Fem inist Qu arterly 4 (1978) : 44- 45; Laura Punnett, "Me nst rua l Ext raction- Politics," Que st: A Femin ist Qua rterly 4 (1978): 48-49; Sh ery l Burt Ruz ek, The Wom en's Health Mov em ent : Fem inist A lte rnatives to Med ical Control (N ew York: Pr aeger, 1978): 54-56; Ellen Frankfo rt , Vaginal Polit ics (New York: Qu adrangle Book s, 1972) , xiv ; T hi rd qu otat ion fro m Vasht e Dublex, "O ld Wom an ," Wom an Spir it (1976): 16. Ma r y Lee George- G, "Blood Prints," Lesbian Ins ider Insight er Inciter (August 1980) : 8; Firs t quota tion from Del an ey, Lupton, and Toth, T he Curse, 2,220; Fou rth quotation from Kar en Lindsey, "falling off t he roof," in Falling Off th e Roof, ed. Kar en Lindsey (C am bridge, M A: Ali ce Jam es Book s, 1975), 41; Fift h quo tation from Ca ro l Erd ma n, "Song for Sisters in th e Moon Hu t," Woman Spir it (1974):, 10; Sixth qu ot ation from Marilynn , "I Love My Spon ges," Woman Spirit (1976): 22; Heste r Eisen ste in , Con temporary Fem inis t Th ought (Boston : G. K. Ha ll, 1983),46,134 -41 ; Robin Mor gan, Going Too Far: The Person al Chronicle ofa Fem inis t (New Yor k: Vint age Books , 1978),290-310; Judith Clav ir, "C hoosing Eit her / Or: A Cri t ique of Metaph ysical Fem in ism," Feminist St udies 5 (Su mmer 1979): 402, 404- 405; Jud y Grahn, "From Sacred Bloo d to th e Cu rse and Beyond ," in The Polit ics of Women's Spi rit uality : Essays on th e Rise ofSp iritua l Power wi thi n th e Femi nis t M oveme nt, ed. Cha rlene Spre tnak (Garden City, NY: Anchor Book s, 1982) ,268 - 76 ; Seventh qu otation from Glor ia Steine m , "If Men Could Men struate-A Politic al Fant asy," Ms . (Oc to ber 1978): 110; a nd eight h qu ot ation from Lander, Im ages of Bleeding, 11 6-28 . Lander, Im ages of Bleeding, 145, 133-46; Lyn ne Lauberg, Body Rhythm s: Chron obiology and Peak Performa nce (Ne w Yor k: Mo rro w, 1994) ; Clau dio Sta rnpi, ed ., Wh y We Nap: Evolution, Chronobiology, and Functio ns of Polyphasic an d Ultrashort Sleep (Boston: Birkhau ser, 1992) ; Dor a K. Hayes, John E. Pauly, and Russel J. Reiter, eds ., Chro no biology: Its Role in Clinica l Medicin e, Gene ral Biology, and Agr icultu re (N ew York: Wil ey-Liss, 1990) ; Joseph S. Taka has hi, Fred W. Turek, and Robert Y. Moore, ed s., Circadian Clocks (New York: Kluwer Aca de m ic/ Plenum, 2001) ; Robe rto Rcfin etti, Circadian Physiology (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2000); Fred W. Ture k and Phyllis C. Zee, eds., Regulat ion of Sleep and Circad ian Rhy thm s (New York: M. Dekker, 1999) ; Prakash C. Dcedwa nia , ed ., Circadian Rhythms of Card iovascu lar Disord ers (Armo n k, N Y: Fut u ra, 1997) ; Peter H . Redfe rn , Circadian Rhythm s in th e Cent ral Nervo us System (London: Mac m illa n, 1985); Jurg en Aschoff, "Annual Rh ythms in Man: ' in Biological Rhythms, ed. Jur gen Aschoff (New York: Plenum , 1981); Alain Reinb erg, "Aspects of Ci rca nnua l Rhythms in Man:' in Circannual Clocks: A nn ua l Biological Rhythms, ed. Eric T. Pen gelly (New York: Acade m ic Press, 1974); and Estelle Ram ey, "Me n's Cycles (Th ey Have T he m Too, You Kn ow) : ' M s. (Spring 1972) : 6,11. Mary F. Asterita, The Physiology of Stress: With Special Ref eren ce to th e Neuroendoc rine Syst em (New York: Human Sciences Press, 1985), 114; Keith D. Sm ith et al., "Rapid O scill ation s in Plasm a Levels of Testo sterone, Luteini zing Hormone, and Follicle-Stim u lat ing Horm on e in Men: ' Fertility and Ster ility 25 (1974): 96 5; Jay Schulkin , Th e Ne uroendoc rine Regul at ion of Beha vior (New York: Camb ridge Un iversi ty Press, 1999) ; Tre vor Ar cher and Stefa n Iaus en , eds ., Beha vioral Biology : Ne uroe nd ocri ne Axis (Hillsd ale , NJ: Erlbau m , 1991); Hiru lmura, ed ., Neuroendocrine Control of the Hyp othalam us-Pitu itary System (Tok yo: Japan Scientific Socie ties Press, 1988) ; Anne Fau sto -Sterling , My ths of Gender: Biological Th eories ab out Wo me n and M en (N ew York : Basic Books, 1985), 130-31; Ruth Bleier, Scie nce and Gender: A Critique of Biology and Its Th eor ies on Wom en (New York: Perg amon, 1984), 84, 88 ; a nd quote d mat erial from Land er, Im ages of Bleeding , 147-62 . Cout inho, Is M en struati on Obsolete?; Lander, Im ages of Bleedin g, 133-74; Da niel M. Lin kie, "T he Physiolo gy of th e Mens tr ual Cycle," in Behav ior and th e M en strual Cycle, ed. Rich ard C. Fried man (New Yor k: Ma rcel Dekker, 1982) ; Ethel Sloa ne, Biology of Wom en (New York: John Wiley, 1980) ,353; Beverly I. Strassma nn, "T he Evolution of Endomet rial Cycles and Men struation," Qu art erly Review of Biology 7 1 (1996) : 181-218; RV. Short, "Oestr us and Men strual Cycles," in Reprodu ction in M ammals, Book 3, Horm onal Con trol ofReprod uction, ed. C. R. Austin and R.V. Short (Cambridge: Ca mb ridge Un ivers ity Press, 1984) , 123- 25; Sho rt,

252 • Notes to Chapters 5 and 6 "Th e Evolution of Human Reproduction ," 18-20: Harrell, "Lactation and Menstruation," 878, fn. 9: Corinne Shear Wood , Human Sickness and Health: A Biocultural View (Palo Alto: Mayfield, 1979), 108: and Linda S. Potter, "Menstru al Regulation and the Pill," in Regulating Menstruation, 141-54.

Chapter 6 Nancy B. Jay, Throughout Your Generations Forever: Sacrifice , Religion, and Paternity (Chicago: Universit y of Chicago Press, 1992), 148. 2. First and second quotations from Richard R. Townsend, "The Renewal of Nature at the Temple of Tlaloc,' in The Ancient Americas: A rt from Sacred Landscapes, ed . Richard F. Townsend (Chicago : Art Institute of Chicago, 1992), 178; Third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, tenth, fourteenth, fift eenth, and sixteenth quotations from David Carrasco, Religions of Mesoamerica (San Fran cisco : Harper San Francisco, 1990),21,53,104,110,113: and eighth, ninth, eleventh, twelfth , thirteenth, and sevent eenth quotation s from Linda Schele and Mary Ellen Miller, The Blood of Kings: Dynasty and Ritual in Maya Art (New York: George Braziller, 1986), 14, 1l0 , 144, 176, 183. 3. Jay, Throughout Your Generations Forever, xviii -iv, 37, 46. 4. Michael Harner, "The Enigma of Aztec Sacrifice," Natural History 236 (1977): 46-51; Marvin Harris, Cannibals and Kings: The Origins of Cultures (New York: Random House, 1977); First quotation from Heb. 9:22: Smith, The Religion of the Semites, 18; Talcott Par sons, The Structure of Social Action: A Study in Social Theory with Special Reference to a Group of Recent European Writers (New York: Free Press, 1968); Edward E. Evans-Pritchard , Theories of Primitive Religion (Oxford: Clarendon, 1965),8; Alasdair Macintyre, "Is Understanding Religion Compatible with Believing?" in Rationality, ed . Bryan R. Wilson (New York: Harper and Row, 1972),65-71: Ed mund Robert Leach, "Ritual," in The International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, ed. David L. Sills (New York: Macmillan and Free Press , 1968), vol. 13, 524; Stanley Tambi ah , "A Performative Approach to Ritual," Proceedings of the British Academy 65 (1981): 113-69; Alfred Schutz, The Phenomenology of the Social World, trans. George Walsh and Frederick Lehnert (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press , 1967), chap . 2; James W. Fernandez, "Symbolic Consensus in a Fang Reformative Cult ," American Anthropologist, n.s., 67 (1965): 902-29 ; Luc de Heusch , Sacrifice in Africa: A Structuralist Approach, trans. Linda O'Brien and Alice Morton (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985): Edward E. Evans-Pritchard, N uer Religion (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press , 1956): Meyer Fortes , Th e Dynamics ofClans hip among the Tallensi : Being the First Part of an Analysis of the Social Stru cture of a Trans-Volta Tribe (London: International African Institute, Oxford Univer sity Pres s, 1945); Gerardus van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Manifestation : A Study in Phenomenology, trans. J.E. Turner (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1967); Jane Ellen Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion , 3rd ed . (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922); Robert J.Thompson, Penitence and Sacrifice in Early Israel outside the Levitical Law: An Examination of the Fellowship Theory ofEarly Israelite Sacrifice (Leiden : E.J. Brill, 1963); Yehezkel Kaufman, The Religion of Israel from Its Beginnings to the Babylonian Exile, trans. Moshe Greenberg (New York: Schocken Books, 1972); Henri Hubert and Marcel Maus s, Sacrifice: Its Nature and Function , trans. W.D. Halls (London: Cohen and West , 1964),6, 17: Geoffrey E.R. Lloyd, Polarity and Analogy: Two Types of Argumentation in Early Greek Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge Universit y Press, 1966); John Dewey, Logic: The Theory ofInquiry (New York: Holt, 1938): and all other quotations from Jay, Throughout Your Generations Forever, 4, 7,13, 15-16,29. 5. Quoted material from Jean-Pierre Vernant, Myth and Society in Ancient Greece, trans. Janet Lloyd (Sussex: Harvester Press, 1980), 137; Jean-Pierre Vernant, "Sacrificial and Alimentary Codes in Hesiod 's Myth of Prometheus," in Myth, Religion and Society: Structuralist Essays by M. Detienne, L. Gernet, f.-P. Vernant and P. Vidal -Naquet, ed . Richard L. Gordon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Jean -Pierre Vernant, Myth and Thought among the Greeks (London: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1983); Marcel Detienne, The Gardens of Adonis: Spices in Greek Mythology, trans. Janet Lloyd (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1977); Marcel Detienne, Dionysos Slain, trans. Mireille Muellner and Leonard Muellner (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979); Marcel Detienne, "The Violence of Well Born Ladies: Women in the Th esmophoria," in The Cuisine of Sacrifice among 1.

Notes to Chapter 6 • 253 the Greeks , ed. Marcel Detienne and Jean-Pierre Vernant, trans. Paula Wissing (Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1989); Pierre Vidal-Naquet, "Slavery and the Rule of Women in Tradition, Myth and Utopia," in Myth, Religion and Society; Arthur Darby Nock, "The Cult of Heroes," Harvard Theological Review 37 (1944) : 141-74 ; Walter Burkert, Homo Necans : The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth, trans. Peter Bing (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983); Walter Burkert, Greek Religion, trans. John Raffan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985); Walter Burkert, "The Problem of Ritual Killing," in Violent Origins : Walter Burkert, Rene Girard and J. Z. Smith on Ritual Killing and Cultural Formation, ed. Robert G. Hamerton-Kelly (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987); Lewis Richard Farnell, Greek Hero Cults and Ideas ofImmortality (Oxford : Clarendon, 1921); William Scott Ferguson, "The Attic Orgeones," Harvard Theological Review 37 (1944) : 61-140; William K. Guthrie, The Greeks and Their Gods (Boston : Beacon Press, 1955); and Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study ofGreek Religion . 6. Robert J. Daly, Christian Sacrifice : The ludaeo-Christian Background before Origin (Washington, DC: Catholic University of American Press, 1978); Roland de Vaux, Studies in Old Testament Sacrifice (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1964); John W. Rogerson, "Sacrifice in the Old Testament: Problems of Method and Approach," in Sacrifice, ed. Michael F.e. Bourdillon and Meyer Fortes (London: Academic Press, 1980); and Robert A. LeVine, "Gusii Funerals: Meanings of Life and Death in an African Community," Ethos 10 (1982) : 26-65. 7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

First and second quotations from Num. 28:2; Lev. 16; Third and fourth quotations from Exod. 12; Vaux, Studies in Old Testament Sacrifice; Royden Keith Yerkes, Sacrifice in Greek and Roman Religions and Early judaism (New York: Scribne r, 1952); and Jay, Throughout Your Generations Forever, 24-26. Evans-Pritchard, Nuer Religion, 56, 198-99,201,215 -16. Second quotation as quoted in Jay from Louis Moulinier, Le Pur et I'Impure dans la Pensee des Grecs d'Hombre a Aristote (Paris: Librarie C. Klincksieck, 1952),70; Third quotation from Ezek. 36:17; and first, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh quotations from Jay, Throughout Your Generations Forever, 28-29. Second quotation from Evans-Pritchard, N uer Religion , 287; Third quotation from Edward E. Evans- Pritchard, The Nuer: A Description of the Modes ofLivelihood and Political Institutions of Nilotic People (Oxford : Clarendon, 1940),202-203,210-11,226-28,230,234; Edward E. Evans-Pritchard, Kinship and Marriage among the Nuer (Oxford: Clarendon, 1951), 6, 24; Fourth and fifth quotations from Fortes, The Dynamics of Clans hip among the Tallensi, 33; and first quotation from Jay, Throughout Your Generations Forever, 36,42-43. Quoted material from Fortes, The Dynamics ofClans hip among the Tallensi, 32-33,229; Meyer Fortes, The Web of Kinship among the Tallensi: The Second Part of an Analysis of the Social Structure ofa Trans- Volta Tribe (London: International African Institute, Oxford University Press, 1949),29,45,156,189; and Jay, Throughout Your Generations Forever, 47-51. Quoted material from John Middleton, Lugbara Religion : Ritual and Authority among an East African People (London : Oxford University Press, 1960); and Jay, Throughout Your Generations Forever, 41-43, 51-53. First and third quotations from Evans-Pritchard, Nuer Religion, 58, 153, 163,215,243,286-87, 320; Edward E. Evans-Pritchard, "Some Aspects of Marriage and Family among the Nuer," Rhodes-Livingstone Papers, no. 11 (Livingstone, S. Rhodesia [Zimbabwe]: Rhodes -Livingstone Institute, 1945),64,202; Evans-Pritchard, Kinship and Marriage among the Nuer, 5,28,104, 108-109,122,228,234; Evans-Pritchard, The Nuer, 222, 233; Second quotation from Godfrey R. Lienhardt, Divinity and Experience: The Religion of the Dinka (Oxford : Clarendon, 1961), 23,234,275; and jay, Throughout Your Generations Forever, 42, 50, 53-59. Quoted material from Burkert, Greek Religion, 255-56; john K. Davies, "Athenian Citizenship: The Descent Group and the Alternatives," Classical journal 73 (1977) : 10521; john K. Davies, Wealth and the Power of Wealth in Classical Athens (Salem, NH: Ayer Company, 1984), 107; Sarah e. Humphreys, The Family, Women and Death : Comparative Studies (London: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1983), 15; Sarah C. Humphreys, "Public and Private Interests in Classical Athens," Classical journal 73 (1977) : 97-104; Sarah e. Humphreys, "The Nothoi of Kynosarges,' journal ofHellenic Studies 94 (1974): 88-95; Detienne, Dionysos Slain, 77; Robert Parker, Miasma : Pollution and Purification in Early Greek Religion (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983),61 ; A. Andrewes, "Philochoros on Phratries,' journal ofHellenic Studies 81 (1961): 1-15 ; Walter R. Connor, The New Politicians ofFifth-Century Athens (Princeton, Nj:

254. Notes to Chapter 6

15. 16.

17.

18.

19.

Princeton Un iversity Pre ss, 1971); William Scott Fergu son , "T he Atti c Orgeones," Harvard Theological Review 37 (1944): 61-140 ; and Jay, Throughout Your Generations Forever, 41-46. Georges Durnezil, Archaic Roman Religion, trans. Philip Krapp (Chicago: University of Chicago Pres s, 1970) ,61 7; and Jay, Throughout You r Gen erations Forever, 45 -46. Dar yll Forde , "Death and Succe ssion : An Anal ysis of Yako Mortuary Ceremoni es," in Essays on the Ritual of Social Relations, ed. Ma x Gluckman (Manchester: Manchester Univ ersity Press, 1962) ; and Daryll Ford e, Yako Studies (London: International African In stitute, Oxford University Press , 1964) . Tenth, eleventh, thirteenth , and seventeenth quotations from Robert Sutherland Rattray, Religion and Art in Ashanti (London: Oxford Un iversity Press, 1927), 13,75, 122, 136, 154, 199, 321; Robert Suth erland Rattray, Ashanti Law and Constitution (Oxford: Clarendon, (929) , 40; Twelfth and sixt eenth quotations from Robert Suth erland Rattray, Ashanti (London: Clarendon, 1923), 96, 146; Fifth, sixt h, and ninth quotations from Ivor Wilks, "Ashanti Gov ernment," in West African Kingdoms in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Daryll Forde and Phyll is M. Kaberry (London : International African In stitute, Oxford Uni versity Press , 1967) ,214,225; First quotation from Ivor Wilks, Asante in th e N ine teen th Century: The Structure and Evolution of a Politi cal Order (London: Cambridge University Press, 1975) ,594; Eighth quotation from Kofi A. Busia , "The Ashanti of the Gold Coast," in African Worlds : Studies in the Cosmological Idea s and Social Values of African Peoples, ed . Daryll Forde (London: International African Institute, Oxford Uni versity Press, 1954), 191; Meyer Fortes, "Time and Social Structure: An Ashanti Case Study," in Social Structure: Studies Presented to A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, ed. Me yer For tes (New York: Russell and Russell, 1963) , 68; Fifteenth quotation from Meyer Fortes, "The Structure of Un iii neal Descent Groups," American Anthropologist, n. s., 55 (1953) : 32; Seventh quotation from Meyer Fortes, Kinship and the Social Order: The Legacy of Lewi s Henry Morgan (Chicago: Aldine, 1969),42; Fourth quotation from Robert Elwyn Bradbury, The Benin Kingdom and the Edo-speaking Peoples ofSouth-Western N igeria (London: Int ernational African Institute, Oxford University Pres s, 1957), 29; Robert Elwyn Bradbury, Benin Studies, ed . Peter Morton-Williams (London: International African Institute, Oxford University Press, 1973), 130; Second quotation as quoted in H. Ling Roth , Great Benill: Its Customs, Art and Horrors (London: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1903) , x; Third quotation from Melville Jean Herskovits, Dahomey: An Ancient West African Kingdom, 2 vols. (New York: J.J. Augustin, 1938) , 153; Frances S. Herskovits and Melville Jean Herskovits, An Outline oj Dohom ean Religious Belief(Menasha, WI: Am erican Anthropological Association, 1933),9; Sir Richard Francis Burton, A Mission to Gelele, King of Dahome (London: Tylston and Edwards, 1893), xiii; and fourteenth quotation from Jay, Throughout Your Generations Forever, 61-76. First, second, third, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth , tenth, eleventh, twelfth, and fifteenth quotations from Valerio Valeri, Kingship and Sacrifice: Ritual and Society in Ancient Hawaii, trans. Paula Wissing (Chicago: University of Chicago Pre ss, 1985), 13, 18, 114, 123-24, 12728, 142, 160-61,297,316; Fou r th and fourteenth as quoted in Marshall Sahlins, Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities: Stru cture in the Early History of the Sandwich Islands Kingdom (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press , 1981),25,39,52,91 ; Edward S.c. Handy and Mary Kawena Pukui, The Polyne sian Family System in Ka -:u, Hawai 'i (Rutland, VT: C.E . Tuttle, 1972), 199; and sixte enth quotation from Jay, Throughout Your Generations Forever, 77-93. J.W. Rogerson, "Sacrifice in th e Old Testament," 45 -49; Alan R. Millard and Donald J. Wiseman, eds ., Essays on the Patriarchal Narratives (Leicest er, UK: Inter-Varsity Press, 1980); Julius Wellhauscn, Prolegomena to the Histo ry of Israel, ed . J. Sutherland Black and Allen Menzies (Edinburgh : A. and C. Black, 1885); Frank Moore Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the Historyofthe Religion ofIsrael (Cambridge, MA : Harvard Universit y Press, 1973), 195-215; Robert j . Thompson , Penitence and Sacrifice in Early Israel outside the Levitical Law : An Examination ofthe Fellowship Theory ofEarly Israelite Sacrifice (Leiden : E.J. Brill , (963); Kaufman , The Religion ofIsrael ; William J. Goode, World Revolution and Family Patterns (New York: Free Pre ss, 1970),93 -95; Robert Francis Murphy and Leonard Kasdan, "The Structure of Parallel Cousin Marriages," American Anthropologist, n.s., 61 (1959) : 1729 ; Robert Francis Murphy and Leonard Kasdan, "Agnation and Endogamy: Some Further Considerations," Southwestern Journal ofAnthropology 23 (1967) : 1-14; Raphael Patai, "T he Structure of Endogamous Unilineal Descent Groups:' Southwestern Journal ofA nthrop ology 21 (1965) : 325 -50; Natha n iel Wander, "Structure, Contradict ion , and 'Resolution' in

Notes to Chapter 6 • 255 Mythology: Father's Brother's Daughter Marriage and the Treatment of Women in Genesis II -50," journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society 13 (1981): 75-99 ; S.j.D. Coh en, "Th e Matrilineal Principle in Historical Perspective," judaism 34 (1985): 5-13 ; Ephraim A. Speiser, Genesis: The Anchor Bible (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1964), 92; Ephraim A. Speiser, "The Wife-Sister Motif in the Patriarchal Narratives," in Biblical and Other Studies, ed . Alexander Altmann (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963); Henri Ca zelles, "Review of I. Van Seters, Abraham in History and Tradition," Vetus Testamentum 28 (1978): 241; Samuel Greengus, "Sisterhood Adoption at Nuzi and the 'Wife -Sister ' in Genesis ," Hebrew Union College Annual 46 (1975): 5-32 ; Martin j. Selman, "Comparative Customs and the Patriarchal Age," in Essays on the Patriarchal Narratives, 93-138; Gerhard von Rad, Genesis: A Commentary, trans. john H. Marks (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1961),227; Carol Delaney, "The Seed and the Soil: The Legacy of Abraham," in Beyond Androcentrism: New Essays on Women and Religion, ed. Rita M. Gross (Missoula: Scholars Press for the American Academy of Religion , 1977); David Bakan, Disease, Pain and Sacrifice: Toward a Psychology of Suffering (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971); Margaret E. Combes-Schilling, Sacred Performances: Islam, Sexuality, and Sacrifice (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989); john Van Seters, Abraham in History and Tradition (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1975),78-85; john Huehnegard, "Biblical Notes on Some New Akkadian Texts from Emar (Syria) ," Catholic Biblical Quarterly 47 (1985): 428-34; Moshe Greenberg, "Rachel's Theft of the Teraphim," journal of Biblical Literature 81 (1962): 239-48; and jay, Throughout Your Generations Forever, 94-111. 20. Raymond E. Brown, Priest and Bishop : Biblical Reflections (Paramus, N]: Paulist Press , 1970), 55; Second quotation from Robert j. Daley, Christian Sacrifice: The judaeo -Christian Background before Origin (Washington, DC : Catholic University of American Press, 1978), 313; Cyprian, Saint Cyprian : Letters, trans. Rose Bernard Donna (Washington, DC : Catholic University of American Press, 1964),85-86,204-205 ,213 -14,228 -29; Hans Freiherr von Campen hausen, Ecclesiastical Authority and Spiritual Power in the Church of the First Three Centuries, trans . j.A. Baker (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1969),89; james A. Mohler, The Origin and Evolution of the Priesthood: A Return to the Sources (Staten Island, NY: Alba House, Division of the Society ofSt. Paul, 1970),99; and first and third quotations from jay, Throughout Your Generations Forever, 117, 120. 21. Second, third, eighth, and ninth quotations from Leo Steinberg, The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and Modern Oblivion (New York: Pantheon Books, 1983), 10,52,62; Sander L. Gilman, Sexuality: An Illustrated History (New York: john Wiley, 1989), 13-48; Fourth quotation from Henry Denzinger, The Sources of Catholic Dogma, trans. Roy J. Deferrari (St. Louis : Herder, 1957), 160; Fifth quotation from Pseudo-Bonaventure, Meditations on the Life of Christ, trans. I. Ragusa and R.B. Green (Princeton, N]: Princeton University Pres s, 1961), 43-44; Sixth quotation from jacopo da Voragine, The Golden Legend; Or, Lives of the Saints as Englished by William Caxton (London: j.M. Dent, 1900),34; Seventh quotation from john W. O'Malley, Praise and Blame in Renaissance Rome (Durham: University of North Carolina Press , 1979), 138; Tenth quotation from Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 33; Gertrud Schiller, The Iconography of Christian Art, trans. janet Seligman, 2 vols. (London: Humphries, 1971-72); and first, eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth quotations from Linke, Blood and Nation, 99, 101-102. 22. Peter Brown , The Cult of the Saints (London: SCM, 1981); Miri Rubin, Corpu s Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991),63,82, 108-39 ; Michel Andrieu, "Aux Origines du Culte du Saint-Sacrernent,' Analecta Bollandiana 68 (1950): 399-408; Ronald C. Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims (Totowa , N]: Rowman and Littlefield, 1977),28; Third quotation from Philip of Clairvaux, "Life of Elizabeth [of Spalbeek], 'Nun of Herkenrode,''' in Catalogus Codicum Hagiographicorum Bibliothecae Regiae Bruxellensis, Subsidia Hagiographica I, ed. Bollandists (Brussels : Typis Polleunis Ceuterick and Lefebure, 1886), 362-78; james of Vitry, "Life of Mary of Oignies," in Acta Sanctorum. Ed. Novissima, ed . joannis Bollandus, Godefridus Henschenius, and jeanBaptiste Carnandet (Paris : Palme, 1867), vol. 5, 551-56; Fourth quotation from jeanne Ancelet -Hustache, ed ., "Les 'Vitae Sororum' dUnterlinden,' Archives d'Histoire Doctrinale et Letteraire du Moyen Age 5 (1930): 340-42; Hyder E. Rollins, "Notes on Some English Accounts of Miraculous Feasts," journal ofAmerican Folklore 34 (1921): 363-64; john Walter of Lciden, "Life of Lidwina," in Acta Sanctorum, vol. 2, 272-75; Sebastian Perusinus, "Life of Columba of Rieti ,' in Acta Sanctorum, vol. 5, 188,217; Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast,

256. Notes to Chapter 6 13,1 7,23,148,200-201, 211, 250 - 55, 274 ; a nd fir st, se co nd , fifth , six th, seventh, eighth, and ninth quotations fro m Linke, Blood and Na tio n, 103-108. 23. Gary Mac y, The Theologies of the Eucharist in th e Early Scholastic Period (Oxford: Oxford Uni ver sit y Pre ss, 1984), 21, 30 -3 1; Ar t hur S. Wa lpole, Early Latin Hymn s (C ambridge: Cambridge Un ivers ity Pr ess, 1922), 350 - 51; Second quotation from H ei nrich D en zinger, "Dec ree s of th e Fourth Latera n Co un cil," in Enchiridion Symbolo rum, ed . Adolph Schonmetzer (Freiburg: Herder, 1967), 260 ; Fifth quotation from Leonce Reypens, ed ., Vita Beatricis (Antwerp: Ruu sbroec-Genootschap, 1964) , 152- 53; Aqu inas Byrnes, ed ., The Hymns of the Dom inican Mi ssal and Breviary (St. Loui s: Herder, 1943), 168; Stephen Gaselee, Th e Oxford Book of Medi eval Lat in Verse (O xford : Clarendon, 1937), 144, 145, 146-47; Joseph Co nnelly, Hymns of th e Roman Liturgy (Westminster, MD : Newman Pre ss, 1957), 120, 123, 126; Giuliana Cavall ini , ed., Cath erine of Siena (Rome: Ed iz io ni Ca ter in iane, 1968), 33134; Co lu mba Hart, Hadewijch : The Complete Work s (New York : Paulist Press, 1980), 260; Richard Kieckhefer, Unquiet Souls : Fourteenth- Century Sain ts and Their Religious Mili eu (Ch icago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 171; Rubin, Corp us Chr isti, 14; Fourth quota tion from Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast, 60, 161; an d fir st , third , and sixth quotations from Linke, Blood and Nation, L08-11. 24. Rudolph Bell, Holy Anorexia (Chicago : Un ivers ity of Chicago Press, 1985); Jesse M . Gellrich, The Idea of the Book in th e Middle Ages (Ithaca, N Y: C o rn ell University Press, 1985), 22; T hom as Aquinas, Summa Theologiae (New York : McGraw-Hill, 1964), 52: 122,58: 96-100, 59: 84 -8 5; Jam es J. Megivern , Concom ita nce and Com m union (New York : Herder Book Center, 1963); Macy, Theologies of the Eucharist, 30-3 1; Ga selee, The Oxford Book of Medieval Latin Verse, 146-47; Byrnes, Th e Hymns of th e Dominican M issal and Breviary, 180-88; Connelly, Hymn s of the Roman Liturgy, 126; Patrick Geary, Furta Sacra: Theft of Relics in the Central Middle Ages (Princeton, N J: Pr inc eton Un iversity Press, 1978), 39-40 ; Rubi n , Corpus Chri sti, 45 -48,58-59,251- 58,292 ; D.R. Dendy, The Use of Lights in Christian Wor ship, Alcuin Club Co llections, no. 41 (London: SPCK , 1959), 38; Richa rd C. Tre xler, "Rit ual in Florence," in The Pursuit of Holin ess in Lat e Medi eval and Renaissan ce Religion, ed . Heiko A. Oberman a nd C harles Trinkhau s (Leid en: Brill, 1974),200-64; Theodor Klauser, A Short History ofthe Western Liturgy, tra ns. John Ha lliburton (O xford: Oxford Universit y Press, 1979),98-103, 110,1 20: Iosef lu ngman n, Th e Mass of th e Rom an Rit e (New Yor k: Ben ziger, 1951), 119-21 , 364, 374-85, 412-14 ; Chri stopher N.L. Bro oke, "Relig io us Sentiment and Church Design in the Later Middle Ages ," Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 50 (1967) : 13-33; Thomas Brinton, The Sermons of Thom as Brinton, Bishop of Roche ster (1373-1389), ed . Mary Devlin (London: Offices of the Royal Histo rical Soci et y, 1954), 212- 17; John Audelay, The Poems of John Audelay, ed . Ella Whiting (London : Oxford University Pr ess, 1931), 67; V.L. Kennedy, "T he Date of th e Pa ri sian Decr ee o n the Elevatio n of the Host," Medieval Stud ies 8 (1946) : 87-92; Lionel Rothkrug, "Popul ar Religion and Ho ly Shrines," in Religion and the People, 800-1700, ed . J. Obelkevich (Chapel Hi ll: Univer sit y of North Ca roli na Press, 1979), 29, 36,41 ; Archdale King, Eucharistic Reservation in the Western Church (Lo ndon : Longmans, 1965), 104-108, 129- 30, 372; Caro line Walker Bynum, Jesus as Mother (Berkeley : Un iversity of California Pre ss, 1982); Second quotation from Bynum, Ho ly Feast and Holy Fast, 51-56, 59,134,327-28, en . 115- 17; and first q uotati on from Linke, Blood and Nation, 112-1 9. 25. D. Gray, "T he Five Wounds of Our Lord," Notes and Queries 208 (1963) : 50 -5 1, 82-89, 127-34, 163-68; Richard W. Pfaff, Ne w Liturgical Feasts in Lat er Medieval England (Oxford : O xford University Press, 1970), 62-83; Steinberg, Th e Sexuality of Christ; Curt F. Biih ler, "Prayers and Charms in Certain M iddl e Eng lis h Scrolls," Specu lum 39 (1964) : 273 -74 ; R.H . Robbins, "The Anima C h rist i Roll s," Mod ern Langu age Notes 34 (1939): 419-20; Gilbert Dolan, "Devotion to the Sacr ed H eart in Medieval Engla nd ," Dublin Review 120 (1897) : 37385; Walter L. Hildbu rgh, " No tes on Some Flemish Amu lets and Beliefs," Folk-Lore 19 (1908) : 205-206; Quoted ma teria l from Bynum, Holy Feast and Ho ly Fast, 63; and Linke, Blood and Nation, 121-23 . 26. Frederic C. Tubach, Ind ex Exe mp lorum : A Handbook of Medieval Religious Tales, Folklore Fellows Communications 204 (H elsinki: Suomalainen Ti edeakatem ia , 1969); James of Vitry, The Exempla; Or Illustrative Stori es from the "Serm ones Vulgares " of Jacques de Vitry, ed . T homas F. Crane (London : D. NUll, 1890), 113, n . 270; C harles Zika, "H osts, Processions, and Pilgrimages in Fifteenth-Century Germany," Past and Present 118 (1988) : 49-59; John A. M ac Cu lloch, Medi eva l Faith and Fable (Bo ston : Marsha ll Jone s, 1932), 159; Fir st quota-

Notes to Chapter 6 • 257

27.

28.

29.

30.

31.

32.

tion from Adam, of Eynsharn, The Life ofSt. Hugh ofLincoln (London: Nelson, 1961),93-94; Rothkrug, "Popular Religion and Holy Shrines," 41; Iungmann, The Mass of the Roman Rite, 119; James ofVitry, "Life of Mary of Oignies," 547-50, 562-63, 565-66; Rubin, Corpus Christi, 135-39; Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast, 63; and second quotation from Linke, Blood and Nation, 123-24. R. Po-Chia Hsia, The Myth of Ritual Murder (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988); Alan Dundes, "The Ritual Murder or Blood Libel Legend," in The Blood Libel Legend, ed. Alan Dundes (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991); Rothkrug, "Popular Religion and Holy Shrines," 29; Rubin, Corpus Christi, 122, 126; and Linke, Blood and Nation, 12627. First quotation from Frederick M. Powicke and Christopher R. Cheney, eds., Councils and Synods with Other Documents Relating to the English Church (Oxford: Clarendon, 1964), vol. 2, 27; Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Faber, 1988), 146,433 ; Marion A. Habig, St. Francis ofAssisi, 3rd ed. (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1973), 105; Iungmann, The Mass of the Roman Rite, 364, 374-82; Klauser, A Short History of the Western Liturgy, 110; Brooke, "Religious Sentiment and Church Design," 13-33; Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 59: 84-85, vol. 3; Rubin, Corpus Christi, 37-49,70-72, 147-50,294-97,340; Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast, 56-58,64; and second quotation from Linke, Blood and Nation, 127-31. First quotation from James of Vitry, "Life of Mary of Oignies," 547-50, 562-63, 565-66, 568; Second quotation from Thomas of Cantirnpre, "Life of Lutgard," in Acta Sanctorum, vol. 4, 192-94; Martin Jean Ferre, ed ., Angela of Foligno: Le Livre de L'Experience des Vrais Fideles, trans . Leon Baudry (Paris : Droz, 1927), 16, 138; "Life of Aida of Siena," in Acta Sanctorum , vol. 3, 474; Martin of Bosco-Gualteri, "Life of Jane Mary of Maille," in Acta Sanctorum, vol. 3, 734-44, 861-967; Augusta R. Drane, The History of Catherine of Siena and Her Companions (London: Burns Oates and Washbourne, 1915),261,271 ; Raymond of Capua, "Life of Catherine of Siena: Legenda Maior," in Acta Sanctorum, vol. 3, 869, 877-78, 904, 915; Suzanne Noffke, trans., Catherine of Siena: The Dialogue (New York: Paulist Press, 1980), 52,215; Third, fourth, fifth, and sixth quotations from Cavallini, Catherine of Siena, 37-38, 51-53,225-30,276-78,352-54,440; Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast, 59, 140, 177-78,376; and Linke, Blood and Nation, 132. Charles T. Wood, "The Doctor's Dilemma: Sin, Salvation, and the Menstrual Cycle in Medieval Thought," Speculum 56 (1981): 710-27; Joseph Needham, A History ofEmbryology, 2nd ed . (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 37-74; Anthony Preus, "Galen's Criticism of Aristotle's Conception Theory," journal of the History of Biology 10 (1977): 6585; Peter Dronke, Women Writers of the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984); Brant Pelphrey, Love Was His Meaning: The Theology and Mysticism of julian of Norwich (Salzburg: 1nstitut ftir Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 1982); Ritamary Bradley, "The Motherhood Theme in Julian of Norwich," Fourteenth-Century English Mystics Newsletter 2 (1976): 25-30; Mary M. McLaughlin, "Survivors and Surrogates," in The History of Childhood, ed. Lloyd deMause (New York: Psychohistory Press, 1974), 115-18; Schiller, Iconography ofChristian Art, 205-206; Bynum, Holy Feasts and Holy Fasts, 122,265-66,271 , 274,292; Bynum, jesus as Mother, 151-54 ; and Linke, Blood and Nation , 137. Peggy Reeves Sanday, Divine Hunger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); Paula Brown and Donald Tuzin, eds ., The Ethnography of Cannibalism (Washington, DC: Society for Psychological Anthropology, 1983); Debbora Battaglia, "The Body in the Gift," American Ethnologist 19 (1992): 3-18; Carol J. Adams, The Sexual Politics ofMeat (New York: Continuum, 1990); Werner Arens, The Man-Eating Myth (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979); Maurice Bloch and Jonathan Parry, eds ., Death and the Regeneration of Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982); and Andrew Strathern, "Witchcraft, Greed, Cannibalism, and Death," in Death and the Regeneration ofLife, 111-32 . Second, third, and fourth quotations from Ernest A. Rappaport, Anti-judaism (Chicago : Perspective Press, 1975), 95-96, 103-103, 108; Mary D. Anderson, A Saint at Stake: The Strange Death of William of Norwich, 1144 (London: Faber and Faber, 1964), 14; First quotation from Colin Holmes, "The Ritual Murder Accusation in Britain," Ethnic and Racial Studies 4 (1981): 266-67; Fifth quotation from Hyam Maccoby, The Sacred Executioner (London : Thames and Hudson, 1982), 159; Hsia, The Myth of Ritual Murder, 204,210-13; Dundes, "The Ritual Murder," 342, 357; Sixth and seventh quotations from Linke, Blood

258 • Notes to Chapters 6 and 7

33.

and Nation, 147, 149, 151-52; and Ceci l Roth, The Ritual Murder Libel and the few (London : Woburn Pre ss, 1934), 17. First quotation from Wa lter M. Abbott, ed ., The Documents of Vatican II (N ew York : H erder and Herder, 1966),27, 144, 154; Evangelista Vilanova et al., The Crisis of Liturgical Reform . Concilium, vol. 42 (New York : Pau list Press, 1969); Fourth quotation from jay, Throughout Your Generations Forever, 121; Fif th quotation from William D. D inges, "Rit ual Conflict as Social Conflict : Liturgical Reform in the Roman Catholic Church," Sociological Analysis 48 (1987) : 152; Sixth quotation from Dietrich von Hildebrand, The Devastated Vineyard (Chicago: Franciscan Hera ld Press, 1973), 70; Seventh quotation from Michael Davies, Apologia pro Marcel Lefebvre (Dickinson, TX : Angelus Pr ess, 1979),82-83,329 -30; Second and third quotations from Marcel Lefebvre, "Sermon. Mars in Geneva, " in Apologia , 219; Michael Da vie s, Th e Tridentine Mass (Devon: Augustine, 1977); and Michael Davies, The New Mass (Devon: Augustine, 1977).

Chap ter 7 1.

2.

3.

W ill iam H. Durham, Coevolution: Genes, Culture, and Human Diversity (Stanford: Stanford Un iversity Press, 1991),31. G. Lloyd, "The Fem ale Sex : Medica l Treatment and Biological Theories in the Fifth and Four th Centuries B.C. ," in Science, Folklore, and Ideology, Part III (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Peter Brain, Galen on Bloodletting: A Study ofthe Origins, Development and Validity ofHis Opinions, with a Trans lation of the Three Wo rks (Cambridge: Cambridge Un iversity Press, 1986), 15- 37, 38 -66; Pet er Brain, "In Defense of Ancient Bloodletting," African Medica l iournal Sts(1979) : 149- 54; M.j . Kluger, "The H istoryofBloodletting," Natural History 87 (1978) : 78-83; Jame s Polk 1. Morris, "Blood , Bleeding, and Blood Transfusion in M id-Nineteenth -Century American M edic ine" (PhD diss ., Tulane Uni versity, 1973); B.M . Randolph, "The Blood Letting Controversy in the N ineteenth Century," Annals of Med ical History, n.s ., 7 (1935); William G. Rothstein, American Physicians in the 19th Century: From Sects to Science (Balt imore: jo h ns Hopkins University Press, 1985); Leo S. Bryan, "BloodLetting in A merican Medici ne , 1830-1892," Bulletin of the History ofMedicine 38 (1964); and A. Clair Siddall, "Blood lett ing in Am erican Obstetrical Practice , 1800 -1945," Bu lletin of the History ofMedicine 54 (1980) : 101-10 . Ralp h H oulbroo ke, ed ., Death, Ritual, and Bereavement (New York : Routledge, 1989); Ian Morris, Death -Ritual and Social Structure in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); jam es L. Watson and Evelyn S. Rawski, eds ., Death Ritual in Late Imperial and Modern China (Berkeley : Univer sity of Ca lifornia Press, 1988); Loring M. Danforth, The Death Rituals of Rural Greece (Princeton, N]: Princeton University Press, 1982); Anthony Parrett, Dying and Death among the Turkana (Eldoret, Kenya: Gaba Publications, 1987); Herbert Aschwanden, Symbols ofDeath: An Analysis ofthe Consciousness of the Karan ga (Gweru, Zimbabwe: Mambo Press, 1987); Bernardo T. Arriaza, Beyond Death : Th e Chincho rro Mummies ofAncient Chile (Washington , DC : Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995); jam es A. Brown, ed ., "Approaches to the Social Dimensions of Mortuary Practices," Memoirs of the Society for American Archaeology 25 (1971); William A. Douglass, Deat h in Mun!laga: Funerary Ritual in a Spanish Basque Village (Seattle: Univer sity of Wash ing ton Press, 1969); j.H . Kam stra, H . Milde, and K. Wagtendonk, ed s., Funerary Symbols and Religion (Kampen, the Netherlands: j.H . Kok, 1988); Cha rlotte R. Long, The Ayia Triadha Sarcophagus:A Study ofLate Minoan and Mycenaean Funerary Practices and Beliefs (Goteborg: P. Ast rom, 1974); Sue D'Auria, Pet er Lacovara, an d Catharine H. Roehrig, Mummies and Magic: The Funerary Arts of Ancient Egypt (Boston : Museum of Fine Arts , 1988); An drzej Niwinski, Studies on the Illustrated Theban Funerary Papyri of the 11th and 10th Centuries B.C. (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1989); jan Ovesen, "The Orchestration of Lob i Funerary Ritual," Folk 28 (1986); Deborah ). Shepherd, Funerary Ritua l and Symbolism: An Interdisciplinary Interpretation of Burial Practices in Late Iron Age Finland (Oxford: Bri tish Archaeological Reports, 1999); E.A. Wallis Budge, The Mummy: A Handbook of Egyptian Funerary Archaeology (N ew York : Dover Publications, 1989); Eli sabeth Schombucher and C laus Peter Zoller, Ways of Dying: Death and Its Meanings in South Asia (New Delhi: Manohar, 1999); Theodo re W. Eversole, "From Trade to Profession: T he Rise of Mortuary

Notes to Chapter 7 • 259

4.

Science in Cincin nat i:' Qu een City He ritage 43 (1985): 35- 39; Fra nk I. Yurco, "Egypti an Mummies: Myth , Magic and Realit y: ' Bull etin of the Field Mu seum of Natural History 60 (1989): 16-30; Augus tine Kututera Abasi, "Lu-lia, the Fresh Fun era l: Fou nding a House for th e Deceased among th e Kasena of North-east Ghan a: ' Africa 65 (1995); Stephen Qui rke and jeffrey Spenc er, eds., Bri tish Mu seum Book of A ncie nt Egypt (Ne w York: Th am es and Hud son, 1992) ; Robert Steven Bian chi, "The Mummy as Medium:' Archa eology 48 (199 5); Muha mmad jibali, Funeral s: Regulation s and Exhortations (Arlington , TX: AI-Kitab and As-Su nna h Publish ing, 1998) ; Roger Echo- Hawk, "Paw nee Mortuar y Tradit ions," American Ind ian Culture and Research Journal 16 (1992) : 77- 99; Werner Stocklin, "Kukukuku: Funeral Ceremonies and Killing Ghosts: ' Curare 8 (1985): 209 -1 6; Ca rol P. MacCorm ack, "Dying as Transformation to Ancestorhood : The Sherbro Coas t of Sierr a Leone: ' Cura re 8 (1985); Kars ten Poerr egaard, "Death Ritu als and Symbols in th e Ande s: ' Folk 29 (1987): 23-42 ; Piers Vitebsky, "Death and Regeneration of a 'Divine King ': A Preliminar y Acco unt of th e Mo rt ua ry Rites of th e Paramount Ch ief (Citimukulu) of th e Bemba of Zambia, Based on th e Unpublished Fieldn otes of Aud rey Rich ard s: ' Cambridge Anthropology 10 (1985): 56-91 ; Ma rt ha L. Sempowski, "Different ial Mortuar y Treatment of Seneca Women : Some Social Inferences," Bu lletin: Journal of th e New York State Archaeological Associat ion 95 (1987): 5057; Tim oth y Brook, "Fune ra ry Ritu al an d the Building of Lineages in Late Imp erial China," Harvard Journ al of A siati c St udi es 49 (1989) : 46 5-500; and Shaun Kin gsley Malarney, "The Limit s of cState Functionalism' and th e Reconstruction of Fun erary Ritual in Contemporary Vietnam:' American Ethn ologist 23 (1996) : 540-6 1. joseph A. Towles, Asa: Myth of Origin of Blood -Broth erhood among th e Mbo, !turi Forest (Tervuren , Belgique : Musee Royal de l'Afriqu e Centra le, 1993); Harry Tegnaus, Blood Broth ers: An Ethno-sociological Study of the Institutions of Blood- Broth erhood, with Special Reference to Afr ica (New York : Philosophic al Librar y, 1952); Edward Evan Evans -Pritchard, "Zande Blood-Brotherhood : ' Africa 6 (1933); and Luise Whit e, "Blood Broth erhood Revisited : Kinsh ip, Relation ship , and the Body in East and Centr al Africa : ' Africa 64 (1994) : 359- 73.

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Index Blood medicines, 80, 133 Blood m etaphors, 1 Blood offerings, 41, 170 Blood payment, 40 Blood-removing baths, 73 Blood revenge, 40 Blood sacrifice, 14, Ill , 206, 207, seealso Sacrific e Blood serum, 1 Bodil y symbols, 141 Book of Zoha r, 68 Breast feeding, 66- 67, 76, 116, 124- 125

A Abortifacients, 62 Adult/group status, att aining, see Initiation rites Aeschylus, 61 Africa n Eve, 23 Agn at ion , in patrilineal societies, 172-1 76 Alime ntary sacrifices, 169 Amenorrhea, 50,146 Amniotic fluid , 79-80 Amulets, 69, 141 And rocentrism, 83-84 An orexia scolastica, 154 Ara b medical th eory, 72 Aristotle, 50, 59, 126, 143, 167

C Catlinite, 12 Cerem onial defloration, 87-88 Child birth, see Preg na ncy an d childbirth Circu mc ision, 69, 101-102, 107, 112,206, see also Initiation rites Classificatory kin sh ip, 26 Clitoride ctomy, 102, 103 Coevolution and rituals , 13-16, 205 Cofeeding, 64 Cognation, 173-1 74 Color perception, 1,4, 123 Color symbolism, 8-13, 91, 93 Com m uni on sacrifices, 168-1 71 Co nception , blood of conclusion , 82 cultura l beliefs, 49-64 intro d uction, 47-48 Corpus Christi, 197 Cultur al determinism, 15

B Baldur's blood, 10 Baptism , 70 Baths, 66, 68, 73,132 Biotit e gneiss, 12 Birth control, 160 Birth Go ddess,S Birth products, 48 Birth ritu als, 71-74, seealso Pregnan cy and childbirth Bisexu alit y, 10 1 Blood beliefs, ori gin s of, seealso specific topics the color red and, 8- 13 conclusion , 205-208 fertility and life, 5-8 introduct ion, 1-1 6 repro ductive life cycle and , 2- 5, 14, 16,3 7,82 rituals and coevolution, 13-16 symb ols and ritua ls, 1, 16, 17,44 Blood brothers, 8 Blood di sorders, 72, 75, 160 Blood di fetishes , 114 Blood sorders, Bloodl etting, 2, 36,64, 144, 164, 206, 207, see also Male in itiation ritu als

D Darwin ian evolution, 18 Death rituals, 41 Defloration rituals, 140 Death rituals, Deuteronomy, 186 Divin e spirits, 4

261

262 • Index Dogon creation myth , 101 Dual inheritan ce the ory, 13- 14, 15, 205

E Early Upper Paleolithic ar t, 24 Effluvia, 3 Eggs, 4, 47 Embryology, scient ific, 61 Endogamy, 183, 188 Endometriosis, 160 Epigenetic ru les, 14, 15,47 Ergot, 62 Ethno historians, 4 Eucha rist, 199 Eucharist ritu al, 6 Evolutionary biologists, 1 Expia tory sacrifices, 168-1 71, 179, 187 F Feminist critiqu es, 3 Fertility, 5-8, 125 Fertility charms, 104 Fertilit y phrases, 140 Fertility rituals, 50, see also Co nceptio n , blood of Fert ility sym bolism, 89, 136 Foucault, Michel, 2, 3-4 Freud's oed ipal dilemma, 3

G Galenic humoral theo ry, 72 Ge nde red blood, 30- 36 Gender relation sh ips, 102, 132, 185 Gender-segregated cerem oni es, 1I5 Ge ne-cultur e coevoluti on, 5, 13-1 6, 205 Genetic determinism, 15 Genetic evolution, 15 Genital surgeries, fem ale, 101-107 Graafian follicle, 148, 150 H Haematogenic embryological theory, 52 Herodotus, 102, 108 Hippocrates, 49, 59, 60, 98, 126, 143 Ho mo logy prin ciple, 4 Hom osexua lity ritual , 114 Hormones, 85,1 56-1 57, 160 Human culture, ori gins of conclusion , 44-45 gendered blood, 30-36 introduction, 17 sex for meat , 17-24

sex strike the or y, critique of, 36-38 the symbolic evolution , 38-43 th e symbolic revolution, 24- 30 Human sacrifice, 165, 177-178 Humoral theories, 50 Hygien e, 100 I Incest taboos, 25, 30 Infibulation , 102 Init iation rites anthropology of, 83-85 conclusion , 122 female genit al surgeries, 101-107 introduction , 14, 32, 69, 83 male ritual s, 107- 122 menarche, 2, 37, 86- 101 Int ichiu ma rites, 11 K Kinship structures, 25- 30, 36, 39, 43 L Lactation, 60, 67,124-12 5,1 46 Lamia, 68 Leviticus, 68, 131, 133 Life cycle ritu als, 85 Lilith ,68 Lono festival, 184 Luna r symbolism, 28 M

Maimonides, 50 Male in itiation ritual s, 107-122 Matriliny, 26 Men arche , 2, 37, 86-101 ,122,126 Men's blood, see Human culture, origins of Menstrual d isorders, 145, 160 Menstrual ritu als, see Men struation Men strual tab oos, 127, 128, 140, 180 Men struation, see also Human culture, origi ns of an evolutionary oddity, 123-126 anthropology of, 126- 134 conclusion, 161-162 cont emp orar y con structions, 159-161 evolutionary evid enc e of, 20-24, 41 holi stic con siderations, 134-1 43 the hygienic imperative, 154-1 56 introdu ction, 123 medicalization in the west and, 143-1 54 raging ho rmones, 156-1 57 second -wave femi nist s and, 157-1 59

Index • 263 Midwives, male, 76-77 Mikveh bath s, 68 Mitochondrial inh eritance, 23 N Nonalimenta ry sacrifices, 169 Nubility rites, 94

o Ochre, red, 12,28, 31,35,41 ,72,11 5 Out side blood , 43 Ovul ation , 20, 31, 124 p

Paracelsus, 6 Peace offerings , 170, 187 Penile bloodl etting ritu als, 114, 115-116, 118, 120, see also Male initiation ritual s Penn yroyal, 62 Pfluger's theor y, 150 Phlebotomy, 63,146 Phobia s, 154 Placent a, 51, 69, 75, 76, 78, seealso Pregn ancy and childbirth Plato, 61 Postulat ion-deductive th eories, 16 Pregnancy and childbirth, see also Conception, blood of anth ropology of, 48- 49 blood rituals and , 67-82 conclusion, 82 holistic consid erations of, 64-67 introduction, 47- 48 Prem enstru al synd rome, 160 Prenubility sex, 95- 96 Primordial Mother, 140 Psychoan alytic theor y, 3 Pub ert y rites, 85, 87, 104 Purging rituals, 66, 132 Purification rite, 111 Pyrop e,11 R

Rebirthing ceremony, 106 Red ochr e, 12,28,31,35,41, 72, 115 Red symbolism, 8-13, 91, 93 Reproductive life cycle, 2-5, 14, 16,37,82, 134- 143, see also Menstruation Reproductive rituals , 3, 45, 59, 134, seealso Conception, blood of Ritual killing, 192-203 Rituals, seespecific topics

Rituals and coevolutio n, 13-16,205 Roasting rituals, 75 S Sacr ifice acknowledging descent through women , 176-192 agnation in patrilineal societi es, 172-1 76 anthropology of, 163-168 communion and expiation, 168-1 71 conclu sion, 203 introduction, 163 ritual killing and, 192-203 Sacrificial cults, 175 Sacrificial victims , 182 Savin, 62 Scientific embr yology, 61 Self-torture, 195 Semen, 4,8,42,47, 52 Semen-ingesting rituals , 120 Sex acts, 53 Sex-for-meat bargaining, 18 Sex strike theory, 18-20,26-27,31 , 36-38,44 Sexual educ ation, 92 Sin offerings 170 Slavery, 178 Symb olic anthropologists, 1 Symbolic evolution, 38- 43 Symbolic revolution, 24- 30

T Tansy oil, 62-63 Tantrism, 39 Temple hie rarchy, 182 Third day bath s, 66 Tongue scarification, 115 Tonics, 66 Totemic systems, 39 Totemism, 30 Transition-rit e theory, 3 Two seed theory, 59, 60 V Venereal disease, 156 Virginity, 86, 106, 156 Vulva, 31, 34, 45 W Women's blood , see Hum an culture, origins of Wotan's finger, 6

Y Yoruba moon godd ess, 11