139time of questioning (the interview was carried out on 26 March, 2009). This was
the start of the pre-monsoons, and many of the lowland trees were either still
bare, or had just started to sprout new leaves. Although my consultants needed
to confer with each other to arrive at a satisfactory consensus for some of the
rarer trees, for the large majority of trees, they were able to provide
near- instantaneous responses in agreement. During the walk back to my fi eld
station following this interview, I was able to verify that all the trees we passed
along the way were indeed ‘doing’ exactly what my consultants had reported.
As the following description of landscape/forest terms makes clear, Solega peo-
ple also associate each habitat with a particular suite of plant species. As each spe-
cies is characterised by its own phenological cycle, it is possible that each habitat
(i.e. forest/landscape) has a unique ‘phenological signature’ associated with it at
each point in the seasonal cycle. Might these cyclic changes also form part of the
Solega’s mental representation of the landscape, and if so, how would the idea of a
cognitive map need to be altered to accommodate temporal processes?
This chapter addresses many of the issues mentioned above, with respect to
a suite of landscape terms in Solega. Not surprisingly, Solega has a rich vocabu-
lary to describe the numerous landforms and water bodies that are commonly
found on their ancestral lands—many of these are presented in Table 5.2 (see
also Fig. 5.1 ). In the following section, I present transcripts of the interviews I
carried out with two groups of Solega speakers, where I asked them specifi c
Table 5.2 Solega landscape and hydrological terms
Geological and biological landscape features
adda:lu Sheer drop
arre Rock platform
eṇe Flat land at the top of a hill or mountain
ogari Cave
oḍagu Sides of mountain; steeper than a bo:re
oḍḍu Pile of boulders; rocky slopes
oḷḷe Narrow gaps between boulders
o:ḍe Crevice
õgu Valley
kaṭṭe Shore of a lake; artifi cial raised boundary around a lake
kaṇḍi Boundary around a lake
kadiru A grove of similar trees
ka:ḍu Forest
koḷḷa Steep slope
ko:be Valley; fl at land between two mountains
ko:sa:ru Rocky terrain that is hard to navigate; found high up on
mountains
gadde Flat, marshy land
guḍḍe Small hill
(continued)5.1 Introduction