Zaal Kikvidze - Traditional Ecological Knowledge in Georgia

Traditional knowledge (sometimes referred to as indigenous knowledge or local knowledge) is a complex notion. In a broad sense, it encompasses local cultural traditions including the ways ecosystem services and natural resources (among them animals, plants, minerals, hunting grounds, water bodies for fishing) are used. Traditional knowledge means that a given group of people are able to recognise certain elements of nature (living beings, rocks, springs, rivers, forests) and utilise them as resources (food, medicine, materials for toolmaking, construction, decoration, ritual items, adornments) or avoid damage in case of threat (e.g., dangerous predators, poisonous plants) in a specific way to achieve a specific goal. Therefore, traditional knowledge basically refers to the knowledge and skills, both tacit and learned from parents, elders, or peers, of recognising and utilising plants, animals, and ecosystem properties. Transferring knowledge and skills from generation to generation also strongly involves the culture of traditional communities, including their lore, arts, and worldview.

A historical approach and a reconstruction of how traditional knowledge emerged and evolved become crucial for understanding the structure and importance of existing traditional knowledge in a given culture and is made possible through analyses of archaeological materials, ethnographic surveys, and historical records. These approaches complement each other well, although in a somewhat unexpected way. Collection of data on traditional knowledge, is, of course, mostly achieved using the methods of ethnography and sociology, yet the source of this highly sought after information the respondents who still retain and use traditional knowledge and skills are declining rapidly in number as traditional agriculture gives way to an industrial one, and the rural population migrates en masse to cities. But, on the other hand, archaeological databases are only increasing over time. It is evident that the shift in relative importance from ethnographic data to archaeological artefacts will be inevitable in the long term, at least in order to reconstruct already abandoned traditional practices of subsistence. Our priority today, therefore, is to join archaeological materials and their ethnographic interpretations comprehensively into clear concepts and models, so that they can later be usefully extrapolated in the reconstruction of past traditional practices. Perhaps this problem is not specific to Georgia but rather represents a global trend. Although I myself am not aware of any study that reviews this type of reconstruction, there is a body of work that gives good examples of the use of archaeological materials for ethnographic reconstruction: B. Kuftin (1941, p.8990) interpreted the scenes on the Trialeti Chalice as a ritual of fertility worship; Jason Kikvidze (1972; 1976) reviewed fertility cults of prehistoric agrarian societies in Georgia based on archaeological materials; more recently, Irakli Surguladze (1993; 2003) has analysed ancient astral symbols conserved in traditional crafts. Hopefully, the task of linking traditional knowledge with archaeological and other empirical materials will be pursued more rigorously in future studies.