Cutting Absolute Worlds

This chapter presents the work of cultural anthropologist Tim Ingold (on grounded and ungrounded being) and of linguistic anthropologist Stephen Levinson (on spatial frames of reference). Both authors provide the reader with new ways to think about the object being cut at Măgura: the ground. Discussion of Ingold’s work examines his thinking on the shift from a groundless existence in modernity (imposed by shoes, roads, cars, etc., which separate us form the ground), and comment on Levinson’s investigation of the distinction among three ways that people understand where they are in the world (relative, intrinsic, and absolute frames of spatial referencing). The chapter concludes with a proposal that the reader will benefit from thinking about the Măgura pit-houses in terms of an absolute grounded existence.