نشریه دانش های بومی ایران
پیاپی 1 (بهار و تابستان1393)

Neglecting traditional knowledge and technologies in our society and most of the third world countries such as our neighbors occurs when constant failure of western style of development plan and universal destroy of environment make later intellectual and far sighted scholars and international organizations such as Fao, Unesco, Brundtland commission and World Bank increasingly take in to account their mistakes towards third world development and neglecting cultural aspects and indigenous knowledge, technologies, management and rationality. They try to compensate their mistakes. However most of the methods of intellectual from traditional societies incessantly follow their own way like that Isfahani fellow who denied confessing his bad handwriting. Here in this article there is an attempt to consider some points of Iran's traditional knowledge and technologies.

The ancient Lor ethnicity is a branch of Iranian nomads who have gone through the ups and downs of history. Although it has lost much of its historical territory, it occupies an area as large as 123,000 square kilometers, spreading to the west, center and parts of the northern coasts of the Persian Gulf. The ethnicity is classified into the two branches of the Greater Lor and the Smaller Lor. The Daz River defines the demarcation line between the territories of these two branches. Each of these branches has its own closed lifestyle in Iran's central mountains. An ancient culture with amazing phenomena based on internal laws and inventions govern the ethnicity. We can still observe in their daily life parts of these internal phenomena of different strata. One of these ancient and historical phenomena is communication in order to make decisions on ruling the strata which is closely linked to their biological lifestyle. This is because the vast and scattered strata in mountains should be supported by a center from which they can ask for their needs related to natural and human events. Traditional vocal-verbal form of informing is a need with different rules and types, each of which contains special concepts and is expressed in a special way. Everyone has a duty to participate in these traditional speeches and perform their duties in their stratum. This paper attempts to mention some of these traditional events among the Greater Lor community, especially Bakhtiari, Boyer Ahmad and Bahmaie Lors.

Women's clothing has witnessed remarkable changes in history. Among all these coverings, chador bears a special significance. The developments that have rose as a result of changes in the form and usage of this covering has always been appealing to critics and researchers. This covering has represented its wearer's social, political, economic, and religious character; hence, researchers of different social sciences have always argued for or against this covering. This article explores the reasons as to why this covering witnessed changes, particularly in the past decade. It further demonstrates the developments and changes from a traditional chador to the modern forms. The present study was conducted in an academic environment (Islamic Azad University, Tehran Central Branch), and the subjects were students aged from 20 to 35. The research is conducted using qualitative methodology, direct observation, external sources (library deeds and documents), research tools (camera, tape recorder, etc.). The results of this anthropological look and field research show that during the past decade, change of chador patterns from its traditional form to modern has created new thoughts about this covering. The change of form and size of chadors reveals some secret layers in the thoughts of today’s women and girls. This has led some of them to feel sorry about and some other to feel proud of being a woman in the studied population. Though anthropology is not obliged to provide solutions and suggestions, we should not overlook the results of this research which is the overall opinion of women about chador or Islamic hijab. In this paper, the thoughts of functionalist theorists, particularly those of Beranislaw Malinowski are used. Despite the changes in Islamic covering, it can be said that women themselves are the main factors in such development.

The traditional culture of undeveloped countries has been attacked by modernity during centuries of orientology literature in a more descriptive and indirect form, and around 70 years after the World War II in a direct and theorized form. In this paper, different results have been achieved based on the experiences, library research, field researches and observations in Iran during the past 25 years. The conflicts and inconsistency of the modernity school and its assumptions with historical realities both in Europe and undeveloped countries, and second wave of development in countries such as Japan, China, India, etc. showed that development issues are far more complicated and beyond the unreal claims of orientologists and modernity school. The present paper begins with criticism of orientological classification and challenges its inaccuracy, and the conflict between tradition and industry. It is an attempt to show with various conflicting and paradoxical examples that despite considering the tradition and industry as evident, it is the former that has paved the way for the latter whether in the first or second wave of development.

Halālbi (“forgiving the deceased husband”) phenomenon is one of the types of forgiveness or asking for forgiveness which is seen in people at the time of separations in which there is little chance of meeting again such as far and dangerous journeys, or when the individual’s suffering from incurable disease or is going to the operating room. It is a kind of asking for forgiveness of abnormal behaviors, actions and cruelties from people around especially the spouse. Asking for forgiveness or forgiving at the end of the communication line between two people is a very laudable behavior which has been common in the past in our society whether in cities, villages or among nomads and still exists among people to some extent. The present paper studies the functions of a special type of forgiving the deceased man by his wife or wives in his funeral ceremony. The research conducted in Bahmaie city shows that the conditions, states, actions, communications, messages and symbols of forgiving the deceased husband has established a social defensive mechanism which plays an important role in organizing and monitoring the behavior of spouses with its secret functions, in a way that it can prevent and decrease wife abuse by men among the families of these tribes. In a nutshell, when the man dies and is put in the grave, his wife is asked to come next to or go into the grave before burying him and forgive him at the presence of everyone there. In fact, she is allowing him to be buried in his tomb. The observations in Bahmaie city of Kohkilooyeh and Boyer Ahmad Province show that this ceremony has many sociocultural functions which are mentioned in this study.

Anthropology has a special place as the science of culture and study of human interaction and accommodation with the environment. One of the most important discussion in the field of anthropology in knowing the culture of village and nomad societies is the study of their native knowledge and the method of their accommodation with the environment, nature and meeting their biological and non-biological needs in nature. Native knowledge refers to solutions that humans have achieved by experience in so many years for solving their problems based on the experience of their ancestors and which can be different in each region considering their specific conditions. Having recorded the native knowledge of the region, anthropologists make known the thoughts of animal farmers, shepherds and cameleers about their environment. The present paper studies the traditional method of camel husbandry and the native knowledge of cameleers in the grasslands of the North of Iran in Gomishan region. It also aims at knowing and detection of their common information and terminology about camel and camel husbandry. The region studied is the grasslands of Gomishan city o Golestan Province located 25 kilometers far away from the city. In this paper, the necessary information on camel husbandry method based on native knowledge is gathered through interview, observation, taking pictures and videos. The findings include the native knowledge about the cycle and calendar of the camel husbandry activities, camel herd grasslands, issues related to reproduction and delivery in camel, animals accompanying the herd, the status of camel herd, marking the animal and camel productions such as milk and its byproducts, wool and meat.

In the course of realization of constant development of villages with people-based orientation aiming at their empowerment, the native knowledge is the most significant part of development in terms of local beliefs, values, methods and knowledge. Experience shows that not only is the native knowledge not inconsistent with the official one, but it can also complement it. Native knowledge is accessible, comprehensible, efficient, and inexpensive and is transmitted orally. This knowledge has been dynamic, has completed in nature and local communities, is consistent with native and regional conditions and has helped villagers in stable management of water-yielding places so that they would have more active role in development of natural sources. The present study aims at evaluating the level of knowledge of villagers in the field of water and soil protection technology. The data are gathered through using focused groups, interviews, questionnaires along with participation of experts of water-yielding areas of Shahid Rajaie Yanser, Mazandaran Province. The findings show that the primary living facilities in most villages under study are at an average level and that villages in different areas have various climate and weather. Also, the heavy dependence of villagers on natural sources and limitations in family income sources has led to pressurizing and destruction of natural sources. Experts consider destruction of jungles and grasslands, floods, decrease in water sources and shortage of water supply, soil erosion, accumulation of sediments behind dams and destruction of river edges as the most important crises related to natural sources. They believe that utilizers should have great skill and knowledge when it comes to occurrence, reasons and significance of such crises and also significance of operations of wateryielding utilization and its protection. This paper reveals that evaluations and prioritizations of experts are quite different from the evaluations made based on popular knowledge. In many cases the knowledge and information of people about ecosystems and species they are in contact with are less than what is really there. Therefore, the most important educational prioritization should deal with native knowledge and establishment of interaction between the native and official knowledge. In the world industrialization process, agricultural section, especially in the third world has witnessed the most damages, because native methods have left their once tried experience.

It goes without saying that food is quite significant which is felt by biologists, psychologists and more importantly by people. However, some societies including Iranians have always witnessed various incidents for thousand years due to its specific geographical and historical condition, shortage of food and even water on the one hand, and many natural disasters and attacks by alien tribes on the other hand. Therefore, they have so much and sometimes unique experience in issues related to food security, management and storage. The said experiences unfortunately keep being forgotten. In most Iranian regions, there are mountains with water and no soil or deserts with soil and no water. Moreover, plants grow and agricultural, garden, and animal products are produced only in some months of the year. On the other hand, dangerous pests such as locust, age, color, natural disasters such as drought, untimely cold weather, flood, hail, and worst of all social insecurities including attacks on Iran which is a record-holder in this regard have all led to collection of experience in such special conditions so as to be used in such unlucky days of shortage or drought. Iranians have innovated various solutions to the extent that they have been able to store the most perishable foods such as milk for one week to two years. This is also true for vegetable, meat and fresh fruits. The present paper is the preliminary stage of a great work about traditional methods of food storage and traditional ways of fighting drought which have been applied by our ancestors for thousands of years. The paper aims at recording the latest experiences of old villagers and stories they have heard or applied about drought and different methods of combating it, food storage techniques and diet management at times of shortage before its too late. One of the findings is drawing of the preliminary graph of food classification in Iranian culture.