Pastoral nomadism is a highly specialized occupation but, through economic exchanges with agriculturalists and urban communities, the nomads are or have been an important part of the wider society. (11, vol 1)
Taken as a whole, these Danish studies of nomadic cultures and societies are widely different in kind, representing the educational background, interests, and theoretical orientation of the explorer or scholar who carried them out, the length of time spent in the field, and the period in which the expedition or fieldwork took place. As ethnographic data they must be appreciated and analysed against this background. Museum collections cannot be fully understood by viewing them simply and uncritically as adequate and objective representations of the cultures which produced them. Invariably, each collection is a result of selection by the fieldworker who has made choices on the basis of implicit or explicit criteria of representations, and as such what is brought back represents to some degree Western cultural principles, scientific ideas, and aesthetic values over time. (16, vol 1)
Removed from their original context, the objects are then rearranged in exhibitions where they may give the impression of replicating such abstract wholes as, for example, Mongol culture. The interpretations and evaluations of the ethnographic collections and other ethnographic data which are to be presented in this series of publications take such issues into consideration. (16, vol 1)
It is also clear that ethnographic collections and the unpublished data on the lives and traditions of these various pastoral peoples, which in some cases are already of the past, attain a new significance in this situation. Each of these cultures represents a singular social and cultural experiment in the history of mankind. As such each of them carries evidence that is significant to the overall effort to explore the common denominators of cultural and social formation and the factors which limit the variability of these, which is the ultimate goal of anthropology. (17, vol 1)
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