The external coherence of Pokot ritual behaviour

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Abstract
Human ritual behaviour involves a component of sign-symbolism which notably heightens the complexity of its analysis. For participants and observers alike, the meaning of ritual may be ambiguous and arbitrary. Furthermore, the meaning of ritual and its content may change independently of each other with time and circumstance. Using the Nkula ceremony of the Ndembe people of Central Africa as his data, Professor Turner has amply demonstrated for this Symposium the internal coherence of ritual behaviour and the complexity of its discovery (this Symposium, pp. 295- 303). The present paper is written from a different point of view—it emphasizes the external coherence or ‘fit’ of ritual with other aspects of a way of life. The data presented here include the behaviour observed during some of the ritual events by means of which (and at a very generalized level of meaning) the Pokot of East Africa anticipate the summer solstice (1).

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