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Wikipedia:WikiProject Anthropology/Oral tradition taskforce

< Wikipedia:WikiProject Anthropology


Welcome to the Oral tradition task force of WikiProject Anthropology and WikiProject Literature, where we collaborate to improve Wikipedia’s coverage of oral tradition. To join, just add your name to the participants section and maybe watch this page if you want. The project functions via consensus, there are no leaders or coordinators, anyone can suggest initiatives or ideas.

Scope

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Oral tradition is the means by which information is transmitted from one generation to the next through speech and storytelling. It is a dynamic and ever-evolving process that encompasses a vast array of human expression. From myths, legends, and folktales to historical narratives, genealogies, and legal precedents, oral tradition serves as a repository of cultural knowledge, values, and beliefs. Oral tradition relies on institutions and practices for its preservation and transmission. Roles such as the griot serve as oral historians and storytellers, and as custodians of culture and tradition. Memorization, practice, and performance are necessary for the transmission of oral narratives. The frequency and context of storytelling influence the evolution and preservation of these traditions. This taskforce explores the relationship between oral tradition and anthropology, literature, and other scholarly fields. We aim to improve Wikipedia's coverage of oral traditions from diverse cultures, including indigenous and contemporary societies. While oral tradition is largely found and emphasised in societies that revere the oral word in contrast to the written word, it is commonplace in some form within all societies worldwide.

Our scope includes the study of oral performance, transmission, and reception; the interplay between oral and written traditions; and the influence of oral tradition on cultural identity, social structures, and historical narratives. We will examine oral genres such as myths, legends, folktales, gossip, jokes, epics, ballads, proverbs, and riddles. We will also look at the role of oral tradition in preserving cultural heritage, transmitting knowledge, and fostering social cohesion. Additionally, we will explore the impact of the digital age on the documentation, preservation, and revitalization of oral traditions. Through collaboration, we aim to create a comprehensive resource on oral tradition. Our work involves identifying gaps in coverage, improving existing articles, and creating new articles on underrepresented topics.

Objectives

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Our general goal is to clean up and improve existing articles, expand existing articles, and create new articles which all involve oral tradition (?)

(below this, the progress bars for certain milestones like at WP:MILHIST)

To do

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  • Tag related articles by adding {{WikiProject Anthropology}} with the parameter |oral-tradition=yes to the top of the talk page.
    (For an example see Talk:Oral tradition)
  • Notify editors who have shown interest in this subject and ask them whether they might be interested.
  • Identify articles for creation
  • Identify articles for improvement
  • Review importance and quality of existing articles
  • Identify overlapping categories that might identify people's areas of interest, like by Countries' WPs, by topic like WP:History, WP:Religion etc.

Articles to be created

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Articles requiring significant improvement

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Articles requiring translation

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From French:

From German:

From Italian:

From Spanish:

From Portuguese:

From others:

Drafts

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Articles created by this task force

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Move here the links to entries you've written or translated, as part of this task force effort:

Articles

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Tagging and assessment

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Any articles that are within the scope of this project should be tagged on their talk pages with {{WikiProject Anthropology}}, the project banner of WikiProject Anthropology. To this banner, you should add |oral-tradition = yes as this will automatically put the page in the appropriate categories, such as Category:Oral tradition taskforce articles. The importance of the article to this task force should then be assessed with |oral-tradition-imp = followed by Top, High, Mid or Low.

The same functionality may be added later to the banner of WikiProject Literature.

Categories

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Oral tradition articles by quality and importance
Quality Importance
Top NA ??? Total
  GA 1 1
B 1 12 13
C 42 42
Start 72 72
Stub 25 25
List 1 1
NA 14 14
Assessed 1 14 153 168
Total 1 14 153 168
WikiWork factors (?) ω = 719 Ω = 4.70

Advice for recording and writing about an oral tradition

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(expand WP:Oral history to provide guidelines and advice for people wanting record and write about an oral tradition, and make a style guide like Wikipedia:WikiProject Climate change/Style guide)

Featured/Good content

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Good articles

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DYKs

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Participants

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To join the Oral tradition taskforce, edit this section and copy-paste the Wikitext #{{subst:me}} followed by your areas of interest to the bottom of this list of participants.

  1. Kowal2701 (talk · contribs) 17:43:11, 27 July 2024 (UTC) – general interest, but specifically African traditional oral history[reply]
  2. Zanahary (talk · contribs) 06:12:44, 28 July 2024 (UTC) – oral tradition of Madagascar[reply]
  3. Vanderwaalforces (talk · contribs) 09:30:02, 28 July 2024 (UTC) – oral traditions of African states[reply]
  4. Βατο (talk · contribs) 10:11:15, 28 July 2024 (UTC) – Albanian and general Balkan oral tradition.[reply]
  5. Di (they-them) (talk · contribs) 11:27:13, 28 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Revolution Saga (talk · contribs) 11:40:21, 28 July 2024 (UTC) – Armenian oral tradition[reply]
  7. Ahiise2 (talk · contribs) 14:29:51, 28 July 2024 (UTC) – oral tradition of western Uganda[reply]
  8. Ingwina (talk · contribs) 19:52:06, 28 July 2024 (UTC) – oral tradition of Northern Europe, especially England and Scandinavia[reply]
  9. Elspamo4 (talk · contribs) 01:04:05, 29 July 2024 (UTC) – oral tradition of Persian Gulf countries[reply]
  10. ShaveKongo (talk · contribs) 01:23:37, 29 July 2024 (UTC) – Papua New Guinea, Nordic countries, and North American indigenous cultures[reply]
  11. Arthur Taksin (talk · contribs) 11:20:35, 29 July 2024 (UTC) – oral tradition of mainland Southeast Asia and Australia[reply]
  12. SMcCandlish (talk · contribs) 06:47, 30 July 2024 (UTC) – primarily Gaelic and other Celtic[reply]
  13. Durraz0 (talk · contribs) 12:12:30, 30 July 2024 (UTC) – European, primarily balkan oral traditions.[reply]
  14. BlueSahelian (talk · contribs) 20:25:43, 31 July 2024 (UTC) – oral traditions of Northern Nigeria[reply]
  15. Catjacket (talk · contribs) 02:42:38, 1 August 2024 (UTC) – West African, especially Senegambian / Mande[reply]
  16. Bluerasberry (talk · contribs) 12:23, 1 August 2024 (UTC) – I do oral history but the practice is similar and we all need to collaborate[reply]
  17. Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk · contribs) 17:28:20, 1 August 2024 (UTC) – interested in western folklore, especially in the JELLO belt area (Idaho, Utah, and Northern Arizona).[reply]
  18. CambridgeBayWeather (talk · contribs) 16:41:21, 2 August 2024 (UTC) – mainly Canadian Indigenous.[reply]
  19. Pofka (talk · contribs) 13:04, 3 August 2024 (UTC) – Lithuanian oral tradition[reply]
  20. Malaiya (talk · contribs) 3 August 2024 – India oral traditions
  21. Cmacauley (talk · contribs) 17:28 3 August 2024 – general interest, mainly Native American oral traditions, captivity narratives
  22. Nizil Shah (talk · contribs) 06:00:37, 4 August 2024 (UTC) – Western Indian oral traditions and folklore[reply]
  23. Womtelo (talk · contribs) 13:05:03, 4 August 2024 (UTC) – general interest + Homer + oral traditions in Melanesia & the Pacific + methodology of cross-culture comparison[reply]
  24. Oramfe (talk · contribs) 18:57:56, 4 August 2024 (UTC) – general interest in the history of the Lower Guinea region of West and Central Africa (spanning southern Cote d'Ivoire to southern Cameroon) but more specifically the sociopolitical and religious history of Yorubaland[reply]
  25. Adrian Vickers (talk · contribs) – oral traditions in Southeast Asia and their interface with literary traditions
  26. Pakoire (talk · contribs) 02:46, 5 August 2024 (UTC) – South Pacific Aoteraoa & arts; I feel I am a novice in this area but keen to be part of / learn from development of this taskforce[reply]
  27. Miki Filigranski (talk · contribs) 07:31:56, 5 August 2024 (UTC) – general interest for European (Slavic and else), Asian, African when needed and is available reliable literature.[reply]
  28. Rockethound (talk · contribs) 20:07:25, 5 August 2024 (UTC) – folktales, urban legends and mythology[reply]
  29. TRESISR (talk · contribs) 05:29:57, 7 August 2024 (UTC) – oral tradition of Northern England, especially Norse mythology.[reply]
  30. CapitainAfrika (talk · contribs) 20:46:49, 7 August 2024 (UTC) – oral traditions in Central Africa and their interface[reply]
  31. Francish7 (talk · contribs) 12:08:39, 8 August 2024 (UTC) – lives and works in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.[reply]
  32. Darwin Naz (talk · contribs) 12:24, 11 August 2024 (UTC) – oral tradition and folklore.[reply]
  33. Laurakgibbs (talk · contribs) 15:55:23, 13 August 2024 (UTC)  - I've been adding oral literature references to African language articles (see my user page for a list); my main areas of interest are proverbs, riddles, and fables (Aesop is my academic specialty); languages: Latin, Greek, Polish, Italian[reply]
  34. Pladica (talk · contribs) 22:32:36, 13 August 2024 (UTC)  Folklore motifs, comparative mythology, folk tales, folklore, legends, and customs/rites, no specific regional focus[reply]
  35. XxTechnicianxX (talk · contribs) 00:29:10, 15 August 2024 (UTC)  — Latine and Latin American, occasionally African (diasporic), history[reply]
  36. SteveMcCluskey (talk · contribs) 21:04:12, 15 August 2024 (UTC)  – Indigenous astronomical systems, particularly in Western North America, degree in history of science[reply]
  37. Helen m nde (talk · contribs) — General African mythology and folklore
  38. Kaizenify (talk · contribs) — Oral traditions and folklore of Nigeria
  39. Crisantom (talk · contribs) 03:56:39, 23 August 2024 (UTC)  - Philippine Indigenous peoples, including arts and culture of Indigenous communities[reply]
  40. Medievalfran (talk · contribs) 12:30:36, 30 August 2024 (UTC)  - Old English and medieval poetry, folklore, general and academic interest in different ways of supporting oral histories and knowledges to be preserved/ represented on Wikipedia.[reply]
  41. Wowzers122 (talk · contribs) 23:24:26, 31 August 2024 (UTC)  — African traditional oral history[reply]

Resources

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Bibliography

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Please add any sources you've found useful for your understanding below.
  • Akinyemi, Akintunde; Falola, Toyin, eds. (2021). The Palgrave Handbook of African Oral Traditions and Folklore. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9783030555177, 9783030555191, 9783030555160. Focus: African.
     
    "The most comprehensive, analytic, and multidisciplinary study of oral traditions and folklore in Africa and the African Diaspora to date. Scholars across African Studies research retrieve and renew the scholarship of oral traditions and folklore in Africa and the diaspora just as critical concerns about their survival are pushed to the forefront of the field. Divided into five sections on the central themes within orality and folklore – including engagement ranging from popular culture to technology, from methods to pedagogy. Offers a complete, deep, and innovative analysis of oral traditions and folklore in Africa and among Africans in the diaspora. Assesses the current and historical dynamics between oral traditions and folklore, illustrating how the nature of oral transmission of cultural heritage and folklore is simultaneously vital to the livelihood of tradition while also at the heart of the issues that surround their diminished role in an increasingly globalized society. Comprises a comprehensive, multidisciplinary, and well-researched collection of essays covering different aspects of African oral traditions and folklore. Provides fresh insights into new discourses and intellectual development in African oral traditions and folklore occasioned by new directions in development studies, globalization and some other critical issues raised by the diaspora. Centers theoretical debates on such topics as the collective or communal character of oral cultures, the relationship between tradition and individual talent, and the unique circumstances required for traditions to emerge. Establishes a reference for comparative analysis and ongoing debates in Africanist discourse on gender, class, ethnicity, language, and cultural nationalism."
  • Brednich, Rolf; Alzheimer, Heidrun; et al., eds. (2016). Enzyklopädie des Märchens (in German). Focuses: European, general.
     
    "Comprising some 4,000 articles, the Encyclopedia of the Folk Tale presents the results of almost two centuries of research in the field of folk narrative tradition. Offering a comprehensive survey of all written and oral genres, the encyclopedia discusses types, motifs and themes; explores theories, methods and stylistic issues; and presents various regions, countries, authors, collectors and researchers."
  • Foley, John (2011) [1997]. "Oral Tradition and Its Implications". In Morris, Ian; Powell, Barry (eds.). A New Companion to Homer. "Mnemosyne, Supplements" series. Vol. 163. Brill. pp. 146–173. doi:10.1163/9789004217607_007. ISBN 9789004206083, 9789004217607, 9789004099890. Focus: Greek.
     
    "This chapter focuses on the modern rediscovery of ancient Greek oral tradition and its implications for the study of Homeric epic. It will thus be concerned not only with the demonstration of the poems' oral traditional nature – an interesting and important phenomenon in itself – but more fundamentally with the question 'So what?' If Homeric verse emerges from an unwritten art of poetry and is committed to text only quite late in its development, how does this cultural, historical, and technological circumstance affect the way we read the Iliad and Odyssey? The discussion will consist of four sections: (I) a brief history of the early research conducted by Milman Parry and Albert Lord; (II) a sketch of the most prominent features of the so-called Oral Theory; (III) significant replies to and revisions in the theory; and (IV) the implications of oral tradition for Homer's art. ..."
  • Irele, F. Abiola; Simon Gikandi, eds. (2000). The Cambridge History of African and Caribbean Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521832755. ISBN 9781139054638. Focus: African and Caribbean.
  • Kesteloot, Lilyan [in French]; Dieng, Bassirou (1997). Les épopées d'Afrique noire (in French). Paris: Éditions Karthala / UNESCO. ISBN 9782811102104. URL provides access only to selected pages. Focus: African.
     
    "L'épopée est un genre littéraire majeur. souvent fondateur. comme cela a été le cas pour la littérature médiévale française. Mais, contrairement au domaine français, où l'épopée a disparu depuis longtemps, l'Afrique contemporaine comporte encore deux grandes zones où le genre épique est particulièrement vivace : l'Afrique de l'Ouest et l'Afrique centrale et orientale, avec une extension en Afrique du Sud. Ces deux grandes zones offrent une panoplie incomparable d'épopées royales, corporatives, religieuses ou mythologiques, qui, fixées par écrit, dévoilent une incroyable beauté formelle. Cet ouvrage propose au lecteur francophone un vaste panorama, qui, par la richesse des textes offerts en anthologie, et par la pertinence des analyses proposées, autorise une compréhension en profondeur, non seulement des épopées africaines, mais encore des formes et des objectifs du genre épique dans des aires géographiques et culturelles très variées."
  • Kreyenbroek, Philip G.; Marzolph, Ulrich [in German], eds. (2010). Oral literature of Iranian languages: Kurdish, Pashto, Balochi, Ossetic, Persian and Tajik. London; New York: I.B. Tauris.. Focuses: literature and oral tradition of Iranian peoples of Iran, South Asia and neighbouring regions.
  • Lord, Albert (2019) [1960]. Elmer, David F.; Mitchell, Stephen; Nagy, Gregory (eds.). The Singer of Tales. "Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature" series (3rd ed.). Center for Hellenic Studies / Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674975736. A new online version provides the full text as well as embedded recordings (from the CD included with the 2nd paper ed.). Focuses: South Slavic, Greek, Byzantine, Old English, Old French.
     
    "First published in 1960, Albert B. Lord's The Singer of Tales remains the fundamental study of the distinctive techniques and aesthetics of oral epic poetry. Based upon pathbreaking fieldwork conducted in the 1930s and 1950s among oral epic singers of Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia, Lord analyzes in impressive detail the techniques of oral composition in performance. He explores the consequences of this analysis for the interpretation of numerous works of traditional verbal art, including―in addition to South Slavic epic songs―the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey, Beowulf, the Chanson de Roland, and the Byzantine epic Digenes Akritas. A cardinal text for the study of oral traditions, The Singer of Tales also represents an exemplary use of the comparative method in literary criticism. This 3rd edition offers a corrected text of the 2nd and is supplemented by all the recordings discussed by Lord, as well as a variety of other multimedia materials."
  • Margaret Read MacDonald, ed. (2013) [1999]. Traditional Storytelling Today: An International Sourcebook. Routledge. Focuses: has articles by folklorists and scholars about traditions from around the world.
  • Parry, Milman (1987) [1971]. Parry, Adam (ed.). The Making of Homeric Verse: The Collected Papers. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 9780195205602. Focuses: Greek, Serbo-Croatian.
     
    "Milman Parry, who died in 1935 while a young assistant professor at Harvard, is now considered one of the leading classical scholars of the last century. Yet Parry's articles and French dissertations—highly original contributions to the study of Homer—have until now been difficult to obtain. The Making of Homeric Verse for the first time collects these landmark works in one volume together with Parry's previously unpublished MA thesis and extracts from his Yugoslavian journal, which contains notes on Serbo-Croatian poetry and its relation to Homer. Adam Parry, the late son of the scholar, has translated the French dissertations, written an introduction on the life and intellectual development of his father, and provided a survey of later work on Homer conducted in Parry's glorious tradition."
  • Parry, Milman; Whitman, Cedric; Rinvolucri, Mario; Notopoulos, James A. (2018–2024). Elmer, David F. (ed.). "Milman Parry Collection of Oral Literature: A Unique Repository of Balkan Oral Traditions". Harvard University Libraries. There are two other "portals" to this collection that highlight different aspects of it: here and here. Focuses: South Slavic, Greek.
     
    "In the early 1930s, Milman Parry, a professor of classics at Harvard, sought to test his theories regarding the composition of the Homeric poems by observing living traditions of oral poetry in then-Yugoslavia. The songs he collected, on phonograph discs and in notebooks, form the core of the Milman Parry Collection of Oral Literature. In addition to being one of the world's most comprehensive archives of South Slavic oral traditions, the Parry Collection also contains uniquely important subsidiary collections documenting numerous other Balkan oral traditions. These include: the collection of Albanian epics gathered by Albert Lord in the mountains of northern Albania in the fall of 1937; Lord's own collection of South Slavic materials made in 1950 and 1951, including some recordings of singers Lord had met in the company of Parry in the 1930s; the Whitman–Rinvolucri Collection, which contains a variety of materials relating to the Greek tradition of shadow-puppet theater as practiced in the 1960s; and the James A. Notopoulos Collection, which includes hundreds of recordings from the 1950s of folk music and narrative poetry from the Greek mainland and the Greek islands."
  • Scheub, Harold (June–September 1985). "A Review of African Oral Traditions and Literature" (PDF). African Studies Review. 28 (2/3): 1–72. doi:10.2307/524603. URL access requires an account with The Wikipedia Library, so this URL is not suitable for use when citing this source in an article. Focus: African.
     
    "There is an unbroken continuity in African verbal art forms, from interacting oral genres to such literary productions as the novel and poetry. The strength of the oral tradition seems not to have abated; through three literary periods, a reciprocal linkage has worked these media into a unique art form against which potent influences from East and West have proved unequal. Vital to African literature is the relationship between the oral and written word; in seemingly insignificant interstices have flourished such shadowy literary figures as Egyptian scribes, Hausa and Swahili copyists and memorizers, and contemporary writers of popular novellas, all playing crucial transitional roles in their respective literatures. The oral tale is not "the childhood of fiction" (MacCulloch, 1905), but the early literary traditions were beneficiaries of the oral genres, and there is no doubt that the epic and its hero are the predecessors of the African novel and its central characters. ..."
  • Scheub, Harold (2000). A dictionary of African mythology : the mythmaker as storyteller. Internet Archive. Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-512456-9.
     
    "This collection of fascinating, mysterious, and revealing tales captures the immense sweep and diversity of African mythology. The stories touch on virtually every aspect of belief: gods and goddesses, epic heroes and divine tricksters, along with epics of the world's origins, the struggle between the human and the divine, and much more. Entries cover the entire continent, from the mouth of the Nile to the Cape of Good Hope. This magnificent collection not only provides hundreds of fascinating myths, but also recaptures their cultural contexts, in which story and storyteller, tradition and performance, all merge." — Oxford Reference
  • Schmidt, Peter R.; Mrozowski, Stephen A., eds. (2014). The Death of Prehistory. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199684595. Focus: general.
     
    "Since the 18th century, the concept of prehistory was exported by colonialism to far parts of the globe and applied to populations lacking written records. Prehistory in these settings came to represent primitive people still living in a state without civilization and its foremost index, literacy. Yet, many societies outside the Western world had developed complex methods of history making and documentation, including epic poetry and the use of physical and mental mnemonic devices. Even so, the deeply engrained concept of prehistory – deeply entrenched in European minds up to the beginning of the 21st century – continues to deny history and historical identify to peoples throughout the world. The 14 essays, by notable archaeologists of the Americas, Africa, Europe, and Asia, provide authoritative examples of how the concept of prehistory has diminished histories of other cultures outside the West and how archaeologists can reclaim more inclusive histories set within the idiom of deep histories--accepting ancient pre-literate histories as an integral part of the flow of human history."
  • Vansina, Jan (1985). Oral Tradition as History. University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 9780852550076, 9780299102142. Focuses: African, general.
     
    "Jan Vansina's 1961 book Oral Tradition was hailed internationally as a pioneering work in the field of ethno-history. Reviewers were unanimous in their praise of Vansina's success in subjecting oral traditions to intense functional analysis. Now, Vansina—with the benefit of two decades of additional thought and research—has revised his original work substantially, completely rewriting some sections and adding much new material. The result is an essentially new work, indispensable to all students and scholars of history, anthropology, folklore, and ethno-history who are concerned with the transmission and potential uses of oral material. Although written by a leading historian of Africa, Vansina's work on oral traditions ranges far beyond Africa, so has a wider relevance. Vansina explains not only how oral traditions have been used in the past but also how they should be used by historians in their research. 'Those embarking on the challenging adventure of historical fieldwork with an oral community will find the book a valuable companion, filled with good practical advice. Those who already have collected bodies of oral material, or who strive to interpret and analyze that collected by others, will be forced to subject their own methodological approaches to a critical reexamination in the light of Vansina's thoughtful and provocative insights. ... For the second time in a quarter of a century, we are profoundly in the debt of Jan Vansina.' — Research in African Literatures."
  • Webber, Ruth (1986). "Hispanic Oral Literature: Accomplishments and Perspectives" (PDF). Oral tradition. 1: 344–380. Focus: Spain and Latin America

External resources

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Here are some potentially useful websites dealing with oral literature:

Templates

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{{Wikipedia:WikiProject Anthropology/Outreach/User Oral tradition task force}}

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Stub templates

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References

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