Nuer (n
`ər, n
r), a Nilotic people living around Lake No in the S Sudan. Their economy and social life generally revolve around cattle, which are grazed on the plains during the dry season and in the hills during the wet season. During the dry season, the Nuer also fish, hunt, and gather wild plant foods. At their initiation, boys receive six horizontal cuts in the forehead and are given cattle; thereafter they belong to an age grade age grade and age set, differentiation of social role based on age, commonly found in small-scale societies of North America and East Africa.
..... Click the link for more information. , with whom they will advance into various positions within the clan over the period of their lives. Descent is patrilineal, and when a man marries he receives more cattle from his father (see marriage marriage, socially sanctioned union that reproduces the family . In all societies the choice of partners is generally guided by rules of exogamy (the obligation to marry outside a group); some societies also have rules of endogamy (the obligation to marry within a
..... Click the link for more information. and kinship kinship, relationship by blood (consanguinity) or marriage (affinity) between persons; also, in anthropology and sociology, a system of rules, based on such relationships, governing descent , inheritance, marriage , extramarital sexual relations, and sometimes
..... Click the link for more information. ). There is no centralized political authority, but rather a number of autonomous village communities. Spiritual leaders, known as leopard skin chiefs, are employed in the mediation of disputes. E. E. Evans Pritchard's ethnography (1940) is the standard work on the Nuer.
`ər, nr), a Nilotic people living around Lake No in the S Sudan. Their economy and social life generally revolve around cattle, which are grazed on the plains during the dry season and in the hills during the wet season. During the dry season, the Nuer also fish, hunt, and gather wild plant foods. At their initiation, boys receive six horizontal cuts in the forehead and are given cattle; thereafter they belong to an age grade age grade and age set, differentiation of social role based on age, commonly found in small-scale societies of North America and East Africa...... Click the link for more information. , with whom they will advance into various positions within the clan over the period of their lives. Descent is patrilineal, and when a man marries he receives more cattle from his father (see marriage marriage, socially sanctioned union that reproduces the family . In all societies the choice of partners is generally guided by rules of exogamy (the obligation to marry outside a group); some societies also have rules of endogamy (the obligation to marry within a
..... Click the link for more information. and kinship kinship, relationship by blood (consanguinity) or marriage (affinity) between persons; also, in anthropology and sociology, a system of rules, based on such relationships, governing descent , inheritance, marriage , extramarital sexual relations, and sometimes
..... Click the link for more information. ). There is no centralized political authority, but rather a number of autonomous village communities. Spiritual leaders, known as leopard skin chiefs, are employed in the mediation of disputes. E. E. Evans Pritchard's ethnography (1940) is the standard work on the Nuer.
Nuer
People of the marsh and savanna living on both banks of the Nile River in southern Sudan. They speak an Eastern Sudanic language of the Nilo-Saharan family. The Nuer are cattle-raising people who also cultivate millet and spear fish. They spend the rainy season in permanent villages on the higher ground and the dry season in riverside camps. Feuding between clans is common, as is warfare with the Dinka. They number 1.5 million. See also Nilot.
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