Comment on: Challis, Sam and Brent Sinclair-Thomson. 2022. The Impact of Contact and Colonization on Indigenous W orldviews, Rock Art, and the History of Southern Africa "The Disconnect". Current Anthrpopology 63 (25 (original) (raw)
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Current Anthropology
The archaeological record undergoes a dramatic shift in appearance whenever indigenous peoples encounter incoming populations-whether in the form of economy, politics or identity. Rock art in southern Africa testifies to successive interactions between hunter-gatherers, incoming African herders, African farmers and, later, European settlers. New subject matter, however, is not simply incorporated into the preexisting tradition. Without exception, the many rock arts that depict novel motifs, are made differently from the 'traditional corpus', usually rougher in appearance (in both paintings and engravings) more dynamic, or with vivid and chalky paints. The drop in pigment quality is likely owing to the disruption and, ultimate decimation of indigenous groups, and the subsequent breakdown in trade and social communications-The Disconnect. The shifts in manner of depiction and the ways in which motifs are treated owes more, it seems, to the increasingly heterogeneous and creolizing membership of the art-producing people and the mixing of their cosmologies, albeit with specific cultural survivals. Precolonial contact images speak to a multitude of interactions and entanglements in ways that can inform the archaeological record, and colonial-era rock art constitutes a major component of the historical archive, an emic, agentive artefact that offers a reverse gaze from an indigenous perspective.
Current Anthropology, 2022
The archaeological record undergoes a dramatic shift in appearance whenever indigenous peoples encounter incoming populations—whether in the form of economy, politics, or identity. Rock art in southern Africa testifies to successive interactions among hunter-gatherers, incoming African herders, African farmers, and, later, European settlers. New subject matter, however, is not simply incorporated into the preexisting tradition. Without exception, the many rock arts that depict novel motifs are made differently from the “traditional corpus,” usually rougher in appearance (in both paintings and engravings), more dynamic, or made with vivid and chalky paints. The drop in pigment quality is likely owing to the disruption and ultimate decimation of indigenous groups and the subsequent breakdown in trade and social communications—the Disconnect. The shifts in manners of depiction and the ways in which motifs are treated owe more, it seems, to the increasingly heterogeneous and creolizing membership of the art-producing people and the mixing of their cosmologies, albeit with specific cultural survivals. Precolonial contact images speak to a multitude of interactions and entanglements in ways that can inform the archaeological record, and colonial-era rock art constitutes a major component of the historical archive, an emic, agentive artifact that offers a reverse gaze from an indigenous perspective.
Understanding hunter-gatherer rock art in southern Africa
2014
Critical assessment of arguments by peers is crucial to academic research through all branches of the sciences. This is, essentially, the mechanism by which knowledge production is refereed. Critical assessments, however, need to be made from informed perspectives. In his recent critique of the understanding of southern African hunter-gatherer rock art, Victor Biggs (2014) raises serious methodological issues and alleges gross empirical errors on the part of researchers. In this brief article I respond to some of his complaints. Because of space constraints I do not discuss the well-known paintings of soldiers or the apparent painting of the 'Victorian lady'.
Rock-art is a powerful and theoretically informed artefact that allows non-rock-art producing people an understanding of the worldview of the rock-artists. But the flow of information in such rock-art researches – ‘us’ observing ‘them’ via `their’ artefacts is often asymmetrical and can be disempowering to the rock-art-producing individuals and communities past and present. Fortunately, rock-art is also able to balance and even reverse this asymmetry. For example, there are certain ‘contact’ period rock engravings and rock paintings in southern Africa that were produced at and after the time of the colonisation of southern Africa by non-Bushmen beginning about 2 000 years ago. Some of the power relations between indigenes and colonists are made explicit in the form of rock paintings and rock engravings. Specifically, much of this rock-art shows how the Bushmen imagined and imaged the colonists.
Recent archaeological research has identified a widespread southern African rock art tradition that materially affects the Kalahari Revisionist Debate, which interrogates Archaeology’s ability reliably to extend beyond periods covered by ethnography and historical records. This rock art tradition differs from the famous rock art tradition of foragers ancestral to today’s ‘San’ by being dominated by rough-pecked and finger-painted geometric imagery. These geometrics occur in a swathe across southern Africa. Using visual appearance, technique, age, geographic distribution, site preference and relationship to known San-authored rock art, we consider candidates for the authorship of geometric rock art: San foragers, Bantu-speaking farmers, Khoekhoen herders, European colonists and multi-ethnic groupings – and suggest a dominantly Khoekhoen authorship. The identity of the Khoekhoen, their origins, the route(s) by which they traveled, their relationship with foragers and their material culture ‘signature’ are contentious issues. The identification of a Khoekhoen rock art tradition provides another element to the study of the nature of the historical, ethnographic and archaeological ‘San’ and ‘Khoekhoen’ relationship.
The language of archaeological "conservation" is often passive, officious, and removed from conditions on the ground. The fundamental question-why conserve?-is seldom asked. Yet it is often assumed a priori that conservation is both necessary and beneficial. In the reflexive spirit of regularly questioning accepted practices, this paper situates "conservation" at three southern African rock art sites. These sites help to foreground indigenous notions of materiality and history that both embrace and eschew curatorial intervention. They also speak of imperial, colonial, and apartheid pasts that carry their burdens into the present. Finally, restoring to prominence the role of the present, along with conservation's benefits to the past and the future, offers multiple temporal, spatial, and cultural perspectives that situate conservation as a set of negotiated, evolving practices.