Rock Art Researchers in the Ukhahlamba Drakensberg

Rock art researchers in the uKhahlamba Drakensberg

by Elwyn Jenkins

he uKhahlamba Drakensberg the development of an understanding mountain range has a very of the art. Tlarge number of rock paintings, The first serious analysis of the including some of the most beautiful meaning of a Drakensberg painting in the world. Some date back possibly came about in 1873, when Joseph thousands of years and others were still Orpen, who was the British Resident being painted by San people late in the in Nomansland, was sent at the head nineteenth century. Since the nineteenth of a Sotho contingent to pursue Lan- century, they have fascinated visitors. galibalele. He found as a guide Qing, a People have searched for them and young San survivor, who was working recorded them in various ways. They as a hunter for a Sotho chief (Nquasha, have recorded their location; counted of Qacha’s Nek). Orpen had already them; made freehand copies, traced and copied paintings, and he now copied photographed them; excavated around paintings he saw along the way. He them; vandalised them; and removed requested Qing to give him explana- them. Many people have written about tions of the paintings. Qing spoke in the paintings, attempting to date them, sePhuti, which was translated by a So- describing them and analysing them. tho interpreter into English, and Orpen In this article I give a personal view of recorded his explanations. One of his the most notable of these personalities, copies, made in Sehonghong shelter, at the same time recounting in broad shows people interacting with strange outline what I believe to have been animals. The copy was not accurate, but

Natalia 49 (2019) Copyright © Natal Society Foundation 2019 Rock art researchers in the uKhahlamba Drakensberg it has become very well known and is that included Qing’s explanations for still often reproduced (Figure 1). two sets of paintings, to which Bleek’s Orpen sent his copies to the editor notes, which included Diä!kwain’s of the Cape Monthly Magazine, who comments, were published as an ad- forwarded them to Dr Wilhelm Bleek, dendum.2 a German linguist living in Cape Town. The first researcher to have been Together with his sister-in-law Lucy commissioned by a professional prehis- Lloyd, and later his daughter Dorothea, torian was Louis Tylor, a nephew of Sir Bleek had undertaken a project to tran- Edward Tylor, curator of the Pitt-Rivers scribe the lore of some San people who Museum in Oxford. In 1893, at his re- were living with them in Cape Town. quest, Louis went to the Drakensberg, The extensive Bleek records are now where he located 30 sites and copied housed at the University of Cape Town.1 about 80 groups of paintings freehand. Bleek showed Orpen’s copies to He also removed slabs, of which six are Diä!kwain and asked him to explain on display at the Pitt-Rivers. Many of them – thus his explanation was inde- the shelters he located have since been pendent of any other. Diä!kwain said claimed to have been found by people that the strange painting depicted rain who have named them after themselves. animals. Lucy Lloyd’s transcription of One of the paintings he copied, in what his account is the first record of San is now called Willcox Shelter, was of beliefs in rain animals and rain making. an enigmatic figure which is also to be The painting is now understood to show seen at two other sites (Figure 2).3 We shamans leading rain animals, while will return to it later. Tylor’s interest in two of them are thought to be hold- it shows that from the outset observers ing buchu plants, which were used to saw that the paintings included ones that subdue the rain animal. Orpen wrote an must have a ‘magical’ or supernatural article for the Cape Monthly Magazine explanation.

Figure 1: Orpen’s copy of the rain animals panel

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Trooper A.D. Whyte, who in 1905 was instructed to locate all the paintings in the Bushman’s Nek district. He located 37 sites. Patricia Vinnicombe reports that ‘As a result of his recommenda- tions, about 20 groups of paintings, some comprising more than one stone, were removed from various sites by an expert stone mason, R. Clingan, and deposited in the Natal Museum.’4 Wil- liam Anderson, government geologist in Natal, published a report in 1907 that included the first photographs of paintings.5 Jeremy Hollmann and Lawrence Msi- manga, of the KwaZulu-Natal Museum in Pietermaritzburg, reported in 2008 on a sad case of vandalism and the removal of rock art: uMhwabane Shelter (also known as eBusingatha Shelter) is a rock art site alongside the eBusingatha River in the amaZizi Traditional Authority Area. It is one of KwaZulu-Natal’s problem rock art sites. Today it still contains at least 50 hunter-gatherer paintings Figure 2: The figure in Willcox Shelter but there used to be many more. As copied by Tylor with other easily accessible rock art sites that have no access control, While Tylor was working at Main the art has suffered from vandalism. Caves, a farmer, Mark Hutchinson, told Authorities responded by removing some 31 painted rocks at the time of him that he had copied paintings eight- the visit of the British royal family to een years before at the request of Sir South Africa in 1947. The institutions Henry Bulwer. His copies are housed in entrusted with their care subsequently the KwaZulu-Natal Museum, and two neglected the art. Action is now be- of them were published in 1905 in the ing taken to conserve and display the Natal Agricultural and Mining Record. removed rock art.6 At the same time, Brother Otto Mäder This intervention shows how valuable from Mariannhill, an artist, removed the growth of professional archaeol- slabs – one is at Mariannhill – and he ogy has been in providing an overview made copies, mostly on the Kei River. of the situation regarding rock art in Subsequently, many enthusiasts have the Drakensberg and minimising ill- written about the paintings, copied them informed interaction with the art. and removed them. The KwaZulu-Natal Increased overseas awareness of Museum has many records and original the art led to visits by two prominent paintings. An early contributor was prehistorians. The Frenchman Abbé

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Henri Breuil dominated ideas about his coloured copies. He had a serious rock art around the world in the first aim: to cut through the ‘maelstrom’ of half of the twentieth century. He first theories and find a ‘sober approach’. visited South Africa in 1929, and took This was an artistic one, not a rational, shelter in the country during the Second logical procedure: it was what he called World War. He promoted two theories ‘pure aesthetic enjoyment’. Though he about rock art: that it was motivated said he was putting aside preconceived by sympathetic magic, painted to aid ideas, his approach was subjective and the hunt (though there are actually few Western. He did not refer to San beliefs hunting scenes in southern African rock because he said the significance of the art); or that it was art for art’s sake – a art was ‘self-evident’. philosophical view of the nature of Battiss’s mentors were Abbé Breuil art dating from the early nineteenth and the government archaeologist C. century – consisting of ‘pictures that van Riet Lowe, who wrote the preface resulted from a universal, innate desire and foreword respectively to The Art- to express oneself and from a simple ists of the Rocks. He thought South delight in capturing daily life’.7 His African rock art could be divided into utterances on southern African rock three periods. He could not believe that art were unhelpful, as he believed the the most beautiful and skilled art was artists were ancient Minoans, Cretans painted and engraved by the San; he or Phoenicians. He claimed to have believed the ‘little Bushmen’ were naïve identified paintings of Phoenicians in and primitive and incapable of great the Drakensberg.8 art. Therefore the ‘Early’ art, which Professor Leo Frobenius, who un- was the most beautiful, was probably dertook expeditions from Germany to done by unidentified artists. He wrote South Africa, Southern Rhodesia and approvingly that ‘in Game Pass Valley other parts of the world that made vast in the Natal Drakensberg there are very numbers of copies, brought out a team clear hooded and cloaked figures with in 1928–1930 that copied among oth- white monkey faces. Professor van Riet ers 55 paintings from western Lesotho Lowe, who has made a special study and 45 from the Drakensberg. They of them, considers they are foreigners’ are housed in the Frobenius Institute in (Figure 4).11 His ‘Middle’ period was Frankfurt-am-Main. problematic, and the ‘Last’ period – The most prominent South African consisting of scenes – was by the San. to popularise awareness of the art was A different approach to investigating the artist Walter Battiss, who frequently the art was taken by Marion How, who acknowledged the influence of southern was born in Basutoland. Her father and African rock art on his own work. He grandfather had an intimate knowledge published two books on rock art, The of the Basotho and their history. She Amazing Bushman (1939)9 and The drew on their records and the help Artists of the Rocks, which appeared of many other people in publishing in a handsome limited edition of 500 her book, The Mountain Bushmen of copies in 1948.10 He was a pioneer Basutoland (1970).12 The illustrator, in the use of photography to record James Walton, lived in Basutoland rock art, and included monochrome for thirteen years, during which time photographs in his books in addition to he copied paintings from hundreds of

Natalia 49 (2019) CC-BY-NC cc Natal Society Foundation 2019 Rock art researchers in the uKhahlamba Drakensberg rock shelters, many of them previously information of this kind was uncovered unknown. How heard of an old man, in the 1980s by Pieter Jolly14 and David Mapote, aged 74, who had half-San Lewis-Williams,15 who interviewed step-brothers. He had learned to paint an old Xhosa woman of partial San with the San, of whom there had been descent whose father had been a sha- many where he lived as a young man. man rain-maker and painter. She gave He explained to her how the paint some important information about the was made and demonstrated how he potency of the paintings: touching the painted with his brushes. Mapote used paintings and dancing while facing a pigment called Qhang Qhang, which them imparted power. How learned was a ‘powerful medicine’ The 1950s saw the emergence of for the Basotho.13 This, one of the few prominent non-professional archae- first-hand accounts of how the paint ologists who dedicated themselves was prepared, contributed to an aware- to recording rock art through colour ness among scholars that the physical photography. Alex Willcox, a quantity properties of the paintings and the act surveyor who lived in Bergville, wrote of painting are integral parts of their the first book to be entirely devoted to total meaning and significance. Further the rock art of the Drakensberg, Rock

Figure 3: Examples of trance-buck traced by members of the Rock Art Research Institute (RARI)

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Paintings of the Drakensberg, Natal lead researcher, that in some rock panels and Griqualand East (1956),16 and he various individual images were actually was the first person to record paint- painted years apart.20 ings by means of colour photography. Willcox’s books gave detailed in- He wrote several other books on rock structions on how to reach the shelters, art as well as papers, which he illus- whereas today the locations of shelters trated with his slides. The caption to a are never made public in order to photograph in The Rock Art of South protect them. He also wrote books on Africa (1963) captures the homely South African archaeology and ship- nature of Willcox’s writing: ‘Alex and wrecks. He made a valuable literary Nancy Willcox painting-hunting in the contribution when he co-authored with Drakensberg. Baby daughter Sandra is Joan Nockels a sensitive and moving being carried by our Hlubi maid. This children’s story called Kabo of the excursion was successful, some fine and Mountain, the first work of fiction about previously unknown paintings being the San of the Drakensberg that was found in the rock shelter seen in the historically accurate.21 The life of this photograph.’17 pioneer in rock art studies came to an Willcox wrestled with questions that end when he was murdered in his home nowadays are regarded as unimportant, by intruders. such as how the artists could depict ani- Bert Woodhouse and Neil Lee were mals so accurately. He looked at depic- wealthy Johannesburg businessmen tions of clothing, and speculated about who could afford to devote their spare painting materials. He believed that time to the discovery and recording of the art did not have symbolic meaning. rock art. They worked mainly in the However, he invoked psychology, talk- eastern Free State, discovering many ing of ‘eidetic imagery’. He was aware paintings, and left records of the precise of the San ethnography recorded by the location of each one. They followed Bleeks, but was not helpful in saying of Willcox by taking colour slides of the the San stories of the rain bull, ‘One is paintings and produced a joint book, reminded that Jupiter in his character Art on the Rocks of Southern Africa as the giver of rain, the thunderer, was (1970),22 which resembles Willcox’s portrayed riding upon a bull.’18 books. The equally gossipy frontispiece Like other early recorders of the art, shows the authors camping in a rock he enjoyed making up stories about the shelter, surrounded by the detritus of pictures, as in his caption to a painting their untidy campsite. The book in- in Nuttall’s Shelter: ‘A pig hunt that cludes many Drakensberg paintings. went wrong. The pig is chasing some of They also jointly and severally wrote a the hunters.’19 This propensity for story- number of papers for academic journals, making went with seeing all the paint- and Woodhouse wrote other books on ings on a rock face as comprising one rock art. composed panel – something which is Although amateurs, they achieved demonstrably debatable, as anyone who high public status as experts on rock has stood in front of the painted wall of art, Woodhouse in particular. His copies a rock shelter will know. Furthermore, were exhibited in seven European cities, we now know, thanks to research in and at home, where he received official which Adelphine Bonneau has been the recognition. He was commissioned to

Natalia 49 (2019) CC-BY-NC cc Natal Society Foundation 2019 Rock art researchers in the uKhahlamba Drakensberg write the brochure that accompanied a ‘Heads and head-dress’, illustrated by a set of four postage stamps on rock art page of photographs. Like other early that the South African Post Office issued recorders of the art, they had to guess in 1987. They were the first stamps on which features of the paintings were this theme to be issued in South Africa.23 significant. Modern research has shown In 2006 he was awarded the Order of that the details need to be explained ac- Ikhamanga (Silver), which honours ex- cording to a variety of principles, both cellence in the creative fields of arts and historical and anthropological, but their culture. He is the only person to have captions are mostly facetious, such as received this award for rock art studies. ‘With a face reminiscent of a character Like Willcox, Woodhouse and Lee from a painting by Toulouse-Lautrec’, could not make up their minds as to ‘An unusual full-face portrait with a what theoretical paradigm to employ Napoleon-like air’, and ‘With a cap to in analysing the paintings. They were suit Davy Crockett’.25 still tied to Western ways of looking A new era in the study of the art ar- at art, such as determining styles of rived with the advent of Harald Pager painting and hoping they would provide and Patricia Vinnicombe, who readily a chronology. Though aware of other acknowledged the supernatural element paradigms, they frequently resorted in rock art and at the same time intro- to European imagery: ‘There is every duced a new rigour to their recording kind of picture: genre, portraits, still and analysis of the paintings. Pager life, narrative, imaginative, epic, ab- was an Austrian commercial artist. He stract – even landscape.’ They specu- published two books on the Drakens- lated that the motives for the paintings berg art, the massive and spectacular were sympathetic magic, decoration volume Ndedema (1971)26 and Stone of the shelter, denoting of ownership, Age Myth and Magic (1975).27 He pio- illustrating of folktales, recording of neered a new method for copying rock contemporary life, and, by analogy art in which he photographed paintings with Australian aboriginal paintings, in black and white and then took the initiation or other ceremonial rites. They prints back to the sites and coloured explained that the many half-human, them in in oils. He lived in the shelters half-animal figures depicted dancers for months on end, suffering hardship wearing ‘sophisticated examples of the in the field, sometimes shared by wife art of mask-making’.24 None of this is Shirley Ann. He explained that he had to supported by the ethnography of San be in the shelters at all times of the day, people. Consequently their work was as the changing light would bring out rejected and ignored by professional subtle details in the paintings that were archaeologists. not always visible. The resultant copies In their descriptions of the paintings show meticulous recording of every they tried to make the San come alive in detail, but they are criticised for mak- the imagination of the modern Western ing the colours unrealistically bright. viewer. Unfortunately, their humour He worked to the highest professional was often facetious – as in the punning standards of archaeology: measuring title of their book, Art on the Rocks – and drawing ground and wall plans of and in fact degrading to the artists. This the shelters, showing the positions of can be seen, for example, in a chapter on the paintings.

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Pager also tried to interpret the meaning prepared watercolour paints mixed of the paintings, as there was an increas- with a detergent as fixative. Her brush- ing realisation among commentators on strokes followed the strokes of the art- rock art that the paintings could not be ists. This method, with modifications, taken at face value. Like Woodhouse, complemented her photography. In her Lee and Willcox, he noticed similar copies she lessened the effect of the motifs and thought that by collating rock background in order to highlight and comparing them he might unravel the images (whereas some people think their meaning. For example, he brought that in Pager’s copies the background together in one plate various depictions is intrusive). Her tracing made clear of what he called ‘winged antelope’ or details that earlier commentators on the alites.28 He thought they might represent art and photographers had missed, such spirits of the dead ( Figure 3). He as- as the hooves on a human figure. sumed that variations in the details of A limited edition of 1 000 copies of these figures were important. (I present Vinnicombe’s magnum opus, People of a different interpretation later.) the Eland, was published in 1976,29 and Pager went on to record and pub- it was republished by Wits University lish the paintings in the Brandberg in Press along with a festschrift in 2009.30 Namibia, where he lived in even more The first 110 pages covered as much as extreme conditions, and he later died of she could find out about the history of kidney failure . the San in the Drakensberg, followed by Patricia Vinnicombe grew up on a chapter on previous research, before a farm at Underberg, where she first she went on to report her own research. encountered rock art. She trained as She was the first to apply a methodical, an occupational therapist, but went on quantitative approach to the recording to obtain her doctorate on rock art and of rock art. In reaction to archaeologists become a distinguished professional who up to then had considered rock art researcher. She started making copies as ‘arty’ and impossible of scientific of paintings in 1953 and developed study, she wanted to be ‘scientific’. the method of tracing paintings using Each image was analysed according to transparent polythene sheeting and twenty categories. (The amount of work

Figure 4: The dying eland panel in Game Pass Shelter traced by members of RARI

Natalia 49 (2019) CC-BY-NC cc Natal Society Foundation 2019 Rock art researchers in the uKhahlamba Drakensberg involved in putting this all on cards and appreciation of the selectivity of the then analysing the cards is astounding.) subject matter. They found that the It was a determined attempt to throw art was not a simulacrum of multi- the net wide in case something might functional Western image-making, as be significant. Of course, the very act many researchers imagined it to be. Rather, it was a specific, ritualised of devising distinct categories is sub- practice in it own right with its own jective, no matter how objective her aims, concerns, conventions and social quantitative data might seem. consequences.31 Her template combined asking questions about anthropological evidence Between 1979 and 1986 Lucas Smits, a with seeking clues to meaning. Some Hollander who was a lecturer in human of her categories (such as weapons and geography at the National University human dress) are attempts to use paint- of Lesotho, took leave to establish and ings as historical and anthropological head the Analysis of Rock Art in Leso- evidence. Some other categories (style, tho (ARAL) project at the university, colour, manner of execution, superpo- for which he obtained international sitioning) are an attempt to date or put funding. He worked on locating and paintings in historical sequence, using copying paintings in Lesotho. Back at the approach of earlier researchers. the university, he projected the pho- Further random categories included tographs onto sheets which students the relationship of colours to subject then outlined and coloured in. As the matter, the direction in which human students knew nothing of rock art, the figures faced, and enigmatic details sheets are very inaccurate. His concern such as hooves on human bodies. Most was recording, not analysis, so he pub- of these lines of inquiry have proved lished very little. He took all his mate- dead ends. Like close-up photography, rial back to the Netherlands with him in the downside of quantitative analysis 1987. However, the Rock Art Research is that it fragments and breaks up the Institute (RARI) at the University of the complexity of panels. She was aware of Witwatersrand and the University of the records of the Bleeks and the oral Lesotho now have digital copies of all traditions of modern San, but could not his records, which may be seen on the apply them to her fragmented data to RARI website. produce a coherent theory. In retrospect, David Lewis-Williams became inter- Vinnicombe’s analyses made a limited ested in rock art in the 1950s, when he contribution to an understanding of the was living in the Cape. He intensified meaning of the art. his interest in the 1960s and 1970s while Several researchers (such as Tim teaching at Kearsney College, which Maggs in the western Cape) followed gave him the opportunity for field work Vinnicombe in applying quantitative in the Drakensberg, and he produced a analysis to the art. David Lewis-Wil- groundbreaking doctoral thesis on the liams and David Pearce have summed subject, which was published in 1981.32 up their work: On the strength of this he was offered a lectureship at the University of the One of the achievements of the quantitative work that a number of Witwatersrand, where he remained until researchers conducted in the late his retirement. He is still professionally 1960s and early 1970s was a precise active as an emeritus professor. He

Natalia 49 (2019) CC-BY-NC cc Natal Society Foundation 2019 Rock art researchers in the uKhahlamba Drakensberg founded RARI at the university, which San art believed that artists simply led in turn to the establishment of the ignored what was already on the rock Origins Centre, the country’s most face, and painted where they liked, but important rock art museum. RARI has this is easily demonstrated not to be nurtured many young rock art scholars. true, because often large expanses of It now holds important collections of suitable rock face in a shelter are left original rock art and copies, including blank while superpositioning occurs those of Pager, Vinnicombe and Lee. elsewhere. Some researchers used In 2008 Battiss’s son Giles donated the sequence of superpositioning to his rock art archive, which ‘consists of work out successive styles and hence some 700 pieces comprising a variety dating. As more became known of of materials, including tracings and rock art around the world, researchers drawings in paint on cellophane, copies realised that superpositioning like this and drawings on paper, photographs, is found everywhere, and it was gener- prints, notebooks and a variety of other ally thought to have some ‘magical’ items’.33 significance. Lewis-Williams set out Lewis-Williams has published many to see whether, instead of speculation books, including books on the palaeoli- and broad generalisations, quantitative thic art of Europe and neolithic cultures analysis could detect any pattern of in the Near East. His studies of southern deeper meaning to the superposition- African rock art became known to the ing. Although he did not pursue this general public through Images of Power line of inquiry, he provided some (1989), co-authored with Thomas tentative evidence of patterns in what Dowson,34 while two more recent and was painted on top of what. In both the fuller studies are A Cosmos in Stone Giant’s Castle and Barkly East districts, (2002)35 and San Spirituality (2004).36 human figures are shown to be mainly He has also written and co-authored underneath other subjects, while ani- simplified popular guides, such as San mals are on top. Rock Art (2011).37 He has received Lewis-Williams left quantitative many awards, both local and overseas, analysis behind, and set out to interpret including honorary doctorates from the art through detailed analysis in the the Universities of Cape Town and the light of information he believed to be Witwatersrand and the Order of Baobab relevant. He developed his interpreta- (Gold), the highest honour the State tion of rock art from three sources: can bestow for ‘exceptional and distinguished contributions in service to the Historical ethnographic records community, business and the economy, He first drew on the nineteenth-century science, medicine and technological information collected by the Bleeks innovation.’ and Orpen, believing it was helpful be- He began his intensive research cause it was contemporary with the last with statistical recording. Already we known painters. His critics argued that can see a difference between his and the Bleeks’ San teachers were mainly earlier records. A feature of the art from the northern Cape and northern that had puzzled researchers is the Namibia, and there was no proof they deliberate painting of images over shared their beliefs with the people who other images. Early commentators on painted the art in the Drakensberg.

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Contemporary ethnographic studies agery such as dots, zigzags and nested The expeditions of Lorna Marshall and u-shapes. later Megan Biesele to the Kalahari Lewis-Williams’ dictum is: ‘The in the 1950s and later provided a lot best that researchers can hope for in all of information about San beliefs and archaeological explanations beyond the customs. For example, the San have trivial is that they provide a persuasive been photographed, filmed and inter- account that articulates at the finest viewed about performing trance dances. level possible with the available evi- Lewis-Williams realised that the new dence.’39 For example, he has pointed information, systematically organised out that various figures Pager had called according to anthropological principles, ‘winged antelope’ and could not explain was also a fit for many of the paintings. include the following typical features of However, he encountered criticism San trance: ‘nasal blood, antelope heads from those who say that there is no and hoofs, arms in the backward posi- proof the modern people of the Kalahari tion, hairs [erect], lines from the top of share their beliefs and practices with the head, and trailing streamers. Often the earlier artists, and that there is no they are in a kneeling posture that re- such thing as a pan-Bushman system calls the position into which some danc- of beliefs and practices. Nevertheless, ers fall when they enter trance’ (Figure in many extraordinary details he has 3). He therefore dubbed them ‘trance- shown how this information illuminates buck’. Where Pager had recorded and understanding of the art. We have al- collated every detail of the creatures in ready seen how a /Xam man from the case the differences were significant, northern Cape immediately saw the Lewis-Williams sees variation in the meaning in the paintings of shamans details as immaterial: ‘The wide vari- and rain animals that Orpen sent to ety within what is clearly a category of Cape Town. painting … may be attributed to the id- iosyncratic nature of Bushman religion. Neuropsychology Because each trance-buck represents a Once the ethnography had shown that shaman’s hallucination, each is a unique the art was shamanic in origin, Lewis- variation on a theme.’40 Williams turned to neuropsychology, The trance-buck paintings show which has demonstrated that people en- only some of the features of altered tering altered states of consciousness all consciousness that are to be seen in the over the world can have similar experi- art. For these and some other features, ences and visions, which they interpret Lewis-Williams singled out as specially according to their culture, beliefs and revealing – he called it the Rosetta rituals. He and his colleague Thomas Stone of South African rock art – the Dowson, who worked on rock engrav- panel in Game Pass Shelter in the ings,38 showed that the rock paintings Kamberg Nature Reserve that Van Riet and engravings of the San record their Lowe and Battiss believed was painted trance experiences which are induced by ‘strangers’ (Figure 4). It depicts a by their rhythmic dancing, for which we dying eland, with shamans in close at- have historical and contemporary oral tendance, half transformed into eland, accounts. This understanding helped with one holding its tail and imitating its explain some of the non-figurative im- dying stance by crossing his legs. Since

Natalia 49 (2019) CC-BY-NC cc Natal Society Foundation 2019 Rock art researchers in the uKhahlamba Drakensberg shamans often liken entering trance to that its proponents claimed it applied to dying, it would appear that the shaman all paintings, whereas Lewis-Williams figures are closely associated with the and Pearce had previously been at dying eland. pains to make clear that ‘this broad The national significance of Lewis- explanation does not claim that all San Williams’ work on valuing the heritage images derived from specific visions of of the San people has been recognised. a supernatural realm’ (their emphasis).45 The South African coat of arms has at Lewis-Williams was engaged in a long- its centre a figure from a San painting running dispute with Anne Solomon, that RARI provided at the request of the author of many publications on the San Presidency. The same painting featured and rock art such as The Essential Guide subsequently in a series of postage to San Rock Art (1998).46 Simply put, stamps issued in 2006 that illustrated she interpreted the art in mythological some of the most significant images terms. This can be illustrated by refer- that Lewis-Williams had identified ence to the figures that are partly human and explicated. Another of the stamps and partly animal (therianthropes) and reproduced the now famous dying which are common in the art. According eland scene from Game Pass Shelter to Lewis-Williams, they are records of (Figure 4).41 the experiences of shamans in trance There are many challenges to Lewis- who feel themselves transformed into Williams, and the arguments on both animals, but Solomon argued that they sides are too complex to go into here. represented mythological or spiritual For the sake of illustration, I shall name beings.47 four of his critics. Willcox said that Research has also taken other lines Lewis-Williams was ‘metaphysical’, of approach. Before Lewis-Williams and that he disagreed with Lewis- undertook the bulk of his research, Williams’ theories on the grounds the work of John Wright while he was that they were more elaborate than an historian at the University of Natal necessary to explain the existence of proved a dead end. He undertook re- the art. Although Woodhouse accepted search into the history of the San and in later years that the paintings ‘can published his MA dissertation as the best be understood by reference to the classic book Bushman Raiders of the recorded folklore and ethnography of Drakensberg 1840-1870 (1971).48 In the San’,42 his obituary in the Sunday it he provided an authoritative account Times says that he ‘strongly disagreed’ of the interaction between the San and with Lewis-Williams and presented his people of other races, and dispelled collection of about 22 000 slides to the many misconceptions about the nature University of Pretoria, which has no of the interaction and the fate of the specialisation in the study of rock art, San, but he saw the rock art simply as rather than to RARI.43 George Hughes, an historical record. former CEO of the Natal Parks Board, Wright was one of the first historians who had worked as a ranger at Gi- of Natal to to realise that its history was ant’s Castle and submitted a numerical incomplete without an account of its inventory of sites to RARI, dismissed prehistory. He therefore subsequently the neuropsychological explanation as collaborated with Aron Mazel, an ‘fevered speculation’.44 He suggested archaeologist, in co-authoring Tracks

Natalia 49 (2019) CC-BY-NC cc Natal Society Foundation 2019 Rock art researchers in the uKhahlamba Drakensberg in a Mountain Range (2007), in which ers, attempting to decipher San art using Mazel dealt with the rock art.49 Ma- ethnographic analysis and working with zel began searching for rock art sites and training local collectives.51 These in the Drakensberg on behalf of the researchers reinforce the understand- Department of Forestry in 1979, and ing that the interaction between the later worked for the Natal Museum. Bantu-speaking immigrants and the He excavated a number of caves in the indigenous San was not mainly a violent Drakensberg. In Collingham Shelter he one, but one of intermarriage and co- found a painted slab in an 1 800-year- existence, with a transfer of beliefs and old deposit. He recorded and analysed practices in both directions. They have 19 000 paintings. RARI has over 13 000 identified many paintings that illustrate of his colour photographs. details of this cultural sharing. Some researchers nowadays are Different approaches to the art contin- looking at regional differences in the ue to proliferate. For example, a student art of the Drakensberg mountain range from RARI has written his Master’s according to subject matter rather than dissertation on identifying the work style. Using quantitative methods, of the same individual artist in various Mazel showed that there is a differ- shelters in one area of the Berg. The art ence in the distribution of paintings continues to elicit differences of opinion of different kinds of antelope between among archaeologists, art historians and the northern and southern regions. His other interested parties. One dispute analyses added to the quantitative data was between Thembi Russell and David assembled by other researchers, but on Pearce over the use of the Harris Matrix the whole did not advance research very to interpret superpositioning. The Harris much. Mazel accepted Lewis-Williams’ Matrix (actually a lattice, not a matrix) interpretation of the art, and the illustra- was developed to interpret layers in ar- tion on the cover of Tracks can be seen chaeological deposits. It has been used as a tribute to him because of the choice on rock art by Johannes Loubser, Alain of the ‘dying eland’ panel from Game King and Joanè Swart. According to Pass that Lewis-Williams had singled Pearce, all it could do was confirm the out (Figure 4). Mazel left South Africa episodes or artistic periods already iden- to become an archaeologist at the Uni- tified through the use of criteria such as versity of Newcastle in Britain. style and colours of paints. Russell first A new line of research was introduced used it in Giant’s Castle Main Caves to in the 1990s when Pieter Jolly argued confirm the seven ‘styles’ of Pager and that hunter-gatherers had borrowed the four ‘phases’ of Vinnicombe. Then religious concepts and ritual practices she used it to identify sequences for from the African farming groups with individual paintings within a single tra- whom they had been in close contact dition. However, Pearce argues that her for an extended period.50 Several other categories are ill-defined and it is not recent rock art researchers have inves- possible to use the matrix for individual tigated this cultural interaction, includ- paintings in a single tradition, but only ing some of Lewis-Williams’ former for contexts of multiple traditions.52 students. Sam Challis has worked on The use of photography in recording the archaeology of contact between the art has gone through several stages hunter-gatherers, pastoralists and farm- and continues to develop. Kevin Crause

Natalia 49 (2019) CC-BY-NC cc Natal Society Foundation 2019 Rock art researchers in the uKhahlamba Drakensberg took advantage of the development tinct People (Johannesburg, Southern, 2004); of digitised, computer-enhanced pho- and Janette Deacon and Thomas A. Dowson (eds), Voices from the Past: /Xam Bushmen tography to use a technique he called and the Bleek and Lloyd Collection (Johan- the Capture Process Enhance Display nesburg, Wits University Press, 1996). (CPED) Toolset, with which he took 2 For an account of this episode, see J.D. Lewis- colour photographs in the Drakensberg Williams, Images of Mystery: Rock Art of the Drakensberg (Cape Town, Double Storey, that gave fine definition and brought out 2003), pp. 17–26. hitherto invisible details in the paint- 3 Patricia Vinnicombe, People of the Eland: ings.53 Most recently, Jeremy Hollmann Rock Paintings of the Drakensberg Bushmen has described the use of the digital as a Reflection of their Life and Thought (Pietermaritzburg, University of Natal Press, programmes Adobe Lightroom, Adobe 1976), figure 87, p. 160. Photoshop and DStretch.54 4 Vinnicombe, People of the Eland, p. 123. The rock art continues to surprise. In 5 The activities of Tylor, Hutchinson, Mäder, 2011, Jeremy Hollmann and Carolyn Whyte and Anderson are recorded by Vin- nicombe in People of the Eland. Thorp successfully removed a paint- 6 Jeremy Hollmann and Lawrence Msimanga, ing from the Vaalekop Shelter that was ‘“An extreme case”: the removal of rock art due to be inundated by the new Spring from uMhwabane (eBusingatha) rock art Grove Dam on the Upper Mooi River.55 shelter, Bergville, KwaZulu-Natal’ Southern African Humanities 20(2) 2008, pp. 285–315. In the shelter they made a find that takes 7 Lewis-Williams, Images of Mystery, p. 15. us back to the painting in Willcox Shel- 8 H. Breuil, ‘Some foreigners in the frescoes ter first copied by Mark Tylor in 1893 on rocks in southern Africa’ South African (Figure 2). In a provocative address Archaeological Bulletin 4 (1949), pp. 39–50. 9 Walter Battiss, The Amazing Bushman (Pre- to the South African Archaeological toria, Red Fawn Press, 1939). Society, Thorp reported that they had 10 Walter Battiss, Artists of the Rocks (Pretoria, found skeletons of frogs in the cave, Red Fawn Press, 1948). leading her to postulate that the mys- 11 ibid., p. 93. 12 Marion How, The Mountain Bushmen of terious figure and its duplicates were Basutoland (Pretoria, Van Schaik, 1970). based on frogs. 13 ibid., pp. 34–35. The rock paintings in the uKhahlam- 14 Pieter Jolly, ‘A first generation descendant of ba Drakensberg are fading. Thanks to the Transkei San’ South African Archaeologi- cal Bulletin 41 (1986), pp. 6–9. the diligence of so many people, much 15 J.D. Lewis-Williams, ‘The last testament of of the art has been preserved in copies. the southern San’ South African Archaeologi- Like all academic studies, understand- cal Bulletin 41 (1986), pp. 10–11. ing of the art has developed through 16 A.R. Willcox, Rock Paintings of the Drakens- berg, Natal and Griqualand East (London, building on the work of earlier writers, Max Parrish, 1956). collaboration, and disputation. We shall 17 A.R. Willcox, The Rock Art of South Africa never know everything about the art, but (London, Nelson, 1963), p. 19. we know a lot more than when Orpen 18 ibid., p. 34. 19 A.R. Willcox, The Drakensberg Bushmen and and Tylor trudged into those spectacular their Art (Winterton, Drakensberg, 1984), p. fastnesses. 28. 20 A. Bonneau et al., ‘Comparing painting pig- NOTES ments and subjects: the case of white paints 1 There are many publications about the Bleeks at the Metolong Dam (Lesotho)’. Proceed- and their San teachers. For example Andrew ings of the 39th International Symposium for Bank, Bushmen in a Victorian World (Cape Archaeometry, Leuven, 2012, p. 321. Town, Double Storey, 2006); Neil Bennun, 21 Joan Nockels and Alex Willcox, Kabo of the The Broken String: The Last Words of an Ex- Mountain (Winterton, Drakensberg, 1986).

Natalia 49 (2019) CC-BY-NC cc Natal Society Foundation 2019 Rock art researchers in the uKhahlamba Drakensberg

22 D.N. Lee and H.C. Woodhouse, Art on the 43 Chris Barron, ‘Bert Woodhouse’ Sunday Rocks of Southern Africa (Cape Town, Purnell, Times, 27 November 2011. Another source 1970). puts the number of slides at about 44 000. 23 Elwyn Jenkins, ‘Showcasing South African 44 Elwyn Jenkins, ‘Review of Drakensberg rock art on postage stamps’ Critical Arts 26(4) Ranger: Four Years at Giant’s Castle by 2012, p. 473. George Hughes’ Natalia 45 (2015), p. 131. 24 Lee and Woodhouse, Art on the Rocks, pp. 45 Lewis-Williams and Pearce, ‘Framed idiosyn- 16–17, 96. crasy’, p. 76. 25 ibid., pp. 127, 130, 131. 46 Anne Solomon, The Essential Guide to San 26 Harald Pager, Ndedema (Graz, Akademische Rock Art (Cape Town, New Africa Books, Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1971), p. 40. 1998). 27 Harald Pager, Stone Age Myth and Magic 47 Anne Solomon, ‘The myth of ritual origins?: (Graz, Akademische Druck- und Verlags ethnography, mythology and interpretation of anstalt, 1975). San rock art’ South African Archaeological 28 Pager, Ndedema. Bulletin 52 (1997), pp. 3–13. 29 Vinnicombe, People of the Eland. 48 John Wright, Bushman Raiders of the Drak- 30 P.J. Mitchell and B.W. Smith (eds), The ensberg 1840–1870: A Study of their Conflict Eland’s People: New Perspectives on the with Stock-keeping Peoples in Natal (Pieter- Rock Art of the Maloti-Drakensberg Bushmen: maritzburg, University of Natal Press, 1971). Essays in Memory of Patricia Vinnicombe 49 Aron Mazel and John Wright, Tracks in a (Johannesburg, Wits University Press, 2009). Mountain Range: Exploring the History of 31 J.D. Lewis-Williams and David G. Pearce, the uKhahlamba-Drakensberg (Johannesburg, ‘Framed idiosyncrasy: method and evidence Wits University Press, 2007). in the interpretation of San rock art’ South 50 Pieter Jolly, ‘Symbiotic interaction between African Archaeological Bulletin 67(195) black farmers and south-eastern San: impli- 2012, p. 76 (slightly paraphrased). cations for southern African rock art studies, 32 J.D. Lewis-Williams, Believing and Seeing: ethnographic analogy, and hunter-gatherer Symbolic Meaning in Southern San Rock cultural identity’ Current Anthropology 37(2) Paintings (London, Academic Press, 1981). 1996, pp. 277–305. 33 David G. Pearce, Lara Mallen and Catherine 51 Sam Challis, ‘Creolisation on the nineteenth- Namono, ‘Walter Battiss and South African century frontiers of Southern Africa: a case rock art’ Digging Stick 34(2) 2017, pp. 7–8. study of the AmaTola “Bushmen” in the 34 J.D. Lewis-Williams and Thomas Dowson, Maloti-Drakensberg’ Journal of Southern Images of Power: Understanding Bushman African Studies 38(2) 2012, pp. 265–280. Rock Art (Johannesburg, Southern, 1989). 52 David G. Pearce, ‘The Harris Matrix technique 35 J.D. Lewis-Williams, A Cosmos in Stone: in the construction of relative chronologies of Interpreting Religion and Society Through rock paintings in South Africa’ South African Rock Art (Walnut Creek, Altamira, 2002). Archaeological Bulletin 65(192) 2010, pp. 36 J.D. Lewis-Williams and David G. Pearce, 148–153. San Spirituality: Roots, Expression, and So- 53 Kevin Crause, Fingerprints in time: heritage cial Consequences (Walnut Creek, Altamira, imaging solutions, https://www.facebook. 2004). com/media/set/?set=a.378794842240447&t 37 J.D. Lewis-Williams, San Rock Art: A Jacana ype=3 (accessed 4 December 2018). Pocket Guide (Johannesburg, Jacana, 2011). 54 J.C. Hollmann, ‘Digital technology in research 38 Thomas A. Dowson, Rock Engravings of and documentation of hunter-gatherer rock Southern Africa (Johannesburg, Wits Univer- art in South Africa’ African Archaeological sity Press, 1992). Review 35 (2018), pp. 157–168. 39 J.D. Lewis-Williams and David G. Pearce, 55 J.C. Hollmann, ‘Removal of panel of rock Inside the Neolithic Mind: Consciousness, art’. Report on the Vaalekop Rock Art Site, Cosmos and the Realm of the Gods (London, Business Enterprises at the University of Pre- Thames & Hudson, 2005), p. 172. toria (Pty) Ltd., https://www.springgrovedam. 40 Lewis-Williams and Dowson, Images of co.za/rock%20art.html (accessed 5 December Power, pp. 72, 73. 2018). 41 Jenkins, ‘Showcasing South African rock art on postage stamps’, pp. 477–479. 42 H.C. Woodhouse, ‘Rock paintings’. Brochure for issue of rock art stamps, South African Post Office, 4 June 1987.

Natalia 49 (2019) CC-BY-NC cc Natal Society Foundation 2019