Symbiotic interaction between black farmers and south-eastern San: implications for southern African rock art studies, ethnography analogy, and hunter-gatherer cultural identity http://www.aluka.org/action/showMetadata?doi=10.5555/AL.CH.DOCUMENT.sip200025 Use of the Aluka digital library is subject to Aluka’s Terms and Conditions, available at http://www.aluka.org/page/about/termsConditions.jsp. By using Aluka, you agree that you have read and will abide by the Terms and Conditions. Among other things, the Terms and Conditions provide that the content in the Aluka digital library is only for personal, non-commercial use by authorized users of Aluka in connection with research, scholarship, and education. The content in the Aluka digital library is subject to copyright, with the exception of certain governmental works and very old materials that may be in the public domain under applicable law. Permission must be sought from Aluka and/or the applicable copyright holder in connection with any duplication or distribution of these materials where required by applicable law. Aluka is a not-for-profit initiative dedicated to creating and preserving a digital archive of materials about and from the developing world. For more information about Aluka, please see http://www.aluka.org Symbiotic interaction between black farmers and south-eastern San: implications for southern African rock art studies, ethnography analogy, and hunter-gatherer cultural identity Author/Creator Jolly, Pieter Date 1996-04 Resource type Articles Language English Subject Source Smithsonian Institution Libraries, GN1 .C97 Relation Current Anthropology, Vol. 37, No. 2 (April 1996): 277-304. Rights Jolly, Pieter. 1996. Symbiotic Interaction Between Black Farmers and South-eastern San: Implications for Southern African Rock Art Studies, Ethnography Analogy, and Hunter-gatherer Cultural Identity. Current Anthropology 37 (2): 277-305. By kind permission of the University of Chicago. © 1996 by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. Format extent 30 pages (length/size) http://www.aluka.org/action/showMetadata?doi=10.5555/AL.CH.DOCUMENT.sip200025 http://www.aluka.org CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 37, Number 2, April 1996 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 37, Number 2, April 1996 © 1996 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All right reserved 0011-3204/96/3702-OOO$2.5O Symbiotic Interaction between Black Farmers and South-Eastern San Implications for Southern African Rock Art Studies, Ethnographic Analogy, and Hunter-Gatherer Cultural Identity' by Pieter Jolly Studies of San rock art have generally assumed the existence of a structurally uniform "pan-San" cognitive system from at least 2,000 years B.P. to the present all over southern Africa. It is suggested here that the assumption of continuities in San religious ideology and ritual practice has resulted in insufficient attention to the possible influence of the ideologies and ritual practices of encapsulating black farming communities on the cosmologies and ritual life of their San neighbours and the expression of this influence in the rock art. In the light of recent studies demonstrating the profound effects of contact on hunter-gatherers in southern Africa and elsewhere, the possible expression of southern Nguni and Sotho religious concepts and ritual practices in the rock art of the south-eastern mountains of southern Africa, as a result of symbiotic interaction between south- eastern San and black farmers, is investigated here. Some of the implications of such symbiotic interaction for the use of ethnographic analogy to interpret rock art and other iconography, as well as some of the implications for debates surrounding the cultural identity of hunter-gatherers in Africa and elsewhere, are discussed. I. The main ideas presented here derive from my M.A. thesis. Unpublished papers including some of the ideas developed in this article were read at the 1994 conference of the Southern African Association of Archaeologists in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, and at the 1994 Valcamonica Symposium on Prehistoric and Tribal Art in Boario Terme, Italy. I am grateful to John Parkington for drawing my attention to unpublished typescripts of Francis Thackeray lodged with the Department of Archaeology, University of Cape Town, and to Thackeray for giving me permission to cite one of these typescripts. Sandra Klopper of the Department of History of Art, University of Cape Town, kindly pointed me to the work of George Kubler, and Karel Schoeman of the South African Library drew my attention to the original manuscript of Orpen's (1874) article. John Lanham assisted with preparation of the manuscript. The Oppenheimer Institute, Department of African Studies, University of Cape Town, generously provided me with grants to enable me to conduct research in South Africa and Lesotho. PIETER JOLLY is Research Associate in the Archaeology Department at the University of Cape Town (Private Bag, Rondebosch 7700, Cape Town, South Africa). He received his M.A. in archaeology from the University of Cape Town in 1994. His publications include "A First Generation Descendant of the Transkei San" (South African Archaeological Bulletin 41:6-9), "Some Photographs of Late-Nineteenth-Century San Rainmakers" (South African Archaeological Bulletin 47:89-93), and "Melikane and Upper Mangolong Revisited: The Possible Effects on San Art of Symbiotic Contact between South-Eastern San and Southern Sotho and Nguni Communities" (South African Archaeological Bulletin 5o:68-8o). The present paper was submitted 29 xi 94 and accepted 2o i 95; the final version reached the Editor's office 21 11 95. Recognition of the importance of contact between hunter-gatherer and adjacent communities for understanding these communities is reflected in the number of studies dealing with this subject in recent years. While some of these studies have detailed the effects of contact on the political and economic systems of hunter- gatherers, others have demonstrated borrowing by hunter-gatherers of the religious concepts and ritual practices of farming groups with whom they have established symbiotic relationships. This paper will introduce some general problems associated with the current paradigm of San rock art studies and review the evidence which demonstrates that the establishment of symbiotic relationships between hunter-gatherers, including the south-eastern San, and farming communities led to the borrowing of religious ideology and ritual practices by hunter-gatherers from their dominant agriculturist neighbours. In the case of the San, it is argued, these religious concepts and rites were expressed in their rock art, and three rock art panels are interpreted in terms of the religious symbolism of southern African black farming communities. The implications of the establishment of symbiotic relationships between the south- eastern San and black farmers for the assumed cultural identity of the San and of the artists within San society will also be explored. Finally, two wider issues arising out of this discussion will be examined. First, the implications of the adoption by the San of the symbols and rites of other cultures for the use of ethnographic analogy to interpret iconography will be discussed, with specific reference to George Kubler's critical analyses of theories of art and ethnicity which assume continuity in the ideology of preliterate peoples over hundreds or even thousands of years. Second, symbiotic San-farmer relationships and the expression of ideological change in San art will be placed within the context of the wider debate concerning the effects on hunter-gatherers of interaction with other societies and larger economic systems. It is suggested that the symbiotic nature of many San-black-farmer relationships supports the argument that, in a great many cases, hunter-gatherer societies in southern Africa and elsewhere have been closely enmeshed with neighbouring farming communities for hundreds and sometimes thousands of years. 278 I CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 37, Number 2, April 1996 Southern African Rock Art Studies: Problems with the Current Paradigm Current explanations of the overt content and underlying symbolism of San rock art have been formulated largely within a theoretical paradigm developed by Lewis-Williams (198o, 1982a, b, 1982, 1984, 1990). A basic premise which underlies the ideas constituting this paradigm and has been increasingly emphasised in the recent literature is that the art is essentially or even entirely shamanistic, reflecting the trance experiences of San shamans (Lewis-Williams 198o, I98Ia, b, 1982, 1987a, 1988, 199; Lewis-Williams and Dowson 1988, 1989). These experiences, it is further suggested, were mediated by a structurally uniform pan-San ideological system, reflective of kin-based relations of production, which existed from at least 2,ooo and possibly 26,000 years B.P. until the present (Lewis-Williams I984).2 The work of Lewis-Williams has yielded many valuable insights into the meaning and symbolism underlying a great deal of the art, but his theoretical paradigm is incapable of dealing systematically with change (Hall 1987:2) and, in particular, it is suggested here, the effects of contact with black farming communities on San ritual practices and religious ideology. Any theory of the art which emphasises the conservative nature of ideology, and religious ideology in particular, will tend to ignore or minimize the effects of competing ideologies of non-San populations on the