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... Simultaneous then with the book under review are two North American collections, Whitley & Loendorf ... Diversity and contesting is very much within southern Africa: there are nineteen authors from South ... history', and... more
... Simultaneous then with the book under review are two North American collections, Whitley & Loendorf ... Diversity and contesting is very much within southern Africa: there are nineteen authors from South ... history', and link the art to the archaeology that provides the history of the ...
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Research Interests: Sociology and Archaeology
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Almost sixty years ago, Miles C. Burkitt, Lecturer in Prehistory in the University of Cambridge, visited South Africa at the invitation of the University of Cape Town where his former pupil, A.J.H. Goodwin had recently started work. The... more
Almost sixty years ago, Miles C. Burkitt, Lecturer in Prehistory in the University of Cambridge, visited South Africa at the invitation of the University of Cape Town where his former pupil, A.J.H. Goodwin had recently started work. The purpose of the visit was to show Burkitt the sites and elicit his opinions in preparation for the meeting of the British Association in South Africa the following year (Burkitt, 1962, 37; Goodwin, 1958, 32). It seemed appropriate, at a time when the work of South African archaeologists has been denied a hearing by the Southampton World Archaeological Congress, that we should publish an account of recent work there and current perspectives on Southern African prehistory. The authors of this article are: Carmel Schrire, Department of Human Ecology, Rutgers University; Janette Deacon, Department of Archaeology, University of Stellenbosch; Martin Hall, Department of Archaeology, University of Cape Town, and David Lewis-Williams, Department of Archaeology...
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... Simultaneous then with the book under review are two North American collections, Whitley & Loendorf ... Diversity and contesting is very much within southern Africa: there are nineteen authors from South ... history', and... more
... Simultaneous then with the book under review are two North American collections, Whitley & Loendorf ... Diversity and contesting is very much within southern Africa: there are nineteen authors from South ... history', and link the art to the archaeology that provides the history of the ...
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Current Anthropology Volume 28, Number 1, February 1987 © 1987 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, all rights reserved 0011-32,04/87/2801-0004$!.75 Art for Art's Sake in the Paleolithic by John Halverson The... more
Current Anthropology Volume 28, Number 1, February 1987 © 1987 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, all rights reserved 0011-32,04/87/2801-0004$!.75 Art for Art's Sake in the Paleolithic by John Halverson The question of the "meaning" of Paleolithic ...
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Inside the Neolithic Mind: Consciousness, Cosmos, and the Realm of the Gods. David Lewis-Williams and David Pearce. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2005. 320 pp.
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David Lewis-Williams is well-known in rock-art circles as the author of a series of articles drawing on ethnographic material and shamanism (notably connected with the San rock art of southern Africa) to gain new insights into the... more
David Lewis-Williams is well-known in rock-art circles as the author of a series of articles drawing on ethnographic material and shamanism (notably connected with the San rock art of southern Africa) to gain new insights into the Palaeolithic cave art of western Europe. Some 15 years ago, with Thomas Dowson, he proposed that Palaeolithic art owed its inspiration at least in part to trance experiences (altered states of consciousness) associated with shamanistic practices. Since that article appeared, the shamanistic hypothesis has both been widely adopted and developed in the study of different rock-art traditions, and has become the subject of lively and sometimes heated controversy. In the present volume, Lewis-Williams takes the argument further, and combines the shamanistic hypothesis with an interpretation of the development of human consciousness. He thus enters another contentious area of archaeological debate, seeking to understand west European cave art in the context of (...
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An unusual San rock painting provides the basis for an exploration of method and evidence in rock art research. Using Alison Wylie's advocacy of 'tacking' and the 'disunity of science', the article shows that... more
An unusual San rock painting provides the basis for an exploration of method and evidence in rock art research. Using Alison Wylie's advocacy of 'tacking' and the 'disunity of science', the article shows that researchers can go beyond general statements about the art as a whole to identify personal interventions by San painters. Broad interpretations of the art, as well as studies of individual panels of images, should explicitly and clearly articulate painted features with general ethnographic reports as well as those few that deal directly with rock art, and vice versa. In addition, certain 'disunity' arguments can support these interpretations by drawing on corpora of evidence that have different theoretical underpinnings.
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To a Western eye, San rock art panels are chaotic accumulations of disparate images. Yet the panels themselves, seen in the light of San beliefs, are constructed according to certain principles. This article identifies some of those... more
To a Western eye, San rock art panels are chaotic accumulations of disparate images. Yet the panels themselves, seen in the light of San beliefs, are constructed according to certain principles. This article identifies some of those principles and exemplifies them by analysing a panel at a site in the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa.
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FIGURE 1 (right). The new national coat-of arms for South Africa, in colours of black, brown, gold and green. Above: a rising sun symbolizes promise of rebirth; the secretary bird with uplifted wings represents growth, and as a protective... more
FIGURE 1 (right). The new national coat-of arms for South Africa, in colours of black, brown, gold and green. Above: a rising sun symbolizes promise of rebirth; the secretary bird with uplifted wings represents growth, and as a protective bird 'slays serpents and thus protects us ...
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An unusual San rock painting provides the basis for an exploration of method and evidence in rock art research. Using Alison Wylie's advocacy of 'tacking' and the 'disunity of science', the article shows that... more
An unusual San rock painting provides the basis for an exploration of method and evidence in rock art research. Using Alison Wylie's advocacy of 'tacking' and the 'disunity of science', the article shows that researchers can go beyond general statements about the art as a whole to identify personal interventions by San painters. Broad interpretations of the art, as well as studies of individual panels of images, should explicitly and clearly articulate painted features with general ethnographic reports as well as those few that deal directly with rock art, and vice versa. In addition, certain 'disunity' arguments can support these interpretations by drawing on corpora of evidence that have different theoretical underpinnings.
Research Interests:
To a Western eye, San rock art panels are chaotic accumulations of disparate images. Yet the panels themselves, seen in the light of San beliefs, are constructed according to certain principles. This article identifies some of those... more
To a Western eye, San rock art panels are chaotic accumulations of disparate images. Yet the panels themselves, seen in the light of San beliefs, are constructed according to certain principles. This article identifies some of those principles and exemplifies them by analysing a panel at a site in the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa.
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FIGURE 1 (right). The new national coat-of arms for South Africa, in colours of black, brown, gold and green. Above: a rising sun symbolizes promise of rebirth; the secretary bird with uplifted wings represents growth, and as a protective... more
FIGURE 1 (right). The new national coat-of arms for South Africa, in colours of black, brown, gold and green. Above: a rising sun symbolizes promise of rebirth; the secretary bird with uplifted wings represents growth, and as a protective bird 'slays serpents and thus protects us ...
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... 123 THREADS OF LIGHT: RE-EXAMINING A MOTIF IN SOUTHERN AFRICAN SAN ROCKART* ... Rock Art Research Institute School of Geography, Archaeology & EnvironmentalStudies University of the Witwatersrand Johannesburg 2050 ...
Research Interests: Sociology, Archaeology, Ethnography, Nineteenth Century, Anthropology of Shamanism, and 15 morePrehistoric Rock Art, Rock Art, South Africa, Archaeology of shamanism, San, Aboriginal, Human Brain, Bushman, Bushman beliefs, South Africa Archaeology, Rock art recording, South African History, Bleek, Bushman Archaeology, and Jstor
... 123 THREADS OF LIGHT: RE-EXAMINING A MOTIF IN SOUTHERN AFRICAN SAN ROCKART* ... Rock Art Research Institute School of Geography, Archaeology & EnvironmentalStudies University of the Witwatersrand Johannesburg 2050 ...
Research Interests: Sociology, Archaeology, Ethnography, Nineteenth Century, Anthropology of Shamanism, and 15 morePrehistoric Rock Art, Rock Art, South Africa, Archaeology of shamanism, San, Aboriginal, Human Brain, Bushman, Bushman beliefs, South Africa Archaeology, Rock art recording, South African History, Bleek, Bushman Archaeology, and Jstor
... Abstract Information. Storm Shelter : an important new rock art find in South Africa : research in action. Journal Title: South African Journal of Science; Volume: Volume 97; Issue: Issue 1 & 2; Publication Date: 2001; Pages: p.43... more
... Abstract Information. Storm Shelter : an important new rock art find in South Africa : research in action. Journal Title: South African Journal of Science; Volume: Volume 97; Issue: Issue 1 & 2; Publication Date: 2001; Pages: p.43 - 46; Authors: Geoffrey Blundell; David Lewis-Williams ...
McCall (2010) uses data collected by Pager (1971) to argue for geographically controlled differences in the uses of painted rock art sites in the Didima Gorge, South Africa. We point out fundamental errors in the ascription of sites to... more
McCall (2010) uses data collected by Pager (1971) to argue for geographically controlled differences in the uses of painted rock art sites in the Didima Gorge, South Africa. We point out fundamental errors in the ascription of sites to particular categories that undermine the conclusions he reached. We conclude that there is no evidence to suggest different uses of painted rock shelters in the Didima Gorge.
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Cave paintings and first-hand ethnographic accounts from living peoples have led to the notion that southern African spiritual experts routinely mediated with the other world through energetic dances leading to the trance state. The... more
Cave paintings and first-hand ethnographic accounts from living peoples have led to the notion that southern African spiritual experts routinely mediated with the other world through energetic dances leading to the trance state. The evidence for this idea has been challenged in recent years, and the importance of the trance dance diminished accordingly. The authors confront these criticisms and place the shamanistic dance back on centre stage—with important consequences not only for the study of San peoples, but for wider prehistoric interpretations.
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ABSTRACT Recent work on a well-known San rock art panel from South Africa shows that continued movement between, on the one hand, San beliefs and rituals and, on the other, the images themselves allows us to move from general statements... more
ABSTRACT Recent work on a well-known San rock art panel from South Africa shows that continued movement between, on the one hand, San beliefs and rituals and, on the other, the images themselves allows us to move from general statements about San rock art to specific understandings. We demonstrate that continuing field research, combined with the revisiting of painted panels, is uncovering diverse ways in which San rock painters deployed and, at the same time, individually transmuted abstract ideas and experiences into material images, often in easily missed details. One of these instances, hitherto unknown, is described. By following-up the heuristic potential of this approach researchers are able to explore the ways in which San imagery played a social role at different times and in different places in San history.
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Joseph Millerd Orpen’s article recounting the ethnographic data he collected from a Bushman informant (Qing) whilst searching for Langalibalele in the southern Maloti-Drakensberg is a key document for southern African archaeology, one of... more
Joseph Millerd Orpen’s article recounting the ethnographic data he collected from a Bushman informant (Qing) whilst searching for Langalibalele in the southern Maloti-Drakensberg is a key document for southern African archaeology, one of the cornerstones in the decipherment of the rock art of the region. This article publishes a slightly edited version of Orpen’s article with paragraph breaks and headings to facilitate the reading of this crucial document, as well as selections from Bleek’s Second report concerning Bushman researches and Lloyd’s A short account of further Bushman material collected that help situate Orpen’s work within the intellectual community of the nineteenth-century Cape Colony. The article also locates this work within the substantial corpus of Qing- and Orpen-related scholarly material, outlining the major uses made of the work thus far.
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Whether or not a ‘trance-dance’ akin to that of today's Kalahari San (Bushmen) was performed by southern /Xam San in the nineteenth century has long been the subject of intense debate. Here the authors point to parallels between... more
Whether or not a ‘trance-dance’ akin to that of today's Kalahari San (Bushmen) was performed by southern /Xam San in the nineteenth century has long been the subject of intense debate. Here the authors point to parallels between nineteenth-century records of San life and beliefs and twentieth-century San ethnography from the Kalahari Desert in order to argue that this cultural practice was shared by these two geographically and chronologically distant groups. More significantly, it is suggested that these ethnographic parallels allow a clearer understanding of the religious and ritual practices depicted in the southern San rock art images.
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Research Interests: Sociology and Archaeology
Research Interests: Archaeology and Jstor
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African Archaeological Review, Vol. ... 2To whom correspondence should be addressed at RockArt Research Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, Private Bag 3, WITS 2050, South Africa; e-mail david@rockart.wits.ac ... Southern African... more
African Archaeological Review, Vol. ... 2To whom correspondence should be addressed at RockArt Research Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, Private Bag 3, WITS 2050, South Africa; e-mail david@rockart.wits.ac ... Southern African San Rock Painting as Social Intervention ...
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Science is full of different kinds of what-ifs. What if Niels Bohr had not emigrated to USA? What if the Beagle had not called at the Galapagos Islands? One of the most intriguing what-ifs concerns the ways in which the world has come to... more
Science is full of different kinds of what-ifs. What if Niels Bohr had not emigrated to USA? What if the Beagle had not called at the Galapagos Islands? One of the most intriguing what-ifs concerns the ways in which the world has come to understand the 10,000-to 33,000-...
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Recent work on a well-known San rock art panel from South Africa shows that continued movement between, on the one hand, San beliefs and rituals and, on the other, the images themselves allows us to move from general statements about San... more
Recent work on a well-known San rock art panel from South Africa shows that continued movement between, on the one hand, San beliefs and rituals and, on the other, the images themselves allows us to move from general statements about San rock art to specific understandings. We demonstrate that continuing field research, combined with the revisiting of painted panels, is uncovering diverse ways in which San rock painters deployed and, at the same time, individually transmuted abstract ideas and experiences into material images, often in easily missed details.
One of these instances, hitherto unknown, is described. By
following-up the heuristic potential of this approach researchers
are able to explore the ways in which San imagery played a social
role at different times and in different places in San history.
One of these instances, hitherto unknown, is described. By
following-up the heuristic potential of this approach researchers
are able to explore the ways in which San imagery played a social
role at different times and in different places in San history.
Research Interests:
This paper focuses on a San rock painting motif in the south-eastern mountains of South Africa-a line, usually red and often fringed with white dots. Diverse strands of evidence show that previous attempts to elucidate its significance... more
This paper focuses on a San rock painting motif in the south-eastern mountains of South Africa-a line, usually red and often fringed with white dots. Diverse strands of
evidence show that previous attempts to elucidate its significance were only partially correct. To achieve further clarification, the paper intertwines ethnographic evidence
and neuropsychology. San beliefs concerning journeys to the spirit realm in the sky are examined. These beliefs embrace notions of 'threads of light' along which those who traverse the cosmos climb, walk or float. These 'threads', it is argued, derive from the 'wiring' of the human brain and may be used to explicate the various painted contexts in which the red lines are found.
evidence show that previous attempts to elucidate its significance were only partially correct. To achieve further clarification, the paper intertwines ethnographic evidence
and neuropsychology. San beliefs concerning journeys to the spirit realm in the sky are examined. These beliefs embrace notions of 'threads of light' along which those who traverse the cosmos climb, walk or float. These 'threads', it is argued, derive from the 'wiring' of the human brain and may be used to explicate the various painted contexts in which the red lines are found.
Research Interests: Archaeology, Ethnography, Rock Art (Archaeology), South Africa (Archaeology), Anthropology of Shamanism, and 12 moreSouth African history, Prehistoric Rock Art, Rock Art, South Africa, Archaeology of shamanism, San, Aboriginal, Bushman, Bushman beliefs, Rock art recording, Bleek, and Bushman Archaeology
Traducción de: Les chamanes de la préhistoire Incluye bibliografía
Prehistoria, es sin duda una de las más polémicas escritas en los últimos años para el panorama científico. Su novedosa propuesta y sobretodo la manera de exponerla, ha creado una enorme controversia, que conlleva si cabe a plantear... more
Prehistoria, es sin duda una de las más polémicas escritas en los últimos años para el panorama científico. Su novedosa propuesta y sobretodo la manera de exponerla, ha creado una enorme controversia, que conlleva si cabe a plantear mayores cuestiones acerca de la interpretación del arte prehistórico. La enorme relevancia que adquieren elementos como chamanismo, trance, alucinación o mundo de los espíritus en su base argumental, ha propiciado un enorme interés en la interpretación del arte según estos parámetros. Las hipótesis lanzadas en estrecha relación con la etnografía, y la presencia del chamanismo en todos los ámbitos de su argumentación, han provocado la más profunda animadversión, lo que ha llevado a la proliferación de artículos en su contra. A partir del trabajo expuesto a continuación, se tratará de analizar la obra propuesta, tratando de llegar a comprender el por qué de dicha polémica, desde un acercamiento lo más objetivo posible. Antes de comenzar con el estudio de l...
Page 1. Journal of African History, ( pp. Copyright # Cambridge University Press REVIEWS RECENT TRENDS African History From Earliest Times to Independence. By P C S ...
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" ABSTRACT,-; This article argues that the structures bof CatalhOyuk were constructed. exemplars,of a tiered cosmologycomprising three interactinglevels: an upper and a lower realm and, between them, the level of daily life. ';... more
" ABSTRACT,-; This article argues that the structures bof CatalhOyuk were constructed. exemplars,of a tiered cosmologycomprising three interactinglevels: an upper and a lower realm and, between them, the level of daily life. '; The dimly lit rooms were, in some circumstances,'thought of asspaces ; in the lower realm, the walls being an interfa, '* ; *""-" i.
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How did prehistoric peoples those living before written records think? Were their modes of thought fundamentally different from ours today? Researchers over the years have certainly believed so. Along with the Aborigines of Australia, the... more
How did prehistoric peoples those living before written records think? Were their modes of thought fundamentally different from ours today? Researchers over the years have certainly believed so. Along with the Aborigines of Australia, the indigenous San people of southern Africa among the last hunter-gatherer societies on Earth became iconic representatives of all our distant ancestors, and were viewed either as irrational fantasists or childlike, highly spiritual conservationists. Since the 1960s, a new wave of research among the San and their world-famous rock art has overturned these misconceived ideas. Here, the great authority David Lewis-Williams and his colleague Sam Challis reveal how analysis of the rock paintings and engravings can be made to yield vital insights into San beliefs and ways of thought. The picture that emerges is very different from past analysis: this art is not a naïve narrative of daily life but rather is imbued with power and religious depth. As this elegantly written, enlightening book so ably demonstrates, the prehistoric mind was in fact as complex and sophisticated as that of contemporary humans.
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Recent work on a well-known San rock art panel from South Africa shows that continued movement between, on the one hand, San beliefs and rituals and, on the other, the images themselves allows us to move from general statements about San... more
Recent work on a well-known San rock art panel from South Africa shows that continued movement between, on the one hand, San beliefs and rituals and, on the other, the images themselves allows us to move from general statements about San rock art to specific understandings. We demonstrate that continuing field research, combined with the revisiting of painted panels, is uncovering diverse ways in which San rock painters deployed and, at the same time, individually transmuted abstract ideas and experiences into material images, often in easily missed details. One of these instances, hitherto unknown, is described. By following-up the heuristic potential of this approach researchers are able to explore the ways in which San imagery played a social role at different times and in different places in San history.