Challi
Biographic Data
| ID | 38789 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Challi |
| FAMILY NAME | Challi |
| SIGNATURE | CHALLI |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of the Witwatersrand |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9137-2680 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 142 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in San Forager Theories of Disease, and Its Implications for Understanding Images of Conflict in Southern African Rock Art
San forager populations in nineteenth-century southern Africa were forced to adapt to greatly destructive aspects of the colonial project. Forging new societies from heterogeneous sources, they engaged in prolonged armed insurgency, recording their exploits, presence and beliefs in the rock-art archive of the Maloti-Drakensberg. These images reference conflict and trauma, conventionally interpreted as visions of spiritual warfare. However, viewed…
Fluidities of personhood in the idioms of the Maloti-Drakensberg, past and present, and their use in incorporating contextual ethnographies in southern African rock art research
In the Maloti-Drakensberg mountains of southern Africa, beliefs about snakes and their representations in rock art images are emblematic of hybrid histories of regional societies. The snake symbol initially represented an attempt at ‘reaching out’ as forager societies incorporated a prominent figure in the mythologies of incoming societies into their own – a figure which became a symbolic reference to cross-cultural symbiosis and admixture. Refle…
The Impact of Contact and Colonization on Indigenous Worldviews, Rock Art, and the History of Southern Africa: The Disconnect
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,…
Past Environments and Human Lifeways of Lesotho and the Wider Maloti-Drakensberg Region of Southern Africa
The devil’s in the detail: Revisiting the ceiling panel at RSA CHI1, Kamberg, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
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 …
Art and Influence, Presence and Navigation in Southern African Forager Landscapes
With earlier origins and a rebirth in the late 1990s, the New Animisms and the precipitate 'ontological turn' have now been in full swing since the mid-2000s. They make a valuable contribution to the interpretation of the rock arts of numerous societies, particularly in their finding that in animist societies, there is little distinction between nature and culture, religious belief and practicality, the sacred and the profane. In the process, a p…
Runaway slaves, rock art and resistance in the Cape Colony, South Africa
The protracted colonisation of southern Africa's Cape created conditions of extreme prejudice and violence. Slaves, the unwilling migrants to the Cape, comprised a mixed group of individuals from the Dutch and British colonies: people with Malay, Malagasy, East and West African heritages. They combined to form the labour force for the colonial project, along with indigenous Khoe-San trafficked within an illegal domestic unfree labour economy. Esc…
High and mighty: A San expression of excess potency control in the high-altitude hunting grounds of southern Africa
One of the largest and weirdest anthropomorphic painted figures in the southern African subcontinent (re)discovered in 2015 also happens to be painted at an almost unprecedented altitude. Located in an anomalous uplifting of cave sandstone the painted shelter perches at 2387m in the Highlands of Lesotho. Extremely inhospitable in winter months when snow, wind and altitude can take temperatures below -20°C, it is postulated that this was a summer …
The Matatiele Archaeology and Rock Art (Mara) Program Excavations: The Archaeology of Mafusing 1 Rock Shelter, Eastern Cape, South Africa
The rock shelter Mafusing 1 was excavated in 2011 as part of the Matatiele Archaeology and Rock Art or MARA research programme initiated in the same year. This programme endeavours to redress the much-neglected history of this region of South Africa, which until 1994 formed part of the wider ‘Transkei’ apartheid homeland. Derricourt’s 1977 Prehistoric Man in the Ciskei and Transkei constituted the last archaeological survey in this area. However,…
Collections, Collecting and Collectives: Gathering Heritage Data with Communities in the Mountains of Matatiele and Lesotho, Southern Africa
The ‘bullets to water’ belief complex: A pan-southern African cognate epistemology for protective medicines and the control of projectiles
Remarkable similarities across colonial encounters where Africans believed projectiles could be influenced by ritual practices (medicines, behaviours, observances) demand enquiry into their conception and trajectory. Although suggestion of pan-subcontinental phenomena may elicit suspicion of a generalisation, here evidence is examined from the late-independent and colonial periods that shows that a general belief, held cognate between groups, may…
The ‘Interior World’ of the Nineteenth-Century Maloti-Drakensberg Mountains
Over the last four decades researchers have cast the Maloti-Drakensberg Mountains as a marginal refuge for ‘Bushmen’ amidst constricting nineteenth-century frontiers. Rock art scholarship has expanded on this characterisation of mountains as refugia, focusing on heterogeneous raiding bands forging new cultural identities. Here, we propose another view of the Maloti-Drakensberg: a dynamic political theatre in which polities that engaged in illicit…
Reconfiguring Hunting Magic: Southern Bushman (San) Perspectives on Taming and Their Implications for Understanding Rock Art
The ethnographic decipherment of the Bushman (San) rock art of southern Africa instigated a revolution in our understanding of hunter-gatherer rock arts worldwide, even in regions widely separated from the original context of the model. Crucial to this decipherment were the narratives of the Bushman Qing, an inhabitant of the nineteenth-century Maloti-Drakensberg. This article returns to Qing's testimony to investigate why it is that a putative ‘…
Rain snakes’ from the Senqu River: New light on Qing's commentary on San rock art from Sehonghong, Lesotho
Previously unpublished rock art in Lesotho, southern Africa, is believed to explain the words of Qing — the San (Bushman) man who gave interpretations of paintings in the vicinity. Published in 1874, his testimony, when closely read and compared with other sources, has since become the single most important source for the decipherment of rock art in the sub-continent. One seemingly incomprehensible phrase, though, concerning the famous rain-makin…
Creolisation on the Nineteenth-century Frontiers of Southern Africa: A Case Study of the AmaTola 'Bushmen' in the Maloti-Drakensberg
This article explores the formation of mounted frontier raiding groups of diverse origins in the mountains of the north-eastern Cape Colony. It addresses concepts of creolisation, identity formation and image making (rock art) with special reference to nineteenth-century frontier conditions, and examines the ways in which ‘contact period’ rock art has been perceived until now. Certain frontier raiding groups often referred to simply as ‘Bushmen’ …
Spatial Distribution of Rock Art Sites in Didima Gorge, South Africa
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
Truth in error: An enigmatic 19 th century San comment on southern African rock paintings of ‘lions’ & ‘shields’
Asked to comment on copies of southern African rock paintings, nineteenth-century San informants sometimes gave puzzling explanations. This article considers a San comment that was based on an erroneous interpretation of images in a nineteenth-century copy made by George Stow, but which nonetheless contains insights into San beliefs about lions and associated religious beliefs. The relationship between those beliefs and depictions of lions is dis…
Fishing in the rain: Control of rain-making and aquatic resources at a previously undescribed rock art site in Highland Lesotho
This paper describes a previously unrecorded rock art site in the highlands of Lesotho, southern Africa. It then explores the significance of the paintings at this site, which adds to the still small number of locations in the wider Maloti-Drakensberg region at which fishing scenes are depicted. Unusually, paintings of fish at this site are closely associated with that of a rain-animal and with other images, including dying eland and clapping and…
Funerary monuments and horse paintings: A preliminary report on the archaeology of a site in the tagant region of South East Mauritania - near Dhar Tichitt
A preliminary expedition to record new rock art sites in the Tagant region of the Mauritanian Sahara led to the (re)discovery of previously unpublished stone-walled habitation and what are thought to be rectangular funerary monuments, built substantially and in profusion along the length of the sandstone ridge, Guilemsi. Paintings in cliffs below the top of the ridge depict antelope, giraffe, cattle and mounted horses, as well as camels, handprin…
The Rock Art of Bongani Mountain Lodge and Its Environs, Mpumalanga Province, South Africa: An Introduction to Problems of Southern African Rock-Art Regions
Jamie Hampson, William Challis, Geoffrey Blundell, Conraad De Rosner, The Rock Art of Bongani Mountain Lodge and Its Environs, Mpumalanga Province, South Africa: An Introduction to Problems of Southern African Rock-Art Regions, The South African Archaeological Bulletin, Vol. 57, No. 175 (Jun., 2002), pp. 15-30
Threads of Light: Re-Examining a Motif in Southern African San Rock Art
J. D. Lewis-Williams, G. Blundell, W. Challis, J. Hampson, Threads of Light: Re-Examining a Motif in Southern African San Rock Art, The South African Archaeological Bulletin, Vol. 55, No. 172 (Dec., 2000), pp. 123-136
Creolisation on the Nineteenth-century Frontiers of Southern Africa: A Case Study of the AmaTola 'Bushmen' in the Maloti-Drakensberg
This article explores the formation of mounted frontier raiding groups of diverse origins in the mountains of the north-eastern Cape Colony. It addresses concepts of creolisation, identity formation and image making (rock art) with special reference to nineteenth-century frontier conditions, and examines the ways in which ‘contact period’ rock art has been perceived until now. Certain frontier raiding groups often referred to simply as ‘Bushmen’ …
Reconfiguring Hunting Magic: Southern Bushman (San) Perspectives on Taming and Their Implications for Understanding Rock Art
The ethnographic decipherment of the Bushman (San) rock art of southern Africa instigated a revolution in our understanding of hunter-gatherer rock arts worldwide, even in regions widely separated from the original context of the model. Crucial to this decipherment were the narratives of the Bushman Qing, an inhabitant of the nineteenth-century Maloti-Drakensberg. This article returns to Qing's testimony to investigate why it is that a putative ‘…
Rain snakes’ from the Senqu River: New light on Qing's commentary on San rock art from Sehonghong, Lesotho
Previously unpublished rock art in Lesotho, southern Africa, is believed to explain the words of Qing — the San (Bushman) man who gave interpretations of paintings in the vicinity. Published in 1874, his testimony, when closely read and compared with other sources, has since become the single most important source for the decipherment of rock art in the sub-continent. One seemingly incomprehensible phrase, though, concerning the famous rain-makin…
The Impact of Contact and Colonization on Indigenous Worldviews, Rock Art, and the History of Southern Africa: The Disconnect
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,…
Art and Influence, Presence and Navigation in Southern African Forager Landscapes
With earlier origins and a rebirth in the late 1990s, the New Animisms and the precipitate 'ontological turn' have now been in full swing since the mid-2000s. They make a valuable contribution to the interpretation of the rock arts of numerous societies, particularly in their finding that in animist societies, there is little distinction between nature and culture, religious belief and practicality, the sacred and the profane. In the process, a p…
The ‘Interior World’ of the Nineteenth-Century Maloti-Drakensberg Mountains
Over the last four decades researchers have cast the Maloti-Drakensberg Mountains as a marginal refuge for ‘Bushmen’ amidst constricting nineteenth-century frontiers. Rock art scholarship has expanded on this characterisation of mountains as refugia, focusing on heterogeneous raiding bands forging new cultural identities. Here, we propose another view of the Maloti-Drakensberg: a dynamic political theatre in which polities that engaged in illicit…
Fishing in the rain: Control of rain-making and aquatic resources at a previously undescribed rock art site in Highland Lesotho
This paper describes a previously unrecorded rock art site in the highlands of Lesotho, southern Africa. It then explores the significance of the paintings at this site, which adds to the still small number of locations in the wider Maloti-Drakensberg region at which fishing scenes are depicted. Unusually, paintings of fish at this site are closely associated with that of a rain-animal and with other images, including dying eland and clapping and…
The Rock Art of Bongani Mountain Lodge and Its Environs, Mpumalanga Province, South Africa: An Introduction to Problems of Southern African Rock-Art Regions
Jamie Hampson, William Challis, Geoffrey Blundell, Conraad De Rosner, The Rock Art of Bongani Mountain Lodge and Its Environs, Mpumalanga Province, South Africa: An Introduction to Problems of Southern African Rock-Art Regions, The South African Archaeological Bulletin, Vol. 57, No. 175 (Jun., 2002), pp. 15-30
Threads of Light: Re-Examining a Motif in Southern African San Rock Art
J. D. Lewis-Williams, G. Blundell, W. Challis, J. Hampson, Threads of Light: Re-Examining a Motif in Southern African San Rock Art, The South African Archaeological Bulletin, Vol. 55, No. 172 (Dec., 2000), pp. 123-136
The ‘bullets to water’ belief complex: A pan-southern African cognate epistemology for protective medicines and the control of projectiles
Remarkable similarities across colonial encounters where Africans believed projectiles could be influenced by ritual practices (medicines, behaviours, observances) demand enquiry into their conception and trajectory. Although suggestion of pan-subcontinental phenomena may elicit suspicion of a generalisation, here evidence is examined from the late-independent and colonial periods that shows that a general belief, held cognate between groups, may…
Truth in error: An enigmatic 19 th century San comment on southern African rock paintings of ‘lions’ & ‘shields’
Asked to comment on copies of southern African rock paintings, nineteenth-century San informants sometimes gave puzzling explanations. This article considers a San comment that was based on an erroneous interpretation of images in a nineteenth-century copy made by George Stow, but which nonetheless contains insights into San beliefs about lions and associated religious beliefs. The relationship between those beliefs and depictions of lions is dis…
Funerary monuments and horse paintings: A preliminary report on the archaeology of a site in the tagant region of South East Mauritania - near Dhar Tichitt
A preliminary expedition to record new rock art sites in the Tagant region of the Mauritanian Sahara led to the (re)discovery of previously unpublished stone-walled habitation and what are thought to be rectangular funerary monuments, built substantially and in profusion along the length of the sandstone ridge, Guilemsi. Paintings in cliffs below the top of the ridge depict antelope, giraffe, cattle and mounted horses, as well as camels, handprin…
The devil’s in the detail: Revisiting the ceiling panel at RSA CHI1, Kamberg, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
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 …
Collections, Collecting and Collectives: Gathering Heritage Data with Communities in the Mountains of Matatiele and Lesotho, Southern Africa
Runaway slaves, rock art and resistance in the Cape Colony, South Africa
The protracted colonisation of southern Africa's Cape created conditions of extreme prejudice and violence. Slaves, the unwilling migrants to the Cape, comprised a mixed group of individuals from the Dutch and British colonies: people with Malay, Malagasy, East and West African heritages. They combined to form the labour force for the colonial project, along with indigenous Khoe-San trafficked within an illegal domestic unfree labour economy. Esc…
The Matatiele Archaeology and Rock Art (Mara) Program Excavations: The Archaeology of Mafusing 1 Rock Shelter, Eastern Cape, South Africa
The rock shelter Mafusing 1 was excavated in 2011 as part of the Matatiele Archaeology and Rock Art or MARA research programme initiated in the same year. This programme endeavours to redress the much-neglected history of this region of South Africa, which until 1994 formed part of the wider ‘Transkei’ apartheid homeland. Derricourt’s 1977 Prehistoric Man in the Ciskei and Transkei constituted the last archaeological survey in this area. However,…
Past Environments and Human Lifeways of Lesotho and the Wider Maloti-Drakensberg Region of Southern Africa
Threads of Light: Re-Examining a Motif in Southern African San Rock Art
J. D. Lewis-Williams, G. Blundell, W. Challis, J. Hampson, Threads of Light: Re-Examining a Motif in Southern African San Rock Art, The South African Archaeological Bulletin, Vol. 55, No. 172 (Dec., 2000), pp. 123-136
The Rock Art of Bongani Mountain Lodge and Its Environs, Mpumalanga Province, South Africa: An Introduction to Problems of Southern African Rock-Art Regions
Jamie Hampson, William Challis, Geoffrey Blundell, Conraad De Rosner, The Rock Art of Bongani Mountain Lodge and Its Environs, Mpumalanga Province, South Africa: An Introduction to Problems of Southern African Rock-Art Regions, The South African Archaeological Bulletin, Vol. 57, No. 175 (Jun., 2002), pp. 15-30
Funerary monuments and horse paintings: A preliminary report on the archaeology of a site in the tagant region of South East Mauritania - near Dhar Tichitt
A preliminary expedition to record new rock art sites in the Tagant region of the Mauritanian Sahara led to the (re)discovery of previously unpublished stone-walled habitation and what are thought to be rectangular funerary monuments, built substantially and in profusion along the length of the sandstone ridge, Guilemsi. Paintings in cliffs below the top of the ridge depict antelope, giraffe, cattle and mounted horses, as well as camels, handprin…
Fishing in the rain: Control of rain-making and aquatic resources at a previously undescribed rock art site in Highland Lesotho
This paper describes a previously unrecorded rock art site in the highlands of Lesotho, southern Africa. It then explores the significance of the paintings at this site, which adds to the still small number of locations in the wider Maloti-Drakensberg region at which fishing scenes are depicted. Unusually, paintings of fish at this site are closely associated with that of a rain-animal and with other images, including dying eland and clapping and…
Truth in error: An enigmatic 19 th century San comment on southern African rock paintings of ‘lions’ & ‘shields’
Asked to comment on copies of southern African rock paintings, nineteenth-century San informants sometimes gave puzzling explanations. This article considers a San comment that was based on an erroneous interpretation of images in a nineteenth-century copy made by George Stow, but which nonetheless contains insights into San beliefs about lions and associated religious beliefs. The relationship between those beliefs and depictions of lions is dis…
Creolisation on the Nineteenth-century Frontiers of Southern Africa: A Case Study of the AmaTola 'Bushmen' in the Maloti-Drakensberg
This article explores the formation of mounted frontier raiding groups of diverse origins in the mountains of the north-eastern Cape Colony. It addresses concepts of creolisation, identity formation and image making (rock art) with special reference to nineteenth-century frontier conditions, and examines the ways in which ‘contact period’ rock art has been perceived until now. Certain frontier raiding groups often referred to simply as ‘Bushmen’ …
Spatial Distribution of Rock Art Sites in Didima Gorge, South Africa
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
Rain snakes’ from the Senqu River: New light on Qing's commentary on San rock art from Sehonghong, Lesotho
Previously unpublished rock art in Lesotho, southern Africa, is believed to explain the words of Qing — the San (Bushman) man who gave interpretations of paintings in the vicinity. Published in 1874, his testimony, when closely read and compared with other sources, has since become the single most important source for the decipherment of rock art in the sub-continent. One seemingly incomprehensible phrase, though, concerning the famous rain-makin…
Reconfiguring Hunting Magic: Southern Bushman (San) Perspectives on Taming and Their Implications for Understanding Rock Art
The ethnographic decipherment of the Bushman (San) rock art of southern Africa instigated a revolution in our understanding of hunter-gatherer rock arts worldwide, even in regions widely separated from the original context of the model. Crucial to this decipherment were the narratives of the Bushman Qing, an inhabitant of the nineteenth-century Maloti-Drakensberg. This article returns to Qing's testimony to investigate why it is that a putative ‘…
The ‘bullets to water’ belief complex: A pan-southern African cognate epistemology for protective medicines and the control of projectiles
Remarkable similarities across colonial encounters where Africans believed projectiles could be influenced by ritual practices (medicines, behaviours, observances) demand enquiry into their conception and trajectory. Although suggestion of pan-subcontinental phenomena may elicit suspicion of a generalisation, here evidence is examined from the late-independent and colonial periods that shows that a general belief, held cognate between groups, may…
The ‘Interior World’ of the Nineteenth-Century Maloti-Drakensberg Mountains
Over the last four decades researchers have cast the Maloti-Drakensberg Mountains as a marginal refuge for ‘Bushmen’ amidst constricting nineteenth-century frontiers. Rock art scholarship has expanded on this characterisation of mountains as refugia, focusing on heterogeneous raiding bands forging new cultural identities. Here, we propose another view of the Maloti-Drakensberg: a dynamic political theatre in which polities that engaged in illicit…
The Matatiele Archaeology and Rock Art (Mara) Program Excavations: The Archaeology of Mafusing 1 Rock Shelter, Eastern Cape, South Africa
The rock shelter Mafusing 1 was excavated in 2011 as part of the Matatiele Archaeology and Rock Art or MARA research programme initiated in the same year. This programme endeavours to redress the much-neglected history of this region of South Africa, which until 1994 formed part of the wider ‘Transkei’ apartheid homeland. Derricourt’s 1977 Prehistoric Man in the Ciskei and Transkei constituted the last archaeological survey in this area. However,…
Collections, Collecting and Collectives: Gathering Heritage Data with Communities in the Mountains of Matatiele and Lesotho, Southern Africa
High and mighty: A San expression of excess potency control in the high-altitude hunting grounds of southern Africa
One of the largest and weirdest anthropomorphic painted figures in the southern African subcontinent (re)discovered in 2015 also happens to be painted at an almost unprecedented altitude. Located in an anomalous uplifting of cave sandstone the painted shelter perches at 2387m in the Highlands of Lesotho. Extremely inhospitable in winter months when snow, wind and altitude can take temperatures below -20°C, it is postulated that this was a summer …
Runaway slaves, rock art and resistance in the Cape Colony, South Africa
The protracted colonisation of southern Africa's Cape created conditions of extreme prejudice and violence. Slaves, the unwilling migrants to the Cape, comprised a mixed group of individuals from the Dutch and British colonies: people with Malay, Malagasy, East and West African heritages. They combined to form the labour force for the colonial project, along with indigenous Khoe-San trafficked within an illegal domestic unfree labour economy. Esc…
Past Environments and Human Lifeways of Lesotho and the Wider Maloti-Drakensberg Region of Southern Africa
The devil’s in the detail: Revisiting the ceiling panel at RSA CHI1, Kamberg, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
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 …
Art and Influence, Presence and Navigation in Southern African Forager Landscapes
With earlier origins and a rebirth in the late 1990s, the New Animisms and the precipitate 'ontological turn' have now been in full swing since the mid-2000s. They make a valuable contribution to the interpretation of the rock arts of numerous societies, particularly in their finding that in animist societies, there is little distinction between nature and culture, religious belief and practicality, the sacred and the profane. In the process, a p…
Fluidities of personhood in the idioms of the Maloti-Drakensberg, past and present, and their use in incorporating contextual ethnographies in southern African rock art research
In the Maloti-Drakensberg mountains of southern Africa, beliefs about snakes and their representations in rock art images are emblematic of hybrid histories of regional societies. The snake symbol initially represented an attempt at ‘reaching out’ as forager societies incorporated a prominent figure in the mythologies of incoming societies into their own – a figure which became a symbolic reference to cross-cultural symbiosis and admixture. Refle…
The Impact of Contact and Colonization on Indigenous Worldviews, Rock Art, and the History of Southern Africa: The Disconnect
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,…
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in San Forager Theories of Disease, and Its Implications for Understanding Images of Conflict in Southern African Rock Art
San forager populations in nineteenth-century southern Africa were forced to adapt to greatly destructive aspects of the colonial project. Forging new societies from heterogeneous sources, they engaged in prolonged armed insurgency, recording their exploits, presence and beliefs in the rock-art archive of the Maloti-Drakensberg. These images reference conflict and trauma, conventionally interpreted as visions of spiritual warfare. However, viewed…
Archaeology and Rock Art Studies (19 works) · Archaeology (17 works) · Geography (16 works) · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology (14 works) · History (13 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (10 works) · Rock art (10 works) · History (8 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Art (7 works)