Exploring personhood and identity marking: paintings of lions and felines in San rock art sites from the southern Maloti-Drakensberg and northeastern Stormberg, South Africa.

ABSTRACT

With the influence of the ‘new’ ontologies of animisms and performative materialisms, research has shown that people, animals and things are relational and have agency. In southern San ethnography, behaving with understanding was essential for maintaining reciprocal, beneficial relationships between human and animal persons for the good of these communities. People identified with certain animals to facilitate these negotiations. This paper also considers how certain people may have identified through specific animals. San rock paintings of lion and other felines and their painted contexts provide an opportunity to investigate these multiplex relationships and identities. Felines are relatively commonly depicted in sites from the southern Maloti-Drakensberg and adjacent northeastern Stormberg Mountains. Predominantly, lions and felines are depicted walking or standing and are painted with male and female eland, female rhebok and hartebeest. Felines are also depicted with men and women in clothing, postures and equipment that have been associated with ritual specialists and their use of potency. These painted contexts of felines bring focus to their roles as efficient hunters and protectors and the establishment of reciprocal relations with antelope. The similar roles and skillsets of ritual specialists and their leonine transformations are highlighted with both their dividual and individual selves. In addition, the paper considers the affective range of wild and tame behaviours and notions of ǃko᷉ɑ-se and related ǃnɑnnɑ sse practices. Depictions of felines may be exemplars of powerful ritual specialists accentuating their skill and status, an interpretation that has important implications for realising a multiplex understanding of San personhood and identity marking.

RÉSUMÉ

Sous l’influence des ‘nouvelles’ ontologies des animismes et des matérialismes performatifs, la recherche a démontré que les personnes, les animaux et les choses sont relationnels et ont une capacité d'agir. Dans l’ethnographie des peuples san de l’Afrique du Sud au dix-neuvième siècle, se comporter avec compréhension était indispensable afin de maintenir des relations réciproques et bénéfiques entre les personnes humaines et animales pour le bien de ces communautés. Les personnes s’identifiaient à certains animaux pour faciliter ces négociations. Cet article considère également comment certaines personnes peuvent s’être identifiées à travers des animaux spécifiques. Les peintures rupestres san représentant des lions et d’autres félins, et leurs contextes peints, offrent l’occasion d’étudier ces relations et identités multiples. Les félins sont relativement souvent représentés sur les sites du Maloti-Drakensberg méridional et du nord-est du Stormberg adjacent. Les lions et les félins sont le plus souvent représentés marchant ou debout, et accompagnés d’élands mâles et femelles, des rhebok femelles et des bubales. Les félins sont également représentés avec des hommes et des femmes avec des vêtements, des postures et des équipements qui ont été associés à des spécialistes rituels et à leur usage de la puissance. Ces contextes peints de félins mettent l’accent sur leurs rôles de chasseurs et de protecteurs efficaces et établissent peut-être aussi des relations réciproques avec l’antilope. Les rôles et les compétences similaires des spécialistes rituels et leurs transformations léonines sont mis en évidence à travers leur moi dividuel et individuel. En outre, l’article considère la gamme affective des comportements sauvages et apprivoisés, ainsi que les notions de ǃko᷉ɑ-se et des pratiques ǃnɑnnɑ sse associées. Les représentations de félins peuvent être des exemples de puissants spécialistes rituels accentuant leurs compétences et leur statut, une interprétation qui a des implications importantes pour une appréhension multiple des notions san de la personne et du marquage d’identité.

KEYWORDS:

• felines
• identity marking
• lions
• San rock art
• South Africa
• performative materialisms
• personhood

Acknowledgements

I gratefully acknowledge the Department of Archaeology, University of Cape Town, and the financial support from the South African Research Chairs Initiative of the National Research Foundation of South Africa, grant no 84407 to Prof. Judith Sealy. I appreciate the guidance and support from my supervisors, Judith Sealy and Sven Ouzman. Some of the sites published here were recorded during research with the University of South Africa. I am very thankful to the UNISA M&D Bursary, the Dieter Meyer zu Bargholz Bequest and the Northern Branch of the South African Archaeological Society for funding that research and to the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology at UNISA for its teaching and support. I thank the landowners and communities of the research areas for providing access to rock shelters and for their ongoing collaboration. Jeremy Hollmann generously gave permission to publish Figure 3c and provided information about the !nanna-sse / ǃko᷉ɑ-se complex. I thank the reviewers for their comments on this paper, which focused my thinking and enhanced the paper. A version of this paper was presented at the Ninth World Archaeological Congress held in Prague in July 2022 and in the University of Cape Town’s Seminar Series in August 2022.

Notes

1 I use the term ‘San’ loosely for southern Africa’s first people. I acknowledge the potential differences between San groups in this region and the influences of the knowledge of and presence of others (see Challis and Sinclair-Thomson 2022 and comments).

2 The Bleek and Lloyd notebook references have four components. The initial letter denotes who transcribed the text. This is followed by a Roman numeral to denote the /Xam teacher, followed by the notebook and page numbers (http://lloydbleekcollection.cs.uct.ac.za/; Hollmann 2004: xvi).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dawn Green

Dawn Green is a PhD student in the Department of Archaeology, University of Cape Town. Her research explores onto-ethico-epistemics and focuses on notions of intersectional identity, personhood and identity marking in San rock paintings of the Maloti-Drakensberg and Stormberg, South Africa. She actively works with local mountain communities in heritage education, heritage identification and research.