Presenting Rock Art and Perceiving Identity in South Africa and Beyond

Abstract

This paper addresses the presentation of rock art to the public, and perceptions of indigenous identity, by focusing on two rural South African rock art visitor centers. Both visitor centers were designed in the early 2000s to provide tangible benefits to people in rural areas and also to present rock art in a challenging and exciting new way – one that would dovetail with the central tenets of the “new South Africa”. Fifteen years on, this paper considers the extent to which the visitor centers have succeeded.

Keywords:

• rock art
• indigenous
• identity
• heritage
• South Africa
• Kamberg
• Wildebeest Kuil

Acknowledgements

Many institutions in the UK, Australia, and South Africa made this work possible: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge; Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK); Center for Rock Art Research + Management, University of Western Australia (UWA); and the Rock Art Research Institute (RARI), University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa). I thank them all for their support.

I am grateful for fieldtrips and conservations in South Africa with David Morris, Sam Challis, Conraad de Rosner, Geoff Blundell, David Pearce, Ghilraen Laue, and everyone at RARI. I reserve especial thanks for David Lewis-Williams. In the UK, I thank Aron Mazel, Preston Miracle, Graeme Barker, and Chris Chippindale. In Australia, all of my colleagues at the Center for Rock Art Research + Management at UWA have been supportive: Jo McDonald, Ben Smith, Sven Ouzman, Peter Veth, Al Paterson, Martin Porr, Leslie Zubieta, and Jane Balme. Ben Smith, Sven Ouzman, Lynn Meskell, and two anonymous referees provided valuable comments on drafts of this paper.

ORCID

Jamie Hampson http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5914-9422

Notes

1. I reject any pejorative connotations for the words San, Bushman, and art. (Some groups prefer imagery to art, but others do not, so I retain the word.)

2. Sehlabathebe National Park is on the Lesotho side of the border. As of July 2013, the two parks are together known as the Maloti-Drakensberg Park World Heritage Site.

3. Many of the issues regarding management of Kamberg’s cultural heritage revolve around the relationship between Ezemvelo and Amafa, the provincial heritage agency. A point of tension is the fact that local custodians who monitor rock art sites are not necessarily Ezemvelo or Amafa staff, and there is often a conflict of interest between custodians and guides (see Mazel 2012, 523). Additionally, and astonishingly, one of Amafa’s two tourism brochures does not mention rock art at all (Duval and Smith 2013, 140). RARI was employed by the National Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, via the Poverty Relief Fund.

4. It is impossible to glean exactly how many people visit Game Pass. Deacon and Mazel (2010, 21) suggest that, each year, approximately 20,000 people visit Game Pass, Main Caves, and the Didima Rock Art Center (in Cathedral Peak State Forest) combined. Partly because of relatively easy access, especially for coach tours, Main Caves attracts approximately 9000 visitors each year (Duval and Smith 2013, 139). Perhaps 200,000 visit uKhahlamba–Drakensberg annually (Duval and Smith 2013, 134). For an overview of the Didima Rock Art Center, which opened in 2003, see Mazel (2008, 2012).

5. For details of rock art conservation programs and specific management decisions, see Loubser 2001, especially the flowchart on p 81.

6. Khoisan is the old spelling for Khoesan.

7. Also in the film, an old Khwe woman talked (with customary San language clicks) about the need for computers in the community: a twenty-first-century person naturally addressing twenty-first-century issues.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jamie Hampson

Jamie Hampson is an Assistant Professor at the University of Western Australia and a Marie Curie Fellow (IOF: Stanford/York). He has a BA (Hons) and MA in Modern History from the University of Oxford, and two further degrees from the University of Cambridge: an MPhil in Archaeological Heritage and Museums, and a PhD in Archaeology. Jamie works primarily on rock art, identity, and heritage projects in western Australia, southern Africa, and the Greater Southwest USA. His latest book, entitled Rock Art and Regional Identity: A Comparative Perspective, has just been published by Left Coast Press.