Tusk and transformation in southern African San rock art: an iconographic analysis of WAR2

ABSTRACT

Researchers have made significant progress in understanding the symbolism of certain animal images in southern African San rock art. What is less well understood is the combination of specific animal body parts to create composite creatures. Identifying the species from which a particular body part is taken allows for further insight and nuance in the current interpretation of San iconography. This paper explores this possibility in relation to images from the WAR2 site in the Drakensberg Mountains of southeastern South Africa. Numerous images at the site are illustrated with tusks. While the paper argues that the tusks at this site are modelled on only one species, the behavioural contexts of tusks are similar for all animals that have them in southern Africa. Linking these contexts and the natural properties of tusks to San ethnography allows for the elucidation of the imagery at WAR2.

RÉSUMÉ

Les chercheurs ont fait des progrès significatifs dans le domaine de la compréhension du symbolisme de certaines images animales dans l'art rupestre San d’Afrique méridionale. Ce qui est moins bien compris, c'est la combinaison de parties spécifiques des corps d’animaux afin de créer des créatures composites. L'identification de l'espèce de laquelle provient telle ou telle partie du corps permet de mieux comprendre et de nuancer l'interprétation actuelle de l'iconographie San. Cet article explore cette possibilité par rapport aux images du site WAR2, situé dans les montagnes du Drakensberg au sud-est de l'Afrique du Sud. À ce site, de nombreuses images figurent des défenses. Alors que nous soutenons que ces représentations de défenses se basent sur une seule espèce, les contextes comportementaux des défenses sont semblables pour tous les animaux d’Afrique australe qui en possèdent. Lier ces contextes et les propriétés naturelles des défenses à l'ethnographie San permet d'élucider l'imagerie présente sur le site de WAR2

KEYWORDS:

• tusks
• warthog
• San rock art
• southern Africa

Acknowledgements

David Lewis-Williams, David Witelson and two anonymous referees kindly commented on drafts of this paper. Jerome Reynard and Jamie Clark offered useful discussion about the faunal assemblages from various archaeological sites mentioned in the text. Lucien James located the original French passage about the Maqoma in Arbousset and Daumas (1842). Allan Isted, Buks and Elize Vogel and Lynne Minnaar kindly facilitated access to rock art sites. Lara Mallen and Eric Wettengel allowed the use of a photograph of Walter Battiss's copy of WAR2. The Rock Art Research Institute kindly allowed and facilitated the direct tracing of the WAR2 panel. Bernhard Zipfel of the Evolutionary Sciences Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand generously arranged access to the Institute’s faunal collection for us to take photographs of specimens with tusks. Victor Biggs kindly allowed us permission to use his photograph of a rock painting of a hyrax from the Kei River Valley. Azizo da Fonseca kindly provided images from the SARADA database for publication. Some images for this publication were collected on fieldwork funded by the National Research Foundation African Origins Platform Grant No. AOP150925143023. The views expressed in this paper are solely those of the authors and do not represent those of the NRF or any individual associated with the production thereof. ORCID ID: 0000-0001-6522-4820

Notes on contributors

Geoffrey Blundell undertook his PhD at Uppsala University, Sweden, on the relationship of rock art imagery to the writing of southern African history. He has held positions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as well as at the Origins Centre, the Rock Art Research Institute and the School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies (all at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg). He is currently the Principal Curator of Humanities at the KwaZulu-Natal Museum, Pietermaritzburg.

Angela Ferreira is an Honours Student in the History Department at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, where she is undertaking research on Bhaca women’s life experiences in Dobsonville, Soweto.

Notes

1 Sites are named after their designation on the South African Rock Art Digital Archive. The naming convention has three segments: RARI-RSA-WAR2. Images can be located on the SARADA database usually by submitting the last segment. For ease of use, we list the full segment string only the first time that we mention a site. Thereafter, the last segment is used.