Cambridge Archaeological Journal· 2016Q1
Reconfiguring Hunting Magic: Southern Bushman (San) Perspectives on Taming and Their Implications for Understanding Rock Art
- 82citations
- Q1SCImago
- 2016year
Short summary
Southern Bushman (San) rock art in the Maloti-Drakensberg expresses the relationship between ritual specialists and animals/rain through 'taming' idioms, challenging previous interpretations.
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Key points
- The Maloti-Drakensberg rock art uses 'taming' idioms to represent the connection between ritual specialists and non-human entities like game animals and rain.
- This interpretation is based on the ethnographic testimony of the Bushman Qing from the nineteenth century.
- The study contextualizes these idioms within the broader Southern Bushman concepts of 'taming' and 'wildness'.
- The findings suggest an integrated role for ritual and hunting specialists in Southern Bushman society.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
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 ‘hunter-gatherer’ of the Maloti-Drakensberg should have chosen to express the relationship between ritual specialists (‘shamans’) and non-human entities (game animals and the rain) through taming idioms. It discusses the wider context of ‘taming’ and ‘wildness’ in Southern Bushman thought, responding to calls to consider these communities and their visual arts in light of the perspectives of the ‘new animisms’. It explores how these idioms help us to understand particular visual tropes in the rock art of the Maloti-Drakensberg and highlights the integrated nature of ‘ritual’ and hunting specialists in Southern Bushman life.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 2016 · DOI ↗
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Field: Archeology (Social Sciences)
ArcheologySocial Sciences