View article

The shamanistic interpretation of southern African rock art has had a significant impact on the study of rock art world-wide, as well as the archaeology of southern Africa. Despite considerable theoretical and methodological developments over nearly three decades the approach has retained its basis in Cartesian thinking and overstated the role of the shaman in the control of supernatural forces. By eschewing Cartesian principles and resituating the shaman in an animic hunter-gatherer ontology, I propose a new direction for southern African hunter-gatherer rock art studies. I initiate this new approach here by drawing on a specific set of themes in rock art - those that still greatly influence the wider reception of hunter-gatherer arts, so-called images of daily life. The interaction of non-human animals and rock surfaces, rocks that have been rubbed smooth by rhinoceroses, is also considered. I argue that the control of …