Bibliography: p. 206-228. / Understanding a widespread motif in San rock art - a human figure depicted in frontal perspective with distinctive bodily characteristics - is the aim of this study. A concentration of these figures in north eastern Zimbabwe was first described by researchers in the 1930s and subsequently, when one researcher, Elizabeth Goodall, described them as 'mythic women'. Markedly similar figures in the South African art have received little attention. On the basis of fieldwork in the KwaZulu-Natal Drakensberg, the south western Cape (South Africa) and Zimbabwe, and an extensive literature survey, a spectrum of these figures is described. In order to further understanding of the motif, existing interpretive methods and the traditions which inform them are examined, with a view to outlining a number of areas in need of attention. It is argued that analysis of rock art remains dependent on a range of dualistic notions which may be linked to retained structuralist ideas. It is suggested that the dominant model in rock art research, in which the rock art is seen as essentially shamanistic, perpetuates distinctions between mind and body, myth and ritual, and sacred and profane, while in its search for general truths concerning the rock art, and its central focus on iconography, the model retains traces of linguistic structuralism. It is proposed that the 'mythic woman' motif, with its gendered and sexual characteristics, is not well accounted for by reference to southern San ritual and religious practice alone. Drawing on contemporary theories concerning temporality and embodiment, it is argued that the motif is better understood in relation to recurrent themes of death and regeneration in San mythology and oral narratives, with shamanistic practice enacting related themes. The motif may be seen as representing San history in terms of culturally specific temporal schemes arising from San experience of the world. The 'ethnographic method', by means of which San accounts are used to illuminate features of the art, is reassessed and extended. Hermeneutic theories are drawn upon in order to address questions regarding the way in which ethnographies and art may be mutually illuminating, and to account for the inevitability of multiple interpretations arising from the situated process of reading or viewing. Prominent themes, images and devices in San myth and oral narrative are discussed in an attempt to move beyond a narrowly iconography-centred approach and in order to account for devices and stylistic features of San arts which are evident in both verbal and visual media. Implications of the research for investigating an archaeology of gender, and the writing of San history, are discussed.

MSc., Faculty of Science, University of Witwatersrand, 2011 / Studies of San rock art in southern Africa have appealed to researchers for specificities of individual rock art sites in order to counter the prevailing practice of conceptualising San rock art as a homogenous entity. This research attempts to analyse social interaction through looking at diverse ethnographies and how such ethnographies can reveal information regarding one rock art site. Individual rock art sites like Xoro Gwai can start to unravel the nuanced, diverse and complex nature of San religious beliefs and rites and how these beliefs were affected or influenced by social contact with other social formations.

In this research the contemporary art of the !Xun community in Platfontein, Kimberley is used as a case study to ascertain whether contemporary Bushman art, contrary to the mid-nineteenth century perception that it was child-like, and the present-day sense that it belongs to the past, is based on recognisable aesthetic principles. A functional-semiotic approach is applied, which takes the signs in painting, separates and categorises them in order to locate a painting’s iconic, indexical and symbolic signs. This analysis is done to assess whether or not contemporary Bushman art can be validated as a valuable area of contemporary art and whether creative individuals among the !Xun community may be viewed not as relics of a past people but as legitimate contemporary artists. This argument is revealed through post-structuralist analysis of the individual artworks of two particular !Xun artists. Interviews with !Xun artists uncovered the ways in which they represent themselves in their art, not only for themselves but for the viewers of that art. The constituents of the power relations between art dealers and the artists are also considered. The problematics of ‘authentic Bushman art’ is discussed and ‘authenticity’ in this regard is shown to be a contestable issue. The research then moves to an examination of the impact of modernity on the Bushmen and their art. Mindful of the economic exploitation of these artists in the present day, recommendations are made concerning forms of development which include teaching the artists about art markets, in order to empower them to engage effectively with dealers. Further recommendations are made toward the creation of a code of conduct which would apply to indigenous arts and the relationships between artists, dealers and consumers of the art. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2009.

published_or_final_version / Architecture / Master / Master of Architecture

Thesis (MA)-- Stellenbosch University, 2000. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The Anysberg Nature Reserve is a block of mountainous terrain comprising 44 515 ha in the Little Karoo of the Western Cape. There are approximately 50 known rock art sites within its boundaries. During a two-year site survey details of the rock art images were recorded on forms and, where possible, by tracing and photography. The sites tend to be small with fewer than 50 images per site and are located in narrow kloofs, mostly on the Anysberg. Few sites have occupation deposits. The main interest has been the interpretation of the images. Human figures, predominantly male, are most commonly represented. Other images are animals, such as eland and elephants, antelope, felines and therianthropes, as well as non-representational marks. There are clear resemblances in content and style to the rock art in the Hex River Valley, the Cederberg and the Western Cape generally. The art can be linked to shamanistic experiences in altered states of consciousness. A number of depictions can be interpreted as part of rainmaking rituals. KEYWORDS: Rock art, shamanism, rainmaking. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die Anysberg Natuur Reservaat, van 44 515 ha, is geleë in die Klein Karoo in die Westelike Provinsie. Daar is ongeveer 50 rotskuns vindplase binne die grense van die Reservaat. Navorsing oor 'n periode van twee jaar is onderneem en die inhoud en detail van die rotskuns tekeninge is gedokumenteer. Vorms met dié inligting is vir elke vindplaas uitgereik en waar moontlik is tekeninge nagetrek en gefotografeer. Die vindplase is klein met meestal minder as 50 tekeninge. Die rotskuns is gevind in diep klowe, meestal geleë op die Anysberg. Min vindplase het argeologiese oorblysels wat okkupasie impliseer. Die hoofdoel van die studie is interpretasie van die rotskuns. Menslike figure is hoofsaaklik manlik terwyl ander figure soos die eland, kleiner boksoorte, oliefant, jakkals en katagtige diersoorte en halfmens figure, asook nie-realistiese merke, verteenwoordigend is van die rotskuns. Daar is tekeninge wat ooreenstem met dié van die Hex Rivier Vallei, die Cederberg en ander dele van die Westelike Provinsie. Die rotskuns in die Anysberg is 'n uitbeelding van shamanistiese transendentale ondervindings. Van hierdie tekeninge kan ook geïnterpreteer word as simbolies van rituele reënmakery. SLEUTEL WOORDE: Rotskuns, shamanisme, reënmaak-rituele.

From Introduction: The study of San rock art has undergone several different phases in approach to the interpretation of art. Two approaches are currently in use. The first emphasises the art as narrative or literal representations of San life and its proponents may be called the "art for art's sake" school. Adherents to the second approach make detailed use of the San ethnography on the belief system of these people and are highly critical of the literalists because they provide no such context. The second approach has rapidly gained ascendancy and replaced the "art for art's sake" school over the last twenty years. The watershed came with the researches of Vinnicombe (1967) in the southern Drakensberg and Maggs (1967) in the Western Cape who both embarked upon programs of research which had quantification and numerical analysis at their core, so that they could present "...some objective observations on a given sample of rock paintings in a particular area..." in order to compare and contrast paintings from geographically different areas. What Vinnicombe's numerical analyses clearly showed was that the eland was the most frequently depicted antelope and that it must have played a fundamental role "...in both the economy and the rellgious beliefs of the painters...", which opened up the search for what those beliefs might be and how they could be related to the rock art itself. In order to understand what the rock art was all about it was recognised that researchers had to meaningfully contextualise the art within the social and religious framework of the artists themselves. Without the provision of such a relevant context, as many different interpretations of the paintings could be made as there were people with imaginations. Such a piecemeal approach provides a meaningless jumble of subjective fancy which tells us something about the interpreters but nothing about the rock art. It is unfortunate that the advent of this explicitly social and anthropological approach marks the end of the amateur as a serious interpreter of San rock art, for the juxtaposition of the ethnography with the rock art requires a proper training in which the intricacies of symbol and metaphor can be recognised.

A discussion of the concept of worldview shows that how an artist conceives the world in his images is governed by his worldview - an amalgam of the worldview of the group of which he is a part modified by his own ideas, beliefs, attitudes, perceptions and upbringing. The author proposes that studying an artist's work can reveal his, and hence his group's, worldview and thus the attitudes prevalent when the work was produced. A brief historical sketch of the Eastern Cape to 1834 introduces the various settlers in the area. Though no known examples of Black, Boer or Khoi pictorial art are extant, both the Bushmen and the British left such records. A short analysis of rock art shows how the worldview of the Bushman is inherent in their images which reflect man's world as seen with the "inner" eye of the spirit. In white settler art, the author submits that spatial relationships changed in response to a growing confidence as the "savage" land was "civilised" and that the position, pose and size of figures - and the inclusion or exclusion of certain groups - reflect socio-political changes. The two foremost nineteenth-century Eastern Cape artists, Thomas Baines and Frederick I'Ons, succeeded in capturing the atmosphere of Frontier life but are shown to interpret their surroundings through the rose-tinted spectacles of British Romanticism. They also reveal individuality in approach - Baines preferring expansive views while I'Ons's landscapes tend to be "closed-in", strictly following the coulisse scheme of Picturesque painting. Perhaps, the author postulates, such differences result from the very different environments, i.e. Norfolk and London, in which the two grew up. I'Ons is shown typically to use generalised landscapes as backdrops for his foreground figures, while comparing Baines's scenes with modern photographs shows that he adjusted the spacial elements of the topography as well as the temporal sequence of events to suit aesthetic considerations. Lithographed reports of his work contain even further adjustments. The author concludes that the use of Africana art as historical records must be treated with great caution.

More than any other people, the Bushmen - like the Aborigines on the Australian continent - have epitomized the sub-human other in South African historiography. My primary concern in this study will be to interrogate the representations that gave rise to such entrenched notions of Bushman alterity, and the consequences these have had for Bushman lives. Through an assessment of the writings of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century travellers, missionaries, settlers, colonial officials and scholars, I shall examine understandings of ‘otherness’ and ‘difference’, and the ways in which alterity discourse opened up a space for the ensuing colonial policies of genocide and subjugation against the Bushmen. By allowing the Bushman ‘voices’ to talk back - through an exploration of verbal and visual forms of Bushman creative expression - I hope to present a more balanced sense of Bushman ‘identity’, and expose the fundamental intolerance of difference that lies at the heart of alterity discourse. I shall conclude the thesis with a problematization of contemporary trends of representation, an examination of how these often inadvertently continue the process of othering, and a consideration of their repercussions for present-day Bushman lives. Aside from the obvious relevance of such a study to an understanding of both the destructive events and representations of history, and the current traumatic circumstances of Bushman lives, the questions that this thesis raises can be seen to have more far-reaching implications. In a country such as South Africa, with its long history of segregation and discrimination, issues of otherness and difference take on a particularly compelling resonance. It seems crucial - especially at this point in our national progress - to interrogate our historical attitudes towards otherness, and posit more constructive ways of approaching difference, that allow others their distinct identity, without either demonizing or collapsing such difference; or, to phrase it in Homi Bhabha’s question: “How can the human world live its difference? how [sic] can a human being live Other-wise?” (1994:122). / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1998.

This dissertation critically evaluates the intersections of tourism, heritage conservation, and visual communication by exploring the display materials and Museology within the Didima Rock Art Centre, at Cathedral Peak, southern Drakensberg, KwaZulu-Natal. The text consists of three chapters. The first chapter introduces rock art and current research and conservation concerns in relation to heritage and rock art. The second chapter serves as an introduction to the Didima Rock Art Centre. A discussion raises important issues about visual communication in regard to the representation of the Southern San and rock art as material culture both in this museum context. Chapter three investigates and analyses the museum practices that have been used as a visual communication within the Centre by discussing methods that have been used in the museum and its auditorium. A conclusion follows that summarizes the candidate's findings regarding museum display within the Centre, and its impact on tourism and heritage conservation in relation to the Southern San and rock art. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2006.