Thesis--Toulouse-Le Marail. / Fold. map of cave inserted. Errata slip inserted. Includes bibliographical references (p. 285-289).

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Thesis--Toulouse-Le Marail. / Fold. map of cave inserted. Errata slip inserted. Includes bibliographical references (p. 285-289).

Thesis (doctoral)--University of London, 1997. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references.

A century of hypotheses concerning Paleotlithic cave use has focused either on individual activities (such as vision quests or shamanistic visits) or group activities such as initiations. This thesis proposes and tests systematic criteria for assessing whether painted caves were locations of group or individual ritual activity in four caves in the Dordogne Region of Southwest France (Bernifal, Font-de-Gaume, Combarelles, and Villars). Resolving this issue provides an important foundation for examining more complex questions such as the exclusivity/inclusivity of groups using caves and their possible roles in the development and maintenance of inequalities in the Upper Paleolithic. Models for the emergence of socioeconomic complexity among hunters and gatherers have increasingly stressed the importance of ritual and ideology in understanding how inequality emerged. Addressing the issue of group dynamics and rituals associated with cave use may provide critical insight in our quest to understand Upper Paleolithic culture.

Thesis (M.A. (Anthropology)) - Rhodes University, 2005.

This interdisciplinary thesis is about dwelling, both as a method in archaeology and as a mode of existence. My thesis has two principal aims. Firstly, to explore the 'dwelling perspective' as this has been outlined in recent archaeological theory. This will involve discussion of phenomenological philosophy and the figure of Martin Heidegger. The term 'dwelling' is a technical one originating in Heidegger's philosophy of being. Phenomenology has been making inroads into archaeological theory as a consequence of the interpretive turn of the 1980s. The theoretical commitment of this thesis is that phenomenological inquiry is a useful project in archaeological research. Reflexive archaeological research in the present might articulate and confirm certain phenomenological dimensions of present experience so as to inform and enhance our understanding of the past. Secondly, I discuss the notion of dwelling in the existential sense as a mode of existence in terms that might allow us to deploy this concept in Palaeolithic archaeology, with specific reference to mortuary practice and "art". I propose two case studies in order to explore this. Firstly, mortuary practice and existential awareness of death will be explored with reference to the site of the Sima de los Huesos. Secondly, Heidegger's notion of artistic production as a world-opening event will be explored in relation to Upper Palaeolithic art in caves. The focus on mortuary practice and art is not arbitrary: both are central planks of Heidegger's account of dwelling and both are linked by 'heterotopic' space. Heidegger presented a novel account of human existence as 'Dasein'. Dasein is being-in-the-world and being-in-the-world is unified by what Heidegger called 'care' (Sorge). Heidegger's account of Dasein remains anthropocentric: I argue that we should move away from Heidegger's own anthropocentric view of being-in-the-world, dwelling or care toward a phenomenological archaeology that goes 'beyond the human'. I argue that care or dwelling is evidenced by the archaeological record of human becoming and that our ancestors 'cared for' or 'dwelled with' their dead. Care is evidenced by appropriating the world and by looking after compatriots within the world, and I argue that such an existential state had been reached before the advent of the Upper Palaeolithic. I argue that Upper Palaeolithic "art" opened up a hunter-gatherer world that enabled others, including animal others, and objects, to become meaningful to groups of Daseins, and so to become part of particular "dwelling places". Heidegger remains the key theorist of dwelling but his anthropocentrism should be abandoned. Suitably revised, Heidegger's account of dwelling will provoke us to look at Palaeolithic archaeology from a fresh perspective.

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.

The essay is a manifesto-like personal take on painting, and a redefinition of painting in the digital age. Careless usage of the term ”painting” has led to a diluted descriptive function and a waning categorizing capacity; almost anything can be called painting, which in turn puts actual painting in an awkward position – where it, apart from being itself, could be almost anything. The term “painthing” is introduced to distinguish painting from works that beside its two-dimensional visual information also makes a point of its specific materiality. It brings up cave paintings and links to video-games, suggesting that video-games have gone through the reversed evolution of the history of painting – from abstraction to representation. It speaks of the problems of documentation – the translation of visual information (or re-flattening of a flat surface) – and the cultural equalization of information and images on the internet through the common denominator the pixel. It also describes “information painting”, which in short is digital painting where there is no physical object to be translated to a documentation of itself, but rather a painting that is original in its documentation form (its digital form), painting that strives to be nothing but the utopia of an image – the untouchable/unreachable visual information.

The majestic mountains of the uKhahlamba Drakensberg, formed many millennia ago were home to the Bushmen[footnote 1] or San people. They lived at these mountains for thousands of years before they were colonised by the Bantu speakers and the Europeans. Academic writings for many years have perpetuated the thinking that Bushman people were largely extinct. The dominance of this view in the academic writings was encouraged by historical evidence that Europeans and Bantu speakers hunted and killed Bushmen over the last several centuries. Researchers argue that the extermination of the Bushmen was because they were less human in the eyes of the foreigners, due to cattle raiding. There is still some element of this thinking amongst today’s academics, although research in the last decade is questioning this thinking. The question of whether descendants do exist is relevant to issues of rights of access to ancestral sacred sites, in particular rock art sites. At present, access to rock art sites is granted on qualification as an authentic fee-paying tourist (or affordability) rather than on group rights to a cultural heritage resource (cultural rights). Based on this, I argue that access to rock art sites is based on qualification rather than by right. This is largely driven by an approach that emphasises the physical conservation and financial sustainability of a site, rather than its spiritual maintenance. It has become clear that the interests in rock art by tourists and Bushman descendants are distinct from each other. Tourists have an aesthetic significance for rock art while Bushmen descendants have a spiritual significance for the paintings. Beyond any doubt, the physically based and financially driven approach has brought new challenges to today’s Bushmen descendants, whom in reaffirming their identities now have a new challenge to overcome. Not only are the rock art sites physically threatened but also they have lost much of their spiritual powers. Their fate lies in the hands of heritage officers who must determine access rights to the painted shelters. Both the National Heritage Resources Act and the KwaZulu-Natal Heritage Act acknowledge living heritage. However, the existence of this heritage is judged against the physical approach to rock art management. If the practises of descendants are perceived to be a threat to the rock art, they will not be approved. The case of the Duma is a classic example. Prior to the ritual ceremony at Game Pass Shelter, Kamberg, they were informed of the minimum standards for opening a rock art site to public and rules of how people should behave while visiting painted shelters. While it was evident that there are problems with the two approaches, the spiritual and physical approach, discussed in the thesis, it is important that solutions are identified. I do not believe that one approach on its own will be good enough, for reasons discussed in the thesis. Instead, the two approaches should be implemented together to compliment each other by identifying common grounds. I provide strategies as to how I believe that such a common ground can be reached. In addition, I provide my own analytical thinking as to how these strategies can be achieved. There is no general consensus over which term is appropriate. Both terms are considered by some academics to be derogatory or pejorative (Chennels 2003). San means vagabond and was given to the Bushmen by Khoi-Khoi people, because they considered themselves of a better social class, as they had domesticated animals and were more sedentary than Bushmen. However, according to WIMSA (Thoma 2003) the word San is derived from the Hai||om language meaning “people who gather”. It is normally written Saan but it has been accepted to write San. In 1993 the San requested to be called San when referred to as an entire group. If one refers to individual people/groups they like to be called by their language and cultural name i.e. Khwe, !Kung, !Xun, Ju|’hoansi, ‡Khomani, N|u, |’Auni, Hai||om, etc In this thesis, Bushmen is a preferred term, because it is a better-known term among the people who are central to this study. It is used without any insulting connotations attached to the term.