Routledge Library Editions: Archaeology [1 ed.] 9781138799714, 9781138816091, 0709927436, 1138799718

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ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS: ARCHAEOLOGY

Volume 54

THE ROCK ART OF AFRICA

THE ROCK ART OF AFRICA

A.R. WILLCOX

First published in 1984 This edition first published in 2015 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 1984 A. R. Willcox All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-138-79971-4 (Set) ISBN: 978-1-138-81609-1 (Volume 54) Publisher’s Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this book but points out that some imperfections from the original may be apparent. Disclaimer The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and would welcome correspondence from those they have been unable to trace.

The Rock Art of Africa A.R. Willcox

11 if iM

CROOM HELM London & Canberra

© 1984 A. R. Wilcox Croom Helm Ltd, Provident House, Burrell Row, Beckenham, Kent BR3 lAT Croom Helm Australia Pty Ltd, 28 Kembla Street, Fyshwick, ACT 2609, Australia British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Willcox, A. R. The rock art of Africa. 1. Rock paintings—Africa 2. Africa—Antiquities I. Title 759.01'13'096 N53105'096 ISBN 0-7099-2743-6

Printed and bound in Great Britain

Contents

List of Maps List of Tables List of Figures List of Black and White Plates Foreword Acknowledgements

1. Historical Introduction

1

2. The Study of Rock Art — Aims and Problems

7

3. Terms and Techniques 4.

Africa— the Background, Physical and Climatic

11 17

5. The Peopling of the Art Regions

21

6. The Maghreb and Sahara

29

7.

Bovidean Outliers: the Horn of Africa, Kenya, Southern Sudan and West Africa

8. The Central African Art Zone 9.

The Central Tanzanian Sub-Region

55 75 113

10. The Southern African Art Zone

127

11. Art Sub-Region 1: Zimbabwe and North-East Transvaal

135

12. The Tsodilo Hills

151

13. Art Sub-Region 2: South-West Africa/Namibia

157

14. Art Sub-Region 3: Southern and South-Western Cape

179

15. Art Sub-Region 4: Drakensberg-Maluti Massif and Surrounding Areas

189

16. Art Sub-Region 5: the Northern Cape

205

17. Art Sub-Region 6: South-West Transvaal and Adjoining Areas

219

iv 18. The Mobiliary Art

231

19. The Non-Representational Art

239

20. The Handprints

245

21. The Overall Picture

249

22. Problems and Possibilities

255

23. The Raisons d'être

263

Select Bibliography and References

267

Index

281

Maps

4.1

Africa. (A) Physical (B) Ecological (C) Rock Art Areas (D) Khoisan Remains 19 6.1 Northern Africa — Chief Rock Art Centres 30 6.2 Northern Africa — Settlements During Wetter Phases of the Holocene 30 6.3A Hypotheses of Routes of Neolithic Influences 36 6.3B Routes of the Cattle-herders and Channels of Diffusion of Rock Art 37 6.4 Areas Depicting Vehicles 41 7.1 North-East Africa — Rock Art Sites 56 7.2 West Africa — Rock Painting Sites 72 8.1 Central African Art Zone 77 8.2 Lacustrine Sub-Region 79 8.3 Tanzania — Rock Art Sites 95 8.4 Northern Tanzania — Ethnography AD 100-200 96 8.5 Zambia, Malawi, Northern Mocambique — Rock Painting Sites 106 10.1 Southern African Art Zone — Rock Art Sub-Regions 128

10.2 10.3 10.4 11.1 13.1 14.1 14.2 15.1 16.1 16.2 17.1 17.2 21.1

Southern Africa — Later Stone Age Sites Advance of Bantu-speakers into Khoisan Territory Fighting Retreat of the B,ishmen of South Africa Zimbabwe and Northern Transvaal — Rock Art Sites Mentioned in Text South-West Africa/Namibia Southern Africa — Distribution of Handprints Southern Cape — Sites Mentioned in the Text Art Sub-Region 4 — Places Mentioned in the Text Art Sub-Regions 5 and 6 — Places Mentioned in the Text Art Sub-Region 5 — Rock Art Sites Art Sub-Region 6 — Rock Art Sites Art Sub-Regions 5 and 6 — Domestic Animal Petroglyphs Diagrammatic Illustration of Diffusion Hypothesis

130 131 132 136 158 182 184 190 206 208 221 224 251

Tables

10.1 Rock Art Sites of SW Africa/Namibia, Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland and Zimbabwe 13.1 Statistics for Petroglyph Subjects in Sub-Region 2 13.2 Statistics for Petroglyph Subjects at Klipfontein Farm 14.1 Statistics of Animals as Painting Subjects (from sample area of W Cape) 15.1 Statistics from Various Sites — Art Sub-

vi

Region 4 15.2 Combined Statistics (from Table 15.1) 129 15.3 Statistics of Paintings Subjects from Lesotho 161 15.4 Frequency of Colours Used in Paintings in a Sample Area of the Natal Drakensberg 161 15.5 Frequency of Painting Techniques for Antelope and Cattle from a Sample Area 181 of the Natal Drakensberg

195 195 196

196

196

Figures

2.1 6.1 6.2 6.3

6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7

6.8

7.1 7.2 7.3

7.4 7.5 7.6 7.7

Sections to Show Weathering of Engraved Rock Surfaces Petroglyphs from Abka, Site XXXII Petroglyphs from Kom Ombo Figures with Steatopygia 'Large Wild Fauna' Petroglyphs. (A) Crouching lion, Tassili (B) Elephant protecting calf from leopard (C) Two Bubalus antiquus fighting (D) Lioness and cubs at kill of wild boar Petroglyph: Light Chariot with Two Horses Petroglyphs: Chariots and Carts Petroglyphs: Human Figures of Horse Period Facial Types in Saharan Rock Art. (A-G) In the Round Head Phase art (H-W) In the Bovidian Phase art (XY) In the Horse Phase art Examples of Levantine Spanish Rock Paintings. (A) Hunter and stag, Vallorta (B) Hunters with hinds and stag, Vallorta (C) Hunters and pig Rock Paintings of Genda-Biftou, Sound Rock Paintings of Genda-Biftou, Sourre Rock Paintings of Laga Oda: Early Series, long-horned cattle; Later Series, zebu cattle and man Rock Paintings of Laga Oda. Cattle, fat-tailed sheep and man Rock Paintings of Laga Oda (A) Antbear (B) Giraffe (C) Camel Rock Paintings of Laga Oda. Branded cattle Rock Paintings of Laga Oda. 'H' figures (schematised humans?) and geometrics

Rock Paintings of Laga Oda. Cattle and probably cattle brands used as tallies. Also a camel 7.9 Examples to Show Degeneration in Paintings of Cattle 7.10 Paintings from Sollum Ba'atti. (A) Cattle (B) Cow with schematised human figures 7.11 Comparisons of Schematised Human Figures. (A) From Sollum Ba'atti (B) From the Iberian Peninsula 7.12 Paintings of Cattle at Ba'atti Sollum 7.13 Paintings from Zeban Ona Libanos 7.14 Paintings from Ba'atti Abba Keisi. Highly schematised bovids 7.15 Paintings at Yavello. 1-4 in red, 1 perhaps schematised bovid; 5 in dirty white schematised humped cattle 7.16 Petroglyphs at Bur Dahir 7.17 Petroglyphs at El Goran 7.18 Petroglyphs at Hamasen 8.1 Petroglyphs on Mt Porr 8.2 Petroglyphs from Ng'amoritung'a 8.3 Petroglyphs at Munwa Stream 8.4 Petroglyphs at Calunda. (1-4) Bambala (5-7) Capelo (8-12) Calola 8.5 Rock Art of Tchitundu-Hulu. (A-H) Petroglyphs (I-S) Paintings 8.6 Rock Paintings of Mbafu 8.7 Rock Paintings at Fock's Farm, Kenya 8.8 Rock Paintings from Lake Victoria Region, Group 1 8.9 Rock Paintings from Lake Victoria Region, Group 2 8.10 Rock Painting from Lake Victoria Region, Group 3, Obwin Rock 8.11 Rock Paintings, Nyero, Site 1 8.12 Rock Paintings, Nyero, Site 2 8.13 Rock Paintings of Lolui Island. (A-D) 7.8

8 32 33

34 39 39 40

43

45 58 58

59 59 59 59 59

60 62

63 63 64 65 66

66 68 68 69 76 78 80 82-3 84-6 87 88 89 90 91 91 92 vii

viii List of Figures `Dumbbells' (E) Possible canoe with sails 8.14 Rock Paintings at Magosi 8.15 Rock Paintings of Makolo 8.16 Rock Paintings of Ukimbu 8.17 Rock Paintings of Nachikufu. Animals and humans in black 8.18 Rock Paintings of Nachikufu. Animals in 'dirty white' 8.19 Rock Paintings of Nachikufu. Design in vermilion 8.20 Some Semi-naturalistic and Naturalistic Paintings. (A) Rocklands Farm, Zambia, eland outlined in red (B) Zawi Hill, Zambia, ostrich and eland in red (C) Nachitalo Hill, Zambia, antelope in purple 8.21 Antelope Structure of Nyau Society 8.22 Rock Paintings at Chicolone 9.1 Bowman, Masange, Central Tanzania 9.2 Sandawe Facial Marks 11.1 Rock Engravings, Melsetter area 11.2 Rock Engravings, Inyanga Downs 11.3 Figures with Penis Attachment, Zimbabwe 11.4 Figures from Diana's Vow. (A) Part of reclining man (B) Dog or hyena 11.5 Rock Paintings from Mt Vumba, Mocambique 11.6 Rock Paintings from Mavita, Mocambique 11.7 Y signs from the Limpopo Valley 11.8 Rock Paintings of Swaziland 12.1 Rock Paintings at Tsodilo Hills, Geometrics and Amorphs. (A-N) in white (0) in buff 13.1 Petroglyphs of SW Africa, Commonest Geometrics 13.2 Human Scene from Aar 13.3 Rock Paintings of the Erongo and Brandberg. The Erongo-Brandberg People 13.4 The 'White Lady' Frieze, Key Drawing 13.5 What the 'White Lady' Holds. (A) Bantu rattle (B) from author's photographs 13.6 Paintings from Upper Numas Ravine, Brandberg. (A) Figure playing musical bow (B) Bowman 14.1 Rock Paintings from De Hoek near

Oudtshoorn 93 14.2 Rock Paintings from Whitcher's Cave 94 14.3 Late Rock Paintings from the SW 97 Cape. (A) Probably a galleon, 98 Citrusdale, Cape (B) Horse and vehicles, Ceres, Cape (C) Wagon and horses, Ceres, Cape (D) Part of a 100 large group showing European women in wide dresses, vehicles and horses, 101 Ceres, Cape 101 15.1 Fishing Scenes from Floating Craft. (A) Mpongweni Mountain, Underberg, Natal (B) Kenegha Poort, NE Cape (C) Tsoelike River, Lesotho 15.2 Ladders and Bridges. (A-C) Cathedral Peak, Drakensberg (D) Harare, Zimbabwe (E) Ameib, SW Africa/ 103 Namibia 104 107 15.3 Colonel R.J. Gordon 115 15.4 Bushman Rider with Three-pronged Object 121 137 15.5 Winged Creatures and 'Arms-back' Humans. (A-B) Maclear, NE Cape 138 Province (C-E) Drakensberg, Natal 143 16.1 Petroglyphs of Driekopseiland 16.2 Group of Petroglyphs from Driekopseiland. Thought to be a 144 script 146 16.3 Rock Paintings at Vosburg 17.1 Petroglyph from Sweizer Reneke District Believed to Represent Extinct 147 Hartebeest, now in Old Transvaal 147 Museum, Pretoria 148 17.2 Petroglyphs from the Maanhaarrand. (A-C) Amorphous glyphs (D) Amorphous glyphs probably Iron Age 153 (E-F) Outline glyphs of animals (E) Buffalo (F) Rhino with calf and tree 162 164 17.3 Examples of Foreshortening in Petroglyphs 18.1 Art Mobilier from Apollo 11 Cave 166 18.2 Art Mobilier from Klasies River 18.3 Art Mobilier from Boomplaas Cave 168 18.4 Art Mobilier. (A) from Tsitsikama Cave (B) Sperm whale 18.5 Art Mobilier from Coldstream Cave. As drawn by H.C. Woodhouse 171 19.1 Petroglyphs of Redan, Transvaal 22.1 The Penis Attachment in Southern African Rock Art 172

183 185

186

198

199 200 201

201 209 211 212

223

225 229 231 232 233 234 235 242-3 260

Black and White Plates

6.1

Rock painting site. Ti-n-Aboteka, Tassili 6.2 Petroglyph. Thought by some to represent the extinct buffalo. South Algeria. Bubaline Phase 6.3 Petroglyph. Bird and antelope. Morocco. Bubaline Phase 6.4 Painting of masked woman. Sefar, Tassili. Round Head Phase 6.5 Archer with companion and small antelope. Bovidean Phase (?) 6.6 Part of a battle between archers. Sefar, Tassili. Bovidean Phase (?) 6.7 Bovid in white (probably unfinished). Sefar, Tassili. Horse Period (?) 6.8 Bichrome painting of antelope. Sefar, Tassili. Period uncertain 6.9 Dancers. Sefar, Tassili. Round Head Phase 6.10 Petroglyphs. Concentric arcs and spirals. Fuente de la Zarza, La Palma, Canary Islands 6.11 Petroglyphs. Spirals. Fuente de la Zarza, La Palma, Canary Islands 7.1 Paintings from Ba'atti Focada 8.1 Circles of standing stones surrounding graves. Ng'amoritung'a, Kenya 8.2 Petroglyphs. Chifubwa Stream, Zambia 8.3 Lioness with kill and human armed with spear. Somena Rocks, Zambia 8.4 Paintings in large rock shelter. Chicolone, Mocambique 8.5 Paintings in various colours, including gravid beasts. Riane, Mocambique 9.1 Typical elongated human figures. Kolo, Central Tanzania 9.2 Rhino in red. Tlawi Rock, Central Tanzania

9.3 50 9.4 50

9.5

51 9.6 51 10.1 52 52

11.1

53

13.1

53 53

54

13.2

13.3

54 67 13.4 109 109 13.5 110 110 13.6 111 123 123

13.7

Elephants in red possibly in trap. 124 Fenga Hill, Central Tanzania Squatting figure in red below bees' 124 nest. Swera, Central Tanzania Hunter with antelope struck by his arrow, in red. Bubu River, Central 125 Tanzania Figure in red, possibly of ritual abduc125 tion of girl. Kolo, Central Tanzania Perhaps the last of the Orange Free State Bushmen. Schaapplaats, District 133 Winburg Petroglyph of giraffe. Mtetengwe 149 Stream, Zimbabwe Unique carving of a human face reminiscent of a Greek theatrical mask. Otjitoroa, Northern SW 174 Africa/Namibia The procession of figures has been called the 'Girls' School' frieze. Tsisab Ravine, Brandberg, SW Africa/ 174 Namibia The 'White Lady' frieze. Tsisab Ravine, Brandberg, SW Africa/ 175-6 Namibia Part of the 'Springbok Panel' with typical Brandberg-Erongo people and cranes or herons. Felsenzirkus, Upper 176 Brandberg, SW Africa/Namibia Hunters and quarry imaginatively called the 'Okapi Group'. Numas Plateau, Upper Brandberg, SW 177 Africa/Namibia Petroglyphs. Spirals, concentric circles and other geometries. Daberas on Orange River, SW Africa/Namibia 178 Petroglyphs. Various designs based on circles. Daberas on Orange River, SW 178 Africa/Namibia

ix

x

Black and White Plates

14.1

Painting of 'Mermaid Scene'. Ezeljaght Poort, George District, Southern Cape 14.2 Painting. The so-called 'Dying Bantu' but much more probably a Hottentot. Cockscomb Mountains, Southern Cape 16.1 Glaciated pavement with many petroglyphs at Katlani, near Douglas, NW Cape 16.2 Author and wife Nancy next to some of the petroglyphs. Katlani, near Douglas, NW Cape 16.3 Petroglyphs on glaciated pavement, mostly geometrical. Katlani, near Douglas, NW Cape

16.4 187 16.5

187 16.6

215 18.1 215

216

Petroglyphs. Ostrich (?), rhino and initials PJP. Putzonderwater, Northern Cape Elephants, buck, ostrich (?), etc. of differing ages. Putzonderwater, Northern Cape Petroglyph of a rhino, a fine example of the 'classical' engravings. Kinderdam, Northern Cape The only paintings on bone — scapula of Cape Lion — so far found in South Africa. The figures are in black, a bird, perhaps a seal or penguin and another unidentifiable

216

217 217

237

Foreword

After a stiff climb up a steep and rocky ridge, there can be few experiences more satisfying and exhilarating than that afforded by the first sight of an animated scene of humans and animals painted by some prehistoric artist on the wall of a cave or rockshelter high above the African savanna. Painting in a different century — or even millennium — the often superb artistic ability of these prehistoric craftsmen excites our admiration and claims our acknowledgement of their mastery of representational skills to which the author of this work draws particular attention. Such exhilarating excitement must have been the experience of Lieutenant Brenans when, in 1933, he first saw the now world-famous pastoral paintings of the Tassili n'Ajjer in the Algerian Sahara; or that of Joseph M. Orpen and George William Stow in the 1870s when they found the art of the San Bushmen in the Drakensberg/Maluti Mountains in South Africa and, in their case, they had the added excitement of being able to question still-living San who were knowledgeable about this art. None the less exciting has been my own experience in discovering the walls painted with schematic and geometric motifs in the rockshelters and caves of Zambia and Malawi. These are, perhaps, less aesthetically pleasing but even more challenging to the detective in us to try to understand the meaning behind the symbols and the reasons why they were painted with such obvious care and precision, sometimes high up on the rock face and impossible to reach without the aid of some kind of ladder. When we look at prehistoric art it is easy to allow free rein to our pleasure but the imagination is sometimes apt to overstep the bounds of rationality in seeking to explain the raison d'être behind it and to speculate on its age and the identity and cultural associations of the artists. In 1849 Heinrich Barth was the first to visit and

describe the large animal engravings in the Sahara. At much the same time also, travellers, scientists and adventurers began to search for and study the art of the indigenous KhoiSan or 'Bush-Hottentot' peoples of southern Africa. Since then, many thousands of rock paintings and engravings have been discovered, copied and published though there must certainly remain many more to be found. For example, some of the best preserved and best drawn in the Horn were only fully made known two years ago. Nevertheless, the general distribution and nature of the various artistic traditions of engraving and painting on rocks are now apparent. The sheer number and variety of the known examples of this art, together with the sometimes rather haphazard way in which they have been made known in print — often in obscure or difficult-to-obtain publications — make any attempt to assess the art of the whole continent, particularly a continent the size of Africa, a gargantuan task for any single individual. We cannot but be impressed, therefore, by the detailed and reasoned compilation that Alex Willcox has so successfully undertaken. So far as I am aware, this is the first comprehensive overall review of the rock art of Africa ever to have been compiled that provides the degree of completeness and attention to detail that is presented here. Every region where engravings and paintings on rocks occur, whether they are clearly very ancient or can be associated with an existing or recently existing African people, is treated of in this volume. Starting many years ago as a side interest that Alex and his wife were able to pursue in their leisure hours away from their home in Johannesburg, this has today become a full-time occupation to which he brings an expertise that places him among the foremost rock-art specialists in the continent today. His interests have extended far beyond the bounds of the regions in southern Africa where his own fieldwork has been xi

xii Foreword undertaken, to encompass the whole of the continent and, indeed, beyond. He has travelled extensively to examine the art of other continents and is now able to draw upon this wider knowledge in making his interpretative analysis of the African rock art. Each chapter of the book is accompanied by regional maps and illustrations of the main stylistic traditions to be found there. Somewhat naturally, the main regions are given the most attention but the more sporadic and lesser-known art in areas where it has passed unrecognised until recent years has not been neglected. Presented here for the first time, therefore, is the rock art of peoples with very different economies not only that of the chief artists, the hunter/gatherers. The reader of this book will be able to appreciate something of the way of life of the Neolithic nomadic pastoralists of the Sahara and of the Iron Age cultivators and mixed farmers who can be shown to be associated with some of the later schematic art. As the text shows, dating of the art is notably difficult though possible within broad limits. We now know, for example, that the remarkable painted plaques of the Apollo 11 Shelter in Namibia date to c. 26,000 BP, the engraved limestone slabs in the Wonderwerk Cave in the northern Cape to 10,000 years BP, and the Capsian art in the Maghreb is not much younger. It is satisfactory to realise that the practice of painting and engraving on rock in Africa is as early and as continuous as any in Europe. However, more exact chronological correlation of art styles in Africa must await more precise dating techniques applied to carbon samples whose provenance is more accurately known. Until this becomes possible, the model proposed by Willcox for the spread of this art involving no small amount of direct and stimulus diffusion must be regarded as somewhat less than certain. Others, and he discusses alternative models, see no need to involve diffusion at all and prefer to look upon the art as a spontaneous expression in response to a social or symbolic need at different times, in different places and by quite unrelated peoples. Cultural remains in the stratified occupation deposits in the rockshelters can hardly be adduced to support a diffusion model since, at the general level of `microlithicness' this 'mode' is found throughout the world while, at the more specific level, the associated cultural remains confirm the regional origins and nature of the flaked stone tradition. It is likely that these as well as other factors played their part in the emergence of the very varied prehistoric art traditions. Another problem — and any attempt to solve it

must employ considerable caution — is the ethnic identification of the artists. In many instances this is clearly impossible to determine. In the Sahara, Neolithic and proto-historic skeletal remains have been described as Negroid and Caucasoid and it seems likely that both races were involved. In South Africa, the association of the San Bushmen with much of the art is well authenticated. As for a great deal of the rest of the continent, the authors of the art remain uncertain. Earlier physical anthropologists tended to see `Bushmanoid' characteristics in skeletal remains as far north as the Sudan while more recent scholars stress the similarities of the attributes of these remains to those of existing peoples in the regions. This makes the task of ascribing ethnic affinities to the artists at best both dubious and unrewarding until appreciably more data have become available. Perhaps the problem claiming the most attention is that of the raison d'etre behind the art and Alex Willcox gives considerable thought to it. He has been helped in this by several excellent studies made within the last twenty years or so dealing with the art of specific regions — the Sahara, Zimbabwe or South Africa, for example. These have made the subject matter more acccessible and have also sought to throw light on the motives behind some of the art, though the interpretations proposed by some authors occasionally leave the reader more perplexed than enlightened. Willcox's discussion of the problem is thoughtful and clear and, although not everyone would agree with his interpretations, the reader is encouraged by the well-referenced text to follow up some of the other models he examines. Alex Willcox's review takes the reader through the history of rock-art studies, gives a discussion of the aims and problems involved in research into the art, together with an explanation of the terms used and the methods of recording, reproduction, analysis and dating. The art of each main section is then presented against the backdrop of the prevailing ecology, starting with north-west Africa and the Sahara, then proceeding via the Horn and West Africa to the schematic art zone of central Africa and the primarily, though not entirely, naturalistic art of central Tanzania and the sub-continent. The main styles and stages of the paintings and engravings in each region receive full treatment and the author examines the chronology, the possible ethnic associations and discusses the underlying motives that have been suggested. Special treatment is given to the home or 'portable' art, to the schematic tradition and to the motives underlying the painting of handprints. He closes with a review of the origins of the art — whether it was a

Foreword xiii spontaneous, independent development or whether the phenomenon of diffusion was a significant factor in spreading the idea and practice of parietal art. The final chapter presents the various motives that have been put forward as reasons for the art — sympathetic magic, initiation, art for art's sake, or whether it was purely representational or symbolic of the magicoreligious beliefs of the social group to which the artists belonged. He then gives a reasoned explanation of his own answer as to who were the artists and why they painted and engraved and, in the course of his arguments, he brings together a great deal of significant information about why the art was done. In reviewing some of the ethnographic evidence collected and presented by the author it is apparent that underlying motives for the art are unlikely always to have been the same. For example, among the Wagogo of central Tanzania, prayers for rain are accompanied by the slaughter of a beast and the smearing of fat from the sacrificial animal onto rock paintings. The same practice is reported from among the Oromo of the Harar plateau in Ethiopia. Rainmaking appears to underlie the concentric circles painted by the Guanches in the Canary Islands. Among the Namia of southern Tanzania, paintings were made as part of the funerary rites and we can hardly doubt the funerary associations of the painted grave-stones with Later Stone Age burials in sites on or near the South African south coast. Among the Chewa and related `Maravi' peoples of Malawi and eastern Zambia, the latest 'dirty white' paintings can be linked to the Nyau secret society and so, presumably, to initiation. Initiation is also the underlying motive in the use of schematic engravings among the Chagga of northern Tanzania — and what of the Dogon of Mali? The former Butwa secret society is also linked with the schematic painting and engraving in the northern part of Zambia. Again, magical protection against certain dangers, in particular lightning, is the reason why the Sandawe painted concentric circle designs on their foreheads as, in a similar manner and for a similar purpose, did people in north-east Angola. Probably the best clue to the motives behind the schematic art of central Africa lies in the Cuissis, the surviving relict of a once widespread, hunting/gathering, stone-using, pre-Bantu Negroid population. Because they are still painting, they alone can interpret the symbolistic geometric designs on the walls of certain rockshelters in southwestern Angola. Ownership marks and the marking of territory seem to underlie the engravings round waterholes in the northern Cape. Ownership marks and cattle

brands are also engraved and painted by pastoral peoples in the Horn. Among the Marghi in northern Nigeria, bridegrooms painted with their fingers representations of men and animals in rockshelters as part of the marriage ceremonies and Bemba youths shoot arrows at concentric circles and other designs on the walls of huts during the part-initiation, part-betrothal Chisungu ceremony. Support for the symbolistic nature of the superb polychrome paintings of the South African Drakensberg comes from the report by Frobenius that Kalahari Bushmen (area unspecified) painted a picture of the animal killed in a successful hunt on a piece of its skin taken from just above the hoof and then buried it. Support is also evidenced by the symbolic dances of the present-day Kalahari San. Similar support for the motive of sympathetic magic — that 'like will produce like' — could also be claimed for the Pygmy practice of drawing on the ground the outline of an antelope and shooting an arrow into it preparatory to a hunt. Alex Willcox is strongly in favour of art for art's sake as a motive for the naturalistic painting and engraving and it would be difficult to doubt the representational nature of a scene painted by the Free State San depicting a successful cattle raid or a Boer commando. And there can certainly be no doubt of the representational nature — and the pleasure of execution — that lies behind the engraved plans of villages made by Zulu cattle herders high on the ridges overlooking the settlements, or the engravings of motor cars by young boys in the western part of Zaire. It seems, therefore, most unlikely that there can be only one answer as to why this art was practised. `Much will remain unconfirmable inference', as Willcox states and while, as he goes on to say, 'the chance of knowing died with the hunter-artists', there is still room for hope if it becomes possible to show ethnic continuity within a region where this art was at one time practised. Clearly the rock art would have formed an integral and significant part of the life of the society that made it. Understanding the religious beliefs, symbolic and non-symbolic ritual behaviour of the surviving group is, therefore, likely to hold the most reliable clues to the raisons d'être of this very widespread practice of art. The archaeologist — and most of the work on rock art has been carried out by professional and amateur archaeologists — needs to elicit the help of anthropologists, ethnographers, linguists and psychologists in seeking to use the evidence of still-existing peoples the better to understand the practices of their prehistoric forebears. I am impressed by the progress in this direction that has been made in regard to understanding the Drakensberg art

xiv Foreword through the medium of the myth, ritual and ceremonial of the !Kung in the central Kalahari. Similarly comparisons had been drawn several years ago between attributes of the Bovidean/Pastoral art of the central Sahara and the initiation beliefs and ritual of the Peul nomadic pastoralists before they became Muslims. Today this people moves along the southern fringes of the desert but probably originally lived in the central Sahara from where, it is thought, they were driven by the increasing desertification of their homeland. There appears to be sufficient coincidence in the identification of objects and ritual represented in the paintings to make it eminently worthwhile to pursue studies of this kind. Willcox's book is a thorough and systematic review of these often superb art traditions of which the greatest achievement in aesthetic appreciation and technical skill is to be found in the Bovidean art of the Sahara pastoralists and that of the hunter/gatherers of the Drakensberg and Great Escarpment in South Africa. The author presents all these different traditions in a detail and with an understanding of which only a devotee and an expert is capable. Here for the

first time in a single volume all the evidence is brought together in an overview that only someone such as Willcox can hope to provide. While he would be the first to agree that much still remains to be learned about the age, the associations and motivation of this art, the volume stands as an indispensable sourcebook for all who wish to learn about the rock art of Africa and thereby to gain an understanding of the way of life, beliefs and motivation of the traditional societies that produced the artists. Alex Willcox is to be congratulated on such an encyclopaedic monograph and the wealth of material it contains. Not without cause has Africa been described as the richest storehouse of prehistoric art in the world, and it may well be that future research will reveal that the continent which gave us humanity has much of significance to contribute to the identification of the general premisses that were the raison d'être of the rock art of the wider world also. J. Desmond Clark Berkeley, California

Acknowledgements

My largest debt is to Professor J. Desmond Clark, the outstanding authority on African prehistory, for contributing the Foreword and for reading and amending the portion of Chapter 7 on the rock art of Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa. Dr Mark Milburn read the whole draft of Chapter 6 on the Maghreb and Sahara, suggested many corrections and amplifications and drew my attention to several relevant papers and articles of recent publication in various languages. Dr Hans Biederman also criticised this chapter constructively and he and Herbert Novak brought me up to date regarding the rock art of the Canary Islands. Professor Oliver Davies gave me additional references to West African rock art. Mr P.C. Franks, a member of the Cambridge University South Turkana Expedition of 1980, with the consent of the leader has given me advance information regarding the expedition's findings. Correspondence with Dr Fidel T. Masao, Director of the National Museum of Tanzania, cleared up a number of questions on the prehistoric rock art of Central Tanzania. Mr H.A. Fosbrooke, a pioneer student of the rock art of that region, was a valued correspondent and contributor of illustrations. Dr D.W. Phillipson and Mr C.K. Cooke read my drafts on the archaeology and rock art of Zambia and Zimbabwe respectively and their comments in correspondence and discussion resulted in improvements in accuracy and completeness in those chapters. The Department of Antiquities of Malawi informed me of the most recent relevant work and publications of their Department and Mr Alec Campbell of the National Museum and Art Gallery of Botswana gave me in correspondence the results of recent work in the Tsodilo Hills and provided photographs and a distribution map of the Botswana rock art sites. Dr L.G.A. Smits gave me figures

regarding rock painting sites in Lesotho. For SW Africa/Namibia my chief sources and correspondents were the late Dr E.R. Scherz and Dr W.E. Wendt, both of whom freely answered my questions and provided illustrations. Dr H. Reuning also made useful comments on portions of my draft. I am obliged to Professor C. Garth Sampson for information on his current field work in the Zeekoe Valley of the Northern Cape; to Dr G.H. Fock for useful correspondence, also regarding the Northern Cape, and for photographs; and to Dr J.F. Thackeray for news of the recent and fruitful 'dig' at Wonderwerk Cave in the north of Cape Province. Dr J. Parkington and Professor Richard G. Klein kindly answered my questions about dating of cattle remains in Southern Cape. My map (Map 10.3) showing the advance of the Iron Age peoples was checked and amended in the light of recent discoveries by Dr T.M. O'c. Maggs and Dr M. Hall of Natal Museum, Pietermaritzburg. Professor T.N. Huffman of Witwatersrand University was also consulted. The Archaeological Data Recording Centre at the South African Museum, Cape Town, was a valuable source of information. Plate 44 showing wagons trekking, from People of the Eland by Patricia Vinnicombe, is produced by permission of the publishers, the University of Natal Press. I am indebted to Jean McMann for permission to reproduce photographs from her book Riddles of the Stone Age (see Bibliography). Mr E.A. Bierman and my neighbour the late Mr Joe Bass kindly assisted me with translations from the German. My thanks are due to Robert Soper and the British Institute in Eastern Africa for the photograph of stone circles in Kenya (Plate 8.1). The sources of photographs are acknowledged xv

xvi Acknowledgements below the reproductions except where the photographs are my own. I am especially obliged to Franz Trost and Jiirgen Kunz for their fine photographs of Saharan rock art and J. Kinahan for photographs of newly discovered paintings in the Brandberg. The photographs reproduced as Plates 23 and 24 were by Mr C.K. Cooke, FSA, and are reproduced with the consent of the National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe, who also kindly provided the photographs for Plates 11.1, 16 and 17 with permission to reproduce them. A grant from the Anglo-American and De Beers Chairman's Fund towards the cost of producing the colour plates is gratefully acknowledged. Without this

aid it would have been necessary to reduce drastically the number of plates included. What the book owes to artist Mr Colin Nockels for the production of the figures and maps will be apparent to the reader. Last named here, but foremost among those who helped to make this book, is my wife Nancy, partner in all the labours leading to its production, from the strenuous explorations and fieldwork, the photography and copying of the rock art, to the typing, several times, of the manuscript as successively written and revised: all in addition to those many other tasks as wife, mother, housekeeper, and secretary of various organisations.

Historical Introduction

The discovery of prehistoric rock art, that is its becoming known to the savants of Europe, began late, and the art was slow to receive attention as a field of study by the learned. Curiously, the first discoveries were made in the remotest parts of the world in spite of the wealth of sites within Europe and close at hand in North Africa In 1673 Jesuit Father Jacques Marquette, exploring down the Mississippi River, noted painted monsters on a cliff in what is now the State of Illinois. Other discoveries in North America followed in 1680 in Massachusetts, 1711 in Arizona, 1749 in Pennsylvania and in 1776 in Colorado. The first reference to African rock art has been thought by some to be in the book Africa (1670) by J. Ogilby (Jeffreys, 1953; Phillipson, 1972a). In the book an obscure passage reads: The Cabonas are a very black people, with hair that hangs down their backs to the ground. These are such inhumane cannibals, that if they can get any men, they broyl them alive, and eat them up. They have some cattel, and plant calbasses, with which they sustain themselves. They have, by report of the Hottentots, rare portraitures, which they find in the mountains, and other rarities. The 'rare portraitures, which they find in the mountains' were taken to be rock art. Ogilby, however, never visited Africa and most of what he had to say was taken, translated, from Kaffrarie of Lant der Kaffers (1668) by Olfert Dapper who never visited the Cape either and got his information from correspondents there who got theirs from — who knows? The passage from Dapper taken from Ogilby, as translated by Professor I. Schapera (1933), reads differently: According to the reports of the Cape Hottentots,

1 they have curious objects which they know how to get from the mountains, and still other rarities.

So we have to turn to the original Dutch text in which the relevant words are 'rare maekselen' meaning curious objects or artefacts, and agreeing with Schapera's translation. The Cabonas (Kobonas) incidentally were a black tribe living beyond the Hottentots in the direction of the Transvaal or Natal (possibly the Ama-Xhosa). Eliminating Ogilby's mistranslated reference it appears that the first mention from Africa came in 1721 from another ecclesiastic in the Portuguese colony of Mocambique who mentioned paintings of animals on rocks in a report to the Royal Academy of History in Lisbon. Thirty-one years later a party of explorers led by Ensign August Frederick Beutler, when more than 200 miles out from their Cape Town base, observed rock paintings in the valley of the Great Fish River which they recognised as the work of the 'Little Chinese', their name for the Bushmen because of their yellow skins and somewhat Mongoloid features. The first known copies of paintings in South Africa were made by Colonel R.J. Gordon and his draughtsman servant Johannes Schumacher in 1777 and 1778. Schumacher copied what he described as `teekeningen' a year earlier when accompanying Hendrik Swellengrebel. The word is ambiguous and the drawings look more like crude petroglyphs. Other paintings were noted in 1790 near present day Cathcart in the south-east Cape by Jacob van Reenen, a member of an expedition to seek survivors of the wreck of the Grosvenor (Kirby, 1958). It was as late as 1847 that the first known observation by Europeans of rock art in North Africa was reported. This was by army officers who noted engravings (n.b. not paintings) of various animals on rocks of Southern Oran in Algeria. This was followed

2 Historical Introduction by Heinrich Barth's discovery, also of engravings, in the Fezzan of Libya (1850); the first reports of `inscriptions' in the Tassili by H. Duveyrier (1860); engravings of cattle in the Tibesti in 1869 by G. Nachtigal; F. Foureau's discoveries of engravings in the Tassili and the Air massif between 1893 and 1899. Other discoveries soon followed. In Australia in 1788 a Captain Collins and others charting the shores about Port Jackson in what became New South Wales recorded the existence of outline engravings on sandstone rocks. Further discoveries followed in the Gulf of Carpentaria in 1803, near Cape York in 1827, in Western Australia in 1830 and in the Kimberleys in 1838. All the above-noted rock art was obviously the work of primitive peoples — in the eyes of Europe's learned men, of 'savages' — and it is inexplicable that the first find of prehistoric rock art in Europe was rejected as genuine by the savants on the grounds that such art could not be the work of Stone Age savages. It was, however, unshakably believed in Western Europe that art had begun in Egypt, developed in Greece and Rome and, after its revival in Italy, reached its culmination in Western Europe in the nineteenth century. There was no place for primitive man in the history of art. The disputed finds were, of course, the splendid cave paintings of Altamira by De Sautuola, communicated to an Archaeological Congress in 1879. De Sautuola was accused of forgery and it was only after similar paintings had been discovered in 1895 at La Mouthe in France that some archaeologists accepted the Altamira work as Stone Age art. Other sceptics remained unconvinced until after the turn of the century. Then the hunt was on, many other sites were found and the study of prehistoric rock art was seriously, indeed sometimes passionately, taken up, mainly in France. Various reports and papers and, later, books appeared, notably under the names of E. Cartailhac, L. Capitan, E. Piette and H. Breuil but the New World had priority by some dozen years in producing works substantially devoted to the study. These were Pictographs of the North American Indians (1886) and Picture Writing of the American Indians (1893) by Colonel Mallery. Thereafter the subject in North America was long neglected except for local and regional studies and only very recently have general works appeared, the most useful survey being Campbell Grant's (1967) Rock Art of the American Indian. In South Africa the recording of the rock art — the necessary preliminary to its study — began as mentioned above with Schumacher and Gordon but their

copies were not published. Apart from a single drawing of an animal's head in John Barrow's Travels in the Interior of Southern Africa in the Years 1797 and 1798, no copies were published until Sir James Alexander's A Narrative of Exploration Among the Colonies of Western Africa appeared in 1837. Thomas Baines made oil paintings of Bushman rock shelters showing rock art on the Baviaans River and in the Elandsberg in the Eastern Cape in 1849 and (not to be confused with him) Thomas Bain, son of geologist Andrew Geddes Bain, made tracings in the Southern and South-Western Cape from about 1853. From 1869 George William Stow during his travels made his remarkable collection of copies. These also were not then published. Rock engravings were noticed by Alfred Dolman in 1849 when travelling in the Kalahari but were mentioned only posthumously in 1924, with some crude sketches as illustrations, in his book In the Footsteps of Livingstone. Others in the same region were found in 1866 by A.A. Anderson, described and published in Twenty-Five Years in a Waggon (1887) with two plates of very improbable looking illustrations. Engravings were mentioned by Emil Holub in his books Sieben Jahre in Sud: Afrika (1881) and Von der Kapstadt ins Land der Maschukulumbe (1890) and he took a collection of examples back to Europe. From 1905 L. Peringuey, Director of the South African Museum, collected information regarding rock art sites, and actual specimens. He published illustrated notes on engravings in 1906 and 1908 and J.P. Johnson made important contributions to the study in a publication in 1907 and two in 1910. But it was only with the appearance of M. Helen Tongue's Bushman Paintings (1909), 0. Moszeik's Die Malereien des Buschmanner in Sud: Afrika (1910), F. Christol's L'art dans L'Afrique Australe (1911), J.V. Zelizko's Felsgravierunzen der Sudafrichen Buschmanner (1925), M.C. Burkitt's South Africa's Past in Stone and Paint (1928) and the publication of Stow's copies in 1930, that the learned world at large became aware of the wealth of prehistoric rock art, extraordinary both in quantity and quality, to be found in the rock shelters and on the koppies of Southern Africa. Even more tardy was recognition of the aesthetic merit and technical sophistication of the art, largely as a result of the artist Walter Battiss's researches and writings from 1939, and the extensive application of colour photography to the subject and subsequent publication by the present writer from 1951. Scientific study of the art in South Africa can be taken to have begun with Stow. This versatile man was an ethnographer as well as a geologist and was the

Historical Introduction 3 author of the monumental Native Races of South ethnological approach in a study of the engravings of Africa published in 1905, long after his death. He Oran and the Fezzan entitled Hadschra Maktuba brought his ethnological and historical knowledge to (1925). The Tassili discovery was, after long neglect, bear on the problems posed by the paintings — of followed up by the investigations of a Camel Corps identifying the races of people and the objects officer, Lieutenant Brenans, in 1933. Brenans made represented; of interpreting the scenes; and of dating a great many tracings which were published by the work by reference to what was known of the time the Abbe Breuil and Henri Lhote in 1954. In 1956 of entry of the peoples depicted (and their domestic Lhote organised the well-known expedition with a animals) into the areas where the paintings concerned group of artists and photographers to record the art. were found. He also noted and studied the stone His book translated by A.H. Brodrick as The Search implements found in the painted rock shelters. He for the Tassili Frescoes was the result. Other dismade the first known systematic excavation in one of coveries elsewhere in the Sahara, notably at Djebel them and formed an idea of the antiquity of the Owenat (also written Auenat, Uweinat, Uwenat and artefacts from the depth of the deposit in which they Ouenat) and d'InEzan, led to expeditions including those of Frobenius in 1933 and 1934-5. R. Vaufrey's were found. A great advance in the study of the South African important L'art rupestre nordafricain appeared in art was made by the publication in 1932 of Dorothea 1939. In Australia the early discoveries were followed by Bleek's (1931) paper 'A Survey of our Present Knowledge of Rock Paintings in South Africa'. Her many more and were announced in monographs or survey demarcated the regions in which the rock regional studies. Investigators there had a great paintings and engravings were to be found, described advantage over those in other parts of the world in how they differed in style and technique of execution that Aboriginal rock painting (and decorative art) was in the various regions, and what kinds of stone still being done and the artists could be questioned. implements were found associated with them. This Too often, however, the natives disclaim knowledge fruitful approach was followed by the Bureau of of the origins and meaning of the art in their tribal Archaeology, established in 1935 by the South territory, only saying that it was the work of their African Government under C. Van Riet Lowe. The spiritual ancestors in `Dreamtime'. The first major Bureau, which later became the Archaeological work dealing specifically with Australian Aboriginal Survey of the Union of South Africa, was responsible rock art and its problems as a whole was published in for bringing the Abbe Henri Breuil to South Africa to 1958 by the Australian Museum, Sydney, and written make his important though highly controversial by F.D. McCarthy (1958), its Curator of Anthrostudies, published in a number of papers and books pology. (see Bibliography). A good general work on the rock art of New The study of petroglyphs (rock engravings) was Zealand has also appeared (see Trotter and similarly advanced by the publication in 1933 of The McCulloch, 1971). Rock Engravings of Griqualand West and BechuanaExploration has revealed prehistoric rock art in land, South Africa, by another brilliant woman Russia, India, Ceylon and various remote parts of the scientist Maria Wilman. Also in the Cape, Astley World — some as old as the Palaeolithic period, some John Goodwin did much to further scientific study of unknown age but comparatively recent — so that it and in 1936 produced his Vosburg : Its Petroglyphs at can now be said, with very little qualification, that the time the most thorough study of a single petro- wherever 'pure' hunter-gatherers and exposed rock glyph site, at least in South Africa, and, I believe, also coexisted, rock art appeared. Where the tradition had anywhere else in the World, but now rivalled if not been established the practice continued into Neolithic excelled, by Fock's (1979) study of Klipfontein in times and later. Felsbilder in Said-Afrika. The volume of literature It has been noted above that the published studies since then is too great to be detailed here. of prehistoric rock art have been mainly concerned In North Africa the early discoveries seem not to with specific sites, groups of sites, or regions; at best have aroused much scientific interest. Nor did the with single continents. Only now is it being accepted further discovery in 1909 of the rock art of Tassili-n- that here is a subject worthy of comparative study on Ajjer by a Captain Cortier. An important advance a worldwide basis. Only in this way can some of the was geologist G.B.M. Flamand's study of the engrav- questions most important to anthropology be conings of southern Oran published as Les Pierres Ecrites sidered and perhaps answered. How far is the in 1921; L. Frobenius with H. Obermaier followed the development of artistic skill in Homo sapiens

4 Historical Introduction dependent on built-in mechanisms and how far on learning, that is on culture? How far are the motives of artists universal? How much in the prehistoric art regions of the world results from diffusion of culture and how much from independent invention and local evolution? These are some of the questions, and even in a work limited to one continent, as this one is, some regard must be paid to other regions. These problems will be discussed later but this is perhaps a fitting place to consider one aspect relevant to the question of independent invention against diffusion, and that is 'How did representational art begin in the first place?' From the moment our eyes first focused we (you and I) have been surrounded by representations, indeed there must be hardly anyone alive today for whom this is not true, and it is difficult for us to envisage a world in which no such things existed. And yet of course that was once the case. Nor is it easy for us to realise that the idea of representation — of A being in a strange way B but yet in reality not being B — is an abstract concept that does not come naturally to mind. Our children do not grasp it until some years after they make their first attempts at drawing, making crosses, scribbles, etc. The other higher primates, chimpanzees and gorillas, given the means, produce some remarkable 'abstract' work, but fall short of any representations though one young captive gorilla came near to it when he was observed to run his finger around the outline of his shadow on the wall of his cage, and rhesus monkeys have been observed tracing the outline of their hands in the dust with a stick. Representations of sorts do occur naturally and the shadow is one kind of these. Another is reflection in water, and another — a kind of printing — the marks of wet or dirty feet or hands on the rock floor or wall of a cave. Yet another, and important to the hunter, is the imprint of animals' feet or hooves in soft earth. It has also been suggested that random scratchings on a wall, such as those made by the claws of bears, would sometimes produce chance likenesses and that these were perhaps recognised by the human cave dwellers. This I do not think could have happened until the idea of representation was present in the observer's mind. The natural and accidental representations mentioned above are all two-dimensional representations of objects which are, of course, three-dimensional, and it seems to me that the idea of a threedimensional representation of a three-dimensional object would be more likely to be apprehended by primitive man. How then could three-dimensional representation occur? Projecting bosses on a cave wall may have

taken the recognisable shape of an animal. This does happen in the French caves and some bulges were incorporated in paintings and sculptures later in the evolution of the art. It has been pointed out also that flints quite naturally take all sorts of shapes and not infrequently resemble the body, at least, of an animal. The same thing would often have resulted artificially in the process of making stone tools until eventually the fact of the resemblance dawned upon some perceptive worker who may then have deliberately increased the likeness — and initiated the long history of representational art. Following this theory only sculpture in the round would have been practised until it was realised that the likeness need not be wholly 'in the round'. High relief would do equally well and it saved some labour. Even more labour saving was low relief and then shallow engraving. So three-dimensional representation would become twodimensional and painting would naturally follow. This theory of origin and development cannot be proved but there is nothing in the archaeological record to disprove it. The earliest known representational art — which is in Europe — appears to be sculpture — figurines or carvings of animals and people. The earliest dated Palaeolithic art objects are from the Vitigelherd Cave in Wiirtemberg, Germany. They are carvings in the round out of mammoth ivory and are of mammoth, horse, lion, cervid and bear, and are probably more than 30,000 years old (Sieveking, 1979). The high relief sculptures seem to be at least as old as the palaeolithic engravings and paintings (see also McBurney, 1961). If this theory is correct and sculpture preceded rock engravings and paintings, then it follows that, in areas where only the two-dimensional work is found, independent local invention is less likely than introduction from outside. To examine the case for diffusion as explaining the presence of art at a particular locality one must look at the oldest form found there, if this can be established, as some local evolution is probable: then seek a trail of art sites by which the earliest art present might have been brought. This will be attempted in a later chapter. The beginnings of the discovery of prehistoric rock art have been outlined above and it is now known to exist abundantly in every continent but Antarctica. The practice, once introduced into a region or continent, would appear to have 'caught on' rapidly and spread to every part of it where its makers — palaeolithic, mesolithic or neolithic in their culture — coexisted with suitable rock, or with caves where these were preferred. Thus in Africa it is found from the extreme north-west to the Cape of Good Hope, in

Historical Introduction 5 the Americas from Alaska to Patagonia and in Australia from Arnhem Land and Cape York in the north to Western Australia and New South Wales, Victoria and even Tasmania. New Zealand's South and North Islands have also many sites. In Europe, France, Spain and Portugal are by far the most richly endowed with Stone Age rock art. Germany has one known site, Italy has three in the south, two or three in Sicily, and one nearby on the island of Levanzo; and European Russia has one near the Sea of Azov. Bronze Age and Iron Age rock art is much more widely distributed in Europe. Asia is the continent poorest in ancient rock art. There are sites near Lake Baikal and on the Amur River of Siberia and possibly some petroglyphs in Uzbekistan are of Neolithic age. There are several sites in Turkey; a wealth of petroglyphs in Arabia, Sinai, the Negev, Jordan and elsewhere in the Near East, Neolithic and later in age, and some presumed to be earlier. There

are a great many rock painting sites in India dating from Mesolithic times until the present (Brookes and Wakankar, 1976); and more recent work in Ceylon and Oceania. The urge to decorate or deface a rock surface or a wall would seem to be deep-seated and universal in Homo sapiens. As we all know the urge still finds expression on hoardings and the walls of public buildings, usually far worse in execution than the work of our 'savage' forebears, but sometimes redeemed by wit. For general works on the worldwide distribution of rock art see Bibliography, Maringer and Bandi (1953), Bandi, Breuil, Berger-Kirchner, Lhote, Holm and Lommel (1961), Lommel (1966), Ucko and Rosenfeld (1967), Kuhn (1956), Anati (1963, 1968a, b), McCarthy (1958), Grant (1967), Rhotert (1959), Buhler, Barrow and Mountford (1962).

The Study of Rock Art Aims and Problems

The study of prehistoric rock art, although it serves other disciplines, is primarily a branch of archaeology — and the purpose of archaeology is to find out how people lived in the past and as far as possible infer their attitudes and beliefs. This no doubt will strike many readers as an obvious statement but Sir Mortimer Wheeler had to remind archaeologists, with their intense preoccupation with artefacts, that the excavator, as he put it, 'is not digging up things, he is digging up people'. The study of art reveals aspects of Man's nature not deducible from his material culture. The first two problems presented by the art in any region are the interrelated ones of its age and the identity of the artists. The cave art itself can seldom, if ever, be directly dated — its age in years determined — by any physical means now available. Enough material might theoretically be scraped off a painting for C 14 dating but the necessary destruction would not be acceptable and this has not, to my knowledge, been done. The principle of C 14 (radiocarbon) dating is too well known to require explanation here. It is only approximate and it is customary to add a plus and minus figure to indicate the range of time to which the sample can with high probability be assigned, for example, 3,650 BC ± 60. I have in this book, for simplicity, given only the median date prefixed by `about'. This is because the actual age does not with absolute certainty fall within the time range usually stated and because the original theory implicitly assumed that the concentration of C 14 in living things had been constant for the last 60,000 or so years. By study of very old trees comparing tree-ring counts with radiocarbon determinations, this is known to be wrong and the dates require adjustment according to a 'calibration curve' now being worked out. The adjustments will not greatly affect the datings given in this book which are taken from the literature cited. It

2

should be noted whether the age is given as BC or BP (before present). 'Present' is taken as AD 1950, so to convert BC to BP add this number of years — and for the converse subtract. A refinement in radiocarbon dating now being developed — high energy mass spectrometry — requires only minute samples so its application directly to flakes of paint is practicable and is expected to yield valuable results where C 14 is present. An attempt has been made to date rock paintings in South Africa by the order of disappearance of various amino acids (Denninger, 1971; Willcox, 1971b). This will be discussed later. What is depicted may throw light on — and indeed in some cases answer — the question of age and authorship, but more generally the problems have to be attacked by identifying and dating the associated artefacts, and sometimes human remains, dug up by the archaeologist and subjected to his many searching techniques. Much caution is necessary, however! Often the material in the accompanying deposit, especially if it is a cave site, indicates occupation by various people over, perhaps, thousands of years. And even if only one people and period are represented this is not in a single case conclusive as the nearby petroglyphs or paintings might have been the work of another, in rapid transit. But if a particular material culture is found associated with the same kind of rock art in many cases, it becomes fairly certain that both were the product of the same people. In a few fortunate cases it has been possible to link a stratum in the deposit in a cave with a work of art on its wall by finding in it the preliminary sketch, for example, as at Hornos de la Pena in Spain, or part of a painting which has fallen from the wall as has been found in North Africa and will be later noted. In Europe and in North and South Africa carved or

8 The Study of Rock Art — Aims and Problems painted stones have been found in datable cave deposits. Although this does not prove with certainty that parietal art was being executed at the same time it establishes a high probability as one cannot suppose that the artists who made the art mobilier could have resisted the impulse to decorate the cave wall. In the absence of datable material certainly associated it is nevertheless frequently possible to give a maximum age to a representation by what is known of the object or animal depicted. A minimum age if an animal long extinct in the region concerned is portrayed; a maximum age if an introduced domestic animal is shown. Examples of the former category are the mammoth and woolly rhinoceros in Europe, a certain large-horned buffalo in North Africa and the moa in New Zealand's South Island; and of the latter category domestic cattle and the camel in North Africa, the horse in North and South Africa and in America, and so on. Of course the same applies if people, for example, Negroes or Whites, are shown whose date of entry into the area is known. Objects depicted such as the bow and arrow or the metal axe can also establish age. And the extinction of the artists, such as Bushmen, in an area obviously sets a minimum age. Thus, within limits, the internal evidence of the art may fix absolute age. The relative ages of different styles or technical classes, may also sometimes be established. In the case of paintings, artists, especially in South Africa, frequently superimposed their work on older paintings and study of such cases and observation of the obviously greater freshness of some kinds of work have enabled some generalisations to be made regarding the order of appearance of the different styles and techniques. These cases are also important for the consideration of the artists' motives and this aspect will be discussed later. In the case of the petroglyphs another method of establishing relative age has, combined with other evidence, been especially useful. This is based upon study of the process of weathering of rock surfaces. If Figure 2.1: Sections to Show Weathering of Engraved Rock Surfaces

A

a newly quarried lump of rock, or a broken boulder, is placed so as to expose previously unweathered surfaces to the elements, changes take place caused by chemical action, combined with heating, cooling, wetting, drying, frost action, and abrasion by wind blown grit. The physio-chemical process is extremely complex and its effect depends on the chemical and physical properties of the particular rock, and, of course, on the weather to which it is exposed. Generally speaking the new surface will start to change colour: this is caused by oxidation. Then water penetrating to a greater or lesser depth, depending on absorption, will dissolve some constituents and bring them to the surface thus affecting the surface patina and forming beneath it a 'weathered crust', usually a few millimetres thick, less dense and softer than the underlying rock, and usually lighter in colour. Especially in deserts the matter transported to the surface from beneath, or deposited upon it, will be given a polish by the action of wind blown material. This is known as 'desert varnish'. Although — it must be repeated — the nature and the rate of the process will depend on the kind of rock and the climate, the condition illustrated in Figure 2.1 at A is fairly typical. When the artist comes along and cuts his groove, it will show a colour different from the surface colour, and depending on whether he cuts only into the weathered layer or deeply enough to expose the unweathered natural rock — see B and C in Figure 2.1. In either case the weathering agencies now attack the cut surface and this gradually acquires the same colour as the surface patina. The extent to which this has happened may indicate the relative age of the petroglyph. If the repatination is complete, which is very often the case, then all that can be said is that the work, obviously, is older than the number of years the process takes in the given conditions. This is not known, but may be inferred if the glyph is datable by other means. The surface all the time will be suffering abrasion and being slowly worn down: and this will limit the life of the petroglyph to the time it takes to degrade the surface to the depth to which it was originally cut. Late stages will be as shown at D and E in Figure 2.1.

D

The Study of Rock Art - Aims and Problems 9 On sandstone, as in North Africa, the engraver could cut as deep as he wished; but where the rock was hard, for example, dolerite, as in South Africa, he almost certainly would have cut no deeper than the weathered zone — usually only a few millimetres thick. There is very little evidence for timing these processes. The age of the oldest surviving petroglyphs in North Africa will be considered later. Looking further afield at examples not protected in deep caves, some in Australia about 3,000 years old are deeply cut and abraded grooves in a rock shelter at Devon Downs (McCarthy, 1958; Tindale, 1957). The latest evidence from Australia shows by C 14 dating that petroglyphs on the wall of a rock shelter near Laura in North Queensland below the surface of the deposit (and therefore well protected) are about 13,000 years old. They are peckings of human and kangaroo tracks (Rosenfeld, 1974 and pers. comm.). There is circumstantial evidence that finger markings at Koonalda Cave on the Nullabor Plain, South Australia might be even as old as c. 23,000 BP but the paint marks can hardly be considered to be art. In America the oldest Pit and Groove' petroglyphs on basalt boulders are tentatively given a maximum age of 7,000 years by Robin F. Heizer and Martin A. Baumhoff (1962). The process of repatination in some cases can certainly be reckoned in centuries. In America the same authorities state that some glyphs historically dated at over 150 years appear as fresh as if made yesterday. A date, 1914, cut into dolomite in SW Africa/Namibia shows no change. Just 100 years ago someone cut the date into a dolerite rock on a petroglyph site in the Orange Free State. Although patinated it is still much lighter in colour than the surface into which it was cut. About three centuries is a reasonable estimate in these particular circumstances for the cuts to revert to the surface colour. Many factors affect the rate of weathering of a petroglyph even on the same kind of rock: its angle to the horizontal, orientation to the sun, and original depth, among them. But where the conditions are the same, and especially where there are petroglyphs made at different periods on the same rock surfaces, comparative weathering is a useful guide. I have in my garden, fully exposed to the weather, an exact replica of a petroglyph made on a piece of rock (hornfels) from the same site. It was made as an experiment, firstly to see how the work could be done using stone tools. This proved simple by abrasion with a sharp flake of the same rock in an unweathered state. The cuts were made right through the dark brown patina and the weathered zone (only two millimetres thick) to show the contrasting blue natural

colour and another purpose of the experiment — a long-term one — was to ascertain how long it will take for the blue cuts to take on the dark brown of the surface. This will establish, eventually, the minimum age of the petroglyphs, in similar circumstances, where this has already happened. But this is for an archaeologist of the future to observe. The experiment has been set up for 20 years with no discernible alteration. An interesting method of attempting to establish the minimum ages of petroglyphs comes from Canada. This is to determine the ages of the extremely slow-growing lichens which cover them. These can grow as little as a fraction of a millimetre in a year and attain an age of 700 years. But the factors affecting growth are so variable and numerous that much study will be needed before the method can be at all precise (Dewdney and Kidd, 1967; Dewdney, 1970). Another ingenious method also comes from America. This is to date by the C 14 method the age of the first layer of tufa — a limestone precipitated by blue-green algae and therefore containing organic matter — deposited on some lake-side petroglyphs. This appears to show that the petroglyphs were executed about 9,000 years ago (Smith and Turner, 1975). It has been said that the primary purpose of the study of rock art is as a branch of archaeology. What is depicted confirms or supplements the information gained by digging in an associated deposit, for example, knowledge of the implements the people used, and the animals they hunted or herded. In addition the art reveals much not to be deduced from artefacts found in the deposit either because perishable objects are shown such as wooden weapons, clothing and hair; or bedause cultural practices are depicted — dancing, ritual, methods of hunting. In South Africa, for example, it would never have been known that Bushmen once used small canoes or floats from which to harpoon fish, if this practice had not been illustrated in rock paintings. Nor, but for the North African petroglyphs, would it have been known how far carts and chariots penetrated the Sahara. A `spin-off' from the study in South Africa has been to establish what animals have lived in certain regions in the recent past and thus indicate which ones might be reintroduced to game reserves with a reasonable prospect of success. Another example is the recognition by Henry Fosbrooke of a painting of white rhinos in Central Tanzania — see Chapter 9 (Fosbrooke, 1980). What other aims? Perhaps to throw light on the

10

The Study of Rock Art — Aims and Problems

nature of art; also of artists, how they perceive and recall, and what moves them to reproduce what they have seen or recreate designs of unseen things; and the place of art in primitive culture in promoting tribal cohesion. It may well be as Sir Herbert Read put it 'We can learn more of the essential nature of art from its earliest manifestations in primitive man [and in

children] than from its intellectual elaboration in great periods of culture', and again 'From a study of the Negro and the Bushman we are led to an understanding of art in its most elementary form, and the elementary is always the most vital'. And did not Augustus John advise art students bewildered by the myriad 'movements' of modern art, 'go to the caves. There you will find your cure'.

Terms and Techniques

It is proper to preface our descriptions of rock art with definitions and it is especially important in this study in which the terms are often used too loosely, partly because the subject is still to some extent bedevilled by the subjective language of art criticism, and partly because some of the attributes of art defy precise verbal definition. Even in the same country specialists in this subject are not using the same terms, or not with the same meanings, and the situation is worse as between experts of different regions, America for example, compared with Europe or Africa. This militates against clear thinking, and gravely hampers inter-regional comparative study, reflecting a lack of an accepted terminology which would not be tolerated in any other branch of science. I have commented on this lack in discussing North American rock art (Willcox, 1974). Firstly what is art? No two artists or critics would, I think, agree on a definition and I shall not attempt to formulate one. The term will be used in its widest sense to include the simplest manifestations of the urge to draw, paint or model, even the scratching of a meandering line or two. The term prehistoric has little relation to age and means only belonging to a time before the first written records were made in the area concerned. Thus it can imply an age of thousands of years in North Africa and no more than a century or two in parts of South Africa. Rock paintings can be classified according to colour, or number of colours. Colour means any shade that the normal eye can clearly distinguish from another, light and dark red, for example, being different colours. White and black by this definition are also colours. The terms monochrome, bichrome and polychrome mean, of course, executed in one, two or more than two colours respectively. Shading is the deliberate merging of one colour into another to

3

avoid a sharp demarcation between them. It can be used to make the pictures more true to nature or to model a figure, that is to give the appearance of solidity to a two-dimensional painting. Shadowing is another way of giving a three-dimensional look to a painting by using dark tints or black (without shading) where shadows would fall. Petroglyph means a shallow design cut into the surface of a rock and not also painted unless specifically so described. Engraving is best reserved for work executed by incised lines and pecking where the surface is chipped away. What is a painting or a petroglyph? Loosely, either term is applied to a single discrete element, for example a human or animal figure, or to a group or scene which may consist of several such elements. This can cause confusion and lead to misleading inferences regarding motivation if, for example, it is stated regarding a region that paintings of humans are more common than paintings of animals. This may be true of individual elements but not true of groups. Unless special terms are coined to make this distinction possible, confusion may be avoided by using the terms to mean one element and making it clear when referring to groups. The word pictograph was used by Mallery in America to cover all forms of 'picture writing' whether carved or painted and on any material, but has now come to mean a rock painting in the elemental sense, as opposed to a petroglyph. Petrograph, a term used by some writers, would be better. Curiously there is no accepted term, even regionally, to cover both cases. Writers tend to use sign, design or symbol, words which have other and special significance. Of subject matter the term representational is preferred to figurative because it is self-explanatory as meaning that the intention is to depict an object (in 11

12 Terms and Techniques the widest sense, natural or artificial, animate or not, even imaginary), or where this intention can reasonably be inferred. Sometimes this is uncertain! A simple circle for example may represent the full moon or it may not. The antonym is of course non-representational. This dichotomy is basic in the classification of all graphic and glyptic art. Non-representational art can further be described as geometrical where the designs take any form that can readily be described in the language of geometry. These include all forms based on the circle, for example, divided, grouped, multiple, concentric, circles with rays, etc.; rectangles, triangles, grids, sets of parallel lines; and of course all combinations of these forms. Wavy or zigzag lines having a fairly regular rhythm should be included in this category, but what about meandering or criss-cross lines, shapeless open or closed curves, irregular arrangements of dots and, again, combinations of these. For this category I suggest the term amorph from amorphous meaning 'having no determinate shape' (Shorter Oxford English Dictionary). The distinction between geometrical and amorphous is important as indicating the stage of artistic development of the artist. Children progress from making amorphs at about the age of two to geometrical and more regular forms at the age of four or five when they start making simple representations. The term schematic is used by some writers to cover both kinds of non-representational work but it appears to have no definable meaning in this connection. At a recent symposium (Ucko [(ed.)] 1977) contributors suggested many meanings for the term but no consensus seems to have been made. The terms rectilinear and curvilinear can be applied to the geometrical and amorphous work and are self-explanatory. It is when dealing with such abstractions as manner and style that the often obscure language of the art critic and historian needs sharper definition to be useful to the scientific student of primitive art. Examples are naturalistic, realistic, conventionalised, stylised and abstract. The first four of these terms apply to representations and are concerned with degrees of likeness between the object and its representation. Naturalistic should apply where the likeness is such that the subject is immediately recognisable by anyone familiar with it and used to seeing and interpreting pictures. The word seems applicable only to representations of animals (in the biological sense), including Man, and of plants. One would not apply it to a picture of a building however accurate, or even of a mountain. Here the word would be realistic but this should drop out for

descriptions of living things. Conventionalised would seem to have little proper application to prehistoric art implying as it does conforming to conventions, that is taking forms having generally agreed or understood meanings. Real examples are the signs used on airways to indicate men's and women's toilets or luggage collection points, or road signs meaning sharp bend, steep hill, etc. Some writers, however, use it as a synonym for stylised but this term I take to mean less lifelike than naturalistic but still recognisable by anyone knowing the animal, plant, etc., represented. There is, however, a degree of representation so simplified that it is only recognisable to the initiated, for example, (I\ for a human figure or for an animal, and for this perhaps the best term is schematic, the term above rejected as meaningless when applied to non-representational art. The road signs mentioned above and other conventional signs such as those used on maps, for example crossed weapons to indicate a battlefield, can also be properly described as symbols, a term much misused in rock art literature. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary defines the word as 'something that stands for, represents, or denotes something else (not by exact resemblance, but by vague suggestion, or by some accidental or conventional relation)'. Thus a drawing of the sun is not in itself a symbol unless it `stands for' light, or warmth, or a day; nor is a full moon a symbol unless it denotes a month. Commonly a symbol consists of a part of a whole, as a head for a whole person, or a related object for an abstraction, as genitalia for fertility. To apply the term, as some writers do indiscriminately to any geometrical or amorphous design, is to deprive the words of all meaning. The term abstract is given various meanings by writers on art. One definition is 'design of shapes and colours to satisfy the eye with the minimum of realisitic representations'. Another is 'art which abstracts, i.e. selects certain elements and rejects others in what is depicted'. Other definitions eliminate representation altogether, thus meaning no more than non-representational. But some degree of abstraction is present in all representational art. The artist has to select what to put in and what to leave out: also what to stress and what to understate. This term also would seem to have little definable meaning, at least when applied to prehistoric art. Techniques of Execution — the Petroglyphs Methods of execution of the works of art and the

Terms and Techniques 13 terms used to describe them must be considered in differentially coloured underlying stone was exposed. more detail, beginning with the petroglyphs. It is I It is an indication of considerable skill that a line of think important to realise that the labour required to great sensitivity was commonly produced with no produce them — using of course, stone tools — was signs of slipping of the tool. The outline having been made, the work was left considerable, as my own experiments have convinced me. The driving motive therefore was strong, and the so, or the surface within was chipped away, wholly or glyphs should not be thought of as easy casual partially, and sometimes rubbed smooth. In South doodling, except perhaps on very soft stone. This, Africa in the most delicate work, portions of the original surface were left to show details such as a fold however, was seldom used. The preferred materials were those with a darkly of skin. Or the design might be filled in by hatching patinated surface which, where removed, would give with roughly parallel lines or by pecked dots. a good contrast between the cut and uncut rock. The design was probably first drawn on the rock with charcoal or a coloured mineral. The commonest Techniques of Execution — the Paintings method of operation in North and South Africa, Australia and North America alike was then to form Turning to the rock paintings the term pigment — the the outline by making a series of small more or less colouring matter — must be distinguished from paint a circular pits, overlapping, touching each other, or mixture of pigment with a medium to make it semiclose together. This, in the coarser examples, may liquid or liquid, and sometimes with other ingredients have been done directly with a stone pick but in the to increase durability or hasten drying. For the pigments virtually any coloured mineral more regular work must have been done with a pointed tool — a gad — carefully placed and then struck which could be ground fine was used. The commonest with another, fairly heavy, stone. The finest work in were the ochres, that is hydrated oxides of iron, South Africa could certainly only have been executed usually with an admixture of clay, and used 'raw' or in this way, but more probably with a burin — a tool `burnt' to yield a wide range of colours over the with its end like a chisel. The stone in this case was spectrum yellow, brown, orange and red — the latter almost always amygdaloidal diabase or dolerite, very the favourite colour of primitive man. Charcoal, or hard rock in unweathered form, leading to the carbon from burnt bone, was the commonest black suggestion that diamond must have been used to and manganese was another source. Pipe clay (kaolin) engrave upon it. This is an unnecessary as well as an and gypsum yielded whites and in South Africa finely unlikely assumption, however. The surface of the ground white quartz gave another. For a comprerock has a weathered crust a few millimetres thick hensive study of the pigments and paints used by below the surface patina and this is comparatively Bushmen and Hottentots see Rudner, I. (1982). soft; and there is no evidence that the glyphs were The commonest medium was no doubt water, but ever cut deeper than this. A flake of hard rock, for a wide range of others are known from modern example quartzite, will cut into it and I have found ethnographic parallels and from analyses. such flakes on engraving sites and these were certainly In North America, Grant (1967) lists animal oils, transported there. Experiment has shown also that a blood, white of egg and various vegetable oils and flake from the underlying unweathered rock will cut saps. In Australia, according to McCarthy, the pigthe surface crust, but will need very frequent re- ments were mixed with the fat of fish, emu, possum, sharpening. Diamonds, moreover, shatter on impact. etc., or with a plant juice. In North Africa analyses In North Africa, where sandstone is the com- quoted by Mori (1965) indicated beeswax, vegetable monest rock to be engraved, the line, started accord- and animal fats, egg white and milk. ing to Lhote (1961) by pitting as above described, was Traditions in South Africa also mention animal opened up to form a V or U shaped groove which was fats and plant saps as media and experiments have ground and polished with an unknown tool. shown that a paint made with egg answers well. In Australia the pitted outlines were also com- Analyses by chemist Dr E. Denninger (1971) and see monly rubbed to form a smooth groove (McCarthy, Willcox (1971b) however, show the medium, in 1958) but in South Africa the petroglyphs with such almost every case, to have been blood. There is some smooth outlines show no sign of preliminary pitting. confirmation of this from Lesotho where a tribesman They were made — and this has been confirmed by who had learnt to paint from Bushmen used ox blood experiment — by a process of abrasion, working a to make his paint (How, 1962). sharp flake to and fro along the marked line until the The long life of rock paintings in Africa — or at

14 Terms and Techniques least of those which have survived — is due to their brown, red, yellow, blue and sometimes white. having been painted in protected positions in rock Haematite was used to produce the brown or shelters; and to the porosity of the rock, in the great reddish brown colour, and blue and white clay for majority of cases sandstone, which allowed the paint the yellow and white. These were ground up fine to soak in and the colour to remain even after the with stones and mixed with boiling fat. They were breakdown of the medium. In most cases, however, allowed to cool. This produced a crayon, as it is some paint remains on the surface. Fat as a medium called. But liquid paint applied warm to the has its drawbacks: it can form a halation around the surface was also employed. One method of paintpainting and cannot be applied successfully to a damp ing witnessed by the writer was as follows: the surface. But we may suppose that the prehistoric artist, a half-breed Bushman, first took a pebble painters had their own technology, and adapted their and rubbed the surface of the granite boulder on materials to the circumstances. which he was going to paint as smooth as he could, The methods of application also were various. The and wiped away all the dust carefully. Then he Franco-Cantabrian paintings were, according to took a burnt stick and drew the outline of the Breuil (1952a), made 'by a finger or a brush made of a figure, in this case a zebra. Next he took his lump chewed branch with which one daubed, or a pad of of dry paint, his crayon in fact, and rubbed it over feathers or fur. Sometimes the brush used was very the figure, roughly filling in the outline. Then he fine'. With all respect to the Abbe, himself an expert brushed away all the dust, and then he took a small draughtsman, I think much of that sensitive painting feather brush, some liquid paint which he heated must have been done with a better brush than a in a small hollow pebble, and laid this carefully on chewed stick and it would be surprising if the painters the figure, and the painting was complete. did not discover the brush made of hair, considering that they were hardly ever without animal hair from Silayi also stated that some kinds of paint 'were tails and manes in their daily lives. prepared at the fire'. A chewed or cut and teased out stick was used by One account given to Moszeik (1910) by a white the Australian and North American rock artists as a farmer says that Bushmen applied paint by means of brush, but their work was coarse compared with the pointed pieces of bone. This might have been so for rock art of Europe and Africa. In Australia feathers small details but not for painting flowing lines or also were used or just a finger to apply paint; and in filling in areas of paint, and there can be little doubt America a bound mass of fibre. that the brush was the chief tool of the artist. Very In North Africa, it is suggested by Mori, very fine little of the painter's work in South Africa is so coarse brushes of animal hair or feathers were used though that it could have been done by a finger dipped in this must be by inference only. paint. In South Africa it is certain that brushes were An artist painting on an absorbent surface, used. Some of the work could have been executed in whether stone or plaster, has the problem that the no other way and there is confirmation from two absorption, and therefore the intensity of colour, is independent witnesses that Bushmen used them. One likely to be uneven. Traditionally the remedy has description by Silayi, a Tembu who lived with been to apply a light coloured 'ground' or 'primer' Bushmen, states that the brush was made of hair from evenly over the surface before starting work on the the mane or tail of a gnu (wildebeest) tied to a thin actual painting. It is clear from many unfinished reed (Stanford, 1909). The other account, from examples in South Africa that when making a Lesotho, also states that hairs from the tail of a gnu bichrome or polychrome painting of which one colour were used and later, after horses were introduced, is white, the artist applied the white as the primer; their mane and tail hairs came into use (Ellenberger, and fairly commonly this shows as a border to the 1953). The Basotho painter above mentioned, painting where not covered by the subsequent layer of however, used feather brushes and these are stated by paint. Whether this was done generally with monoChristol (1911) to have been used by Bushmen in chromes is not certain. In the Tadrart Acacus of Lesotho and by Dornan (1925) as used by a Bushman North Africa part of the preparation was, according halfcaste in his presence in Bechuanaland to Mori (1965), the application of a thin layer of (Botswana). Dornan's account, one of very few by whitish gypsum. eyewitnesses, merits full quotation: A great deal of experiment must have been done to arrive at the techniques and discover the enduring The colours used by the Bushmen artists are materials used by the Stone Age artists, and much

Terms and Techniques 15 time and care devoted to the preparation of the tools engraving was not solely to serve a present need or to and materials and the actual execution of the work of please the artist and his community: it was also art. It would seem that the purpose of painting or intended to survive.

Africa - the Background, Physical and Climatic

The occurrence of rock art — it is hardly necessary to say — depends upon the coexistence of exposed rock and artists; and the presence of the latter again depends upon tolerable climatic conditions. Whether the artists were hunters or herders the preferred terrain was open grassland or savannah, not desert or dense forest. During the period in which African rock art was produced — the Holocene and conceivably the terminal Pleistocene — climatic and hence geological change was greater in the northern half of the continent than in the south, mainly because of the slow retreat of the ice of the last glaciation from about 10,000 BC. In South Africa the final temperature drop of the Pleistocene Ice Age, though enough to effect changes in the zoning of vegetation, was not so severe as to cause glaciation. Subsequent fluctuations of temperature and rainfall were minor and a slow warming up of about 7° Celsius took place. Geologically, changes were also small. The cycle of denudation begun by the last (Plio-Pleistocene) uplift of the plateau continued (Willcox, 1976), some river gravels were deposited; more Kalahari desert sand was formed; many sinkholes were created, and some old ones exposed, in the dolomitic rocks; escarpments retreated a few metres, rock shelters deepened a little or perhaps collapsed. Two-thirds of South Africa is covered with sedimentary rocks and some of these, especially the socalled Cave Sandstone, have weathered where exposed in such a way as to form habitable shelters. So, to a certain degree, has the Table Mountain Sandstone and Quartzite of the Southern Cape and the granites of the North Eastern Transvaal. It is in these shelters, with very few exceptions, that the rock paintings are found. The weathering processes that formed the shelters of course continue and have already destroyed much of the art.

4

The sedimentary rocks are riddled with igneous intrusions of dolerite and this is commonly exposed on the highveld and Great Karoo as caps to the koppies or as dykes. Elsewhere erosion has reexposed 'pavements' of ancient rocks, mainly diabase ground down by glaciers 300 million years ago, and long covered by sedimentary deposits. On these rocks almost all the petroglyphs were made: only a few hundreds, out of the many thousands that exist, occur on other rocks, either exposed or in shelters. In SW Africa/Namibia the paintings are in almost all cases in granite shelters. The petroglyphs, also numerous, are chiefly on basalt and other igneous rocks, or on limestone or dolomite. There is, however, one famous site (Twyfelfontein) where both forms of art are upon sandstone (Vierek and Rudner, 1957). In Zimbabwe also, granite provided the 'canvases' for the painters either by negative (concave) weathering to form sizable caves or by positive spherical (convex) weathering of the huge boulders on the koppies to produce innumerable smaller shelters. Although suitable rocks for engraving abound, very few petroglyphs have been found. These are almost entirely in the Eastern Districts on flat, more or less horizontal, quartzite surfaces (Summers, 1959; Cooke, 1969). Vast areas of Botswana and SW Africa/Namibia, being covered with deep sand, have provided no rock surfaces for the prehistoric artists and some parts of Northern Zululand and the Eastern Transvaal remained too heavily forested for their taste. The little rock art there is in Zambia has the paintings on sandstone, quartzite and granite and the most important petroglyphs in a quartz-mica schist rock shelter in one case, and in another on sandstone on an open site (Summers, 1959). Prehistoric rock art in Malawi is found on rocks of 17

18

Africa — the Background, Physical and Climatic

various kinds, in shelters or on detached boulders. times as large as it is now and the water of Lake The large number of rock paintings in Tanzania occur Rudolf stood 80 metres higher (Clark, 1970; mostly in shelters formed in a variety of rocks from Phillipson, 1977). On the mountains and highlands gneisses and granite to sandstones (Fosbrooke et al., there was some forest but over the great plains 1950): there are few if any genuine petroglyphs. savannah vegetation prevailed, grassland and parkThere is very little of any kind of rock art northwards land, supporting great herds of antelope, also buffalo, until that of the Sahara is reached. This region rivals wild cattle, elephant, rhinoceros and giraffe. Some South Africa in the abundance of its art; and its low lying areas must have been marshy. From about climatic and geological background must be outlined. 3,000 BC the climate began to deteriorate and for the Much of the region in Cretaceous times was a sea last three millennia has been much as it is today. The which left behind marine deposits, mainly limestone, process of desertification is believed to have been forming vast tablelands subsequently much eroded accelerated by human agency in introducing domestic but leaving remnants on or around the upthrust animals (especially the destructive goat), over cultivadomes of more ancient rock that form the cores of the tion of diminishing arable land, and the felling of the present mountains as at the Ahaggar and Tibesti. ever scarcer trees for fuel and timber. But the story of During the Miocene period a large part of the peopling of the rock art regions belongs to the next northern Sahara was again a sea leaving more chapter. sedimentary rocks. The present desert sand, however, Map 4.1B shows the present ecological zones of is not marine in origin and has nothing to do with the Africa. They have changed little since about 3,000 BC ancient seas. Mostly it has been of very rapid except for some extensions southwards of the Sahara formation, geologically speaking, since the end of the and some spread of Kalahari sands in Southern Pleistocene. Africa. South of 10° N. lat. the ecological picture was The Atlas region is not, of course, part of the not very different over most of the early and middle Sahara and geologically is really part of Europe. Of Holocene although there were some changes in Tertiary age and the youngest fold mountains in vegetation zoning due to the warming-up. North of Africa, although formed largely of ancient rocks, they that latitude during the Holocene prior to 3,000 BC comprise roughly speaking a double range, the the map would show dry savannah and grass steppe northern one called the Maritime or Tell Atlas in the over the whole region with some forest on the east and the Great or High Atlas in the west; the mountain massifs which caught more rainfall. During southern range called the Sahara Atlas in the east and that period, however, there was here also considerthe Anti-Atlas in the west. Between the ranges lies a able movement of vegetation zone boundaries due to plateau and between the northern range and the sea a minor fluctuations of climate (Butzer, 1971). coastal plain — the Tell. The whole region is called the It will be observed that, from the Sahara to South Maghreb by the Arabs. Africa through the East African highlands, there was During the latter part of the Pleistocene Ice Age a a route through grassland, savannah and open woodtemperate zone of fairly high rainfall lay over the land, with no barrier for a hunter-gatherer populaSahara region. Erosion of the soft sedimentary rocks tion; and with a healthy climate and game animals in was rapid but was held in check by a cover of fantastic abundance all the way. For herders of small vegetation. Only much later, when desiccation re- stock that route was equally favourable, but cattle moved this protective cover, could the wind play herders would, in parts of it, have had their beasts havoc with the dry soil, remove the humus, and grind exposed to tsetse fly-borne diseases. African indigenstones and rocks into sand. Most of the region, ous breeds, however, have acquired a considerable degree of immunity to these diseases — as have the however, consists of stony plains or hamadas. During the early and middle Holocene (from game animals — in the region where they have long 10,000 BC) the climate remained moist, but with been exposed to them, and the effect of the tsetse fly considerable fluctuations of rainfall (Butzer, 1971). as a barrier to cattle movements has perhaps been Drainage was by the Wadis into numerous lakes. The exaggerated. zone of moderate — never high — rainfall extended Map 4.1C shows, for comparison, the chief regions over the Sudan and as far as the Nile eastwards, of rock art, which will be discussed in detail in later apparently increasing towards the East African lake chapters. Only areas of dense forest, very high region, and causing scenes very different from the altitude, or without exposed rock, lack prehistoric arid wastes of today. At the maximum of this pluvial parietal art. period, about 7,000 BC, Lake Chad was about eight

Africa - the Background, Physical and Climatic 19

Desert Sub-desert Dry savannah Woodland Cape and . . Mediterranean ' vegetation Tropical forest

a Map 4.1A: Physical

Map 4.1C: Rock Art Areas

Map 4.1: Africa

Map 4.1B: Ecological

Map 4.1D: Khoisan Remains

The Peopling of the Art Regions

It is necessary to glance only briefly at the earliest human inhabitants of the art regions as there is no evidence that they had any rock art — and if they did it could hardly have survived. Ignoring Homo habilis, whom some anthropologists would rather consider an advanced australopithecine, Homo erectus, the first indisputable man, spread over all the rock art region of Africa including the present Sahara which must at various times during the Pleistocine have been hospitable to mammalian life. His culture was Acheulean exemplified by the handaxe and cleaver, but with flake tools also. He was followed in North Africa from at least 50,000 years ago by Neanderthal man, or a close relation, generally considered a form of Homo sapiens, Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, who was the maker of at least some of the artefacts called Mousterian. He inhabited the Maghreb and part of Cyrenaica but there is little evidence for his existence in the Sahara region. South of the Sahara, however, a similar type of man which has been called by J.D. Clark (1970) the Rhodesoid race was widely, spread and is considered likely to have been the user of the stone tool kit called Sangoan and perhaps also was associated with the Fouresmith stone industry. Largely coextensive in time with the Mousterian complex were a number of industries grouped, from the Sahara southwards, under the general term Middle Stone Age, dating from roughly 80,000 to 30,000 BP (Clark, 1975) but apparently well over 100,000 years old in South Africa. Who exactly Middle Stone Age man was is the subject of debate as there are few skeletal remains that can with any confidence be linked to the tools of the period. What little evidence there is points to a man of Neanderthal type but of less extreme character (Wells, 1972). From about 40,000 BP a new industry of Middle Stone Age type called the Aterian appears thickly

5

distributed over the Maghreb and spread over most of the Sahara (Clark, 1970, 1975; McBurney, 1960). The tool kit, like its Mousterian predecessor, consisted largely of scrapers and points but with some points now tanged as if for hafting. These points were made smaller as time passed and by 11,000 BP were barbed and may have served as arrow heads. This would accord with other evidence for the existence of the bow and arrow about the same time at Wadi Haifa in Nubia (Clark, 1970) and proof in the form of bows found preserved in Danish bogs. We shall note its early appearance in Saharan art. What Aterian man was like physically is hard to say. One authority (McBurney, 1960) thinks he was a local descendant of the more ancient types already mentioned as being in the area. From about 16,000 BP in Cyrenaica, and 11,000 BP in the Maghreb (Clark, 1970), industries called Oranian, largely comprising very small artefacts (microliths), superseded the earlier forms. These were used hafted to wood to make compound tools such as saws, barbs of spears, barbs and points of arrows, and later as sickles. What may be the oldest art on stone in North Africa was found at one site — Taforalt in Morocco — and will be described later. The man responsible for the innovations was very different from his predecessors. According to L. Cabot Briggs (1955) he was muscular, long-headed and prognathous with heavy brow ridges and a wide nose. He is considered related to Combe Capelle man of Western Europe, to be Homo sapiens sapiens, and ancestral to much of the Mediterranean racial stock of today, and therefore is called Palaeomediterranean. These people mixed with the earlier stocks and a broad-headed strain, probably from the Near East, to produce the mixed race classified as the MechtaAfalou type from the names of the two most important sites at which the remains have been found 21

22

The Peopling of the Art Regions

together with tools they made. Their skeletal makeup according to Briggs exhibits some Negro traits and some `Boskopoid' features — a term taken from a skull considered to represent a type ancestral to Bushmen in South Africa. Carlton Coon (1963) refers to this element in the Mechta-Afalou race as 'similar to that seen in Bushmen'. The industry of the Mechta-Afalou people is microlithic, largely blades and scrapers, and the chisel-like tools called burins. The establishment of these people and their industry, called Capsian from Gafsa in Tunis, dates from about 8,500 BC (Butzer, 1971). It appears to be limited to the Maghreb with a short extension into the Sahara The Capsian sites are found in thousands, usually as mounds of ash and kitchen debris, with shells (of land origin), some bone, and the stone artefacts and waste material. None is found closer than 44 miles (70 km) from the coast and they show no relation to coastal cultures. This argues against cultural influence from directly across the Mediterranean (Butzer, 1971). More of the early art on stone in North Africa has been found at one of the Capsian sites El Mekta (also written Mechta) (McBurney, 1960) and it might not be without significance that some evidence for a `Bushmanoid' or `Boskopoid' physical type appear at the same time and place (Coon, 1963; Briggs, 1955). An industry somewhat similar to the Capsian but considerably earlier in its inception is found in Kenya and has been called the Kenyan Capsian although it has been doubted whether there is any real affinity. The remains of long-headed people associated with it show similarity to one of the strains present in the makers of the Oranian and Capsian industries of North Africa (Clark, 1970; Phillipson, 1977; Bower and Nelson, 1978). Roughly coeval with the Oranian other microlithic industries — the Sebilian and Silsilian — appear in the Nile Valley and there is some evidence for associating these also with the beginnings of rock art in North Africa (Clark, 1970; Smith, 1967, 1968). Very soon after the occurrence of what J.D. Clark has called 'the microlithic revolution' in North Africa — and in some places apparently even earlier — microliths were being made over most of Africa. How far this was due to diffusion of technical knowledge, to movements of peoples, or to parallel evolution from earlier forms locally can be endlessly debated. It is probable that all three causes played their part. However it happened, a microlithic industry appears at Laga Oda in Ethiopia from 15,000 BC (Clark and Prince, 1979), and at Kisese in Tanzania from about

17,000 BC; and another (Nachikufan 1) in Zambia from about 16,000 BC (Phillipson, 1977). Other datings from the same region are reasonably consistent (see Chapter 8). In Southern Africa some microliths appear in the Robberg industry somewhere between 19,000 and 12,000 years ago, but the earliest truly microlithic industry discovered has been given the name of Wilton after the type site in Cape Province. It appears at a site Apollo 11 Cave in Southern Namibia about 10,000 years ago (Wendt 1976), in Zimbabwe at Tshangula about 12,200 years ago (Cooke, 1971) and at a number of sites in the Southern Cape from about 8,000 BP (Deacon, 1972, 1974; Maggs, 1977) where it is found generally to overlie large scraper industries also taken to belong to the Later Stone Age (Inskeep, 1978a). The dating of the time boundary between the Middle and Later Stone Ages in South Africa is a matter of opinion depending on arbitrary judgements as to which industries should be assigned to which `Age'. In the Southern Cape the beginning of the Later Stone Age (LSA) is fairly generally agreed to date from the appearance of the so-called Robberg Industry about 18,000 BP. Elsewhere, and especially in the Transvaal, there is little agreement. It is arguable whether the terms Middle Stone Age and Later Stone Age have any further usefulness. For reasons at present only speculative a large part of the interior plateau does not appear ever to have been occupied by the Wilton people or by any other Later Stone Age people between about 9,500 to 4,600 years ago when a new complex of industries appears, given the name Smithfield from a site in the Orange Free State (Inskeep, 1978a). One industry formerly considered part of it, called Smithfield A, from which the later phases were believed to have developed, is now known to be much older. The differences in the later 'Smithfield' industries can be attributed chiefly to the locally available materials and they differ so little from the late Wilton that Inskeep suggests they be regarded as a northward extension of the Wilton traditions of the Cape. Over the plateau north of the Orange River Valley and west of the Caledon River Valley, and extending into the southern Transvaal, the period of apparent non-occupation is even longer. On the present dating evidence it was only from about 1,000 years ago that this region was again occupied — by 'Smithfield' people. More digging and dating might alter this picture, otherwise the rock paintings in the shelters of the area having only a late Smithfield industry must also be taken to belong to the last millennium (Willcox, 1976).

The Peopling of the Art Regions 23 The Wilton and Smithfield artefacts continued to be made, and latterly unquestionably by Bushmen, in some areas until the extinction of their makers or acculturisation by newcomers in the last few centuries. The distribution of these industries is of prime importance to our subject as most, if not all, of the parietal art is found in association with them. What sort of men were the makers of the 'Later Stone Age' implements and art in Southern Africa? As already mentioned they were, at least during the last few centuries, the people given the name Bushman by Europeans and called 'San' by their neighbours the 'Hottentots'. The latter called themselves `Khoi-Khoi' and the term 'Khoisan' has been coined to accommodate the two peoples, who were clearly akin in racial type. Some indications of the presence of this race in North Africa have already been noted from about 8,500 BC. If the evidence of a single poorly preserved skull from Singa near Khartoum is accepted the type may be even older there — about 17,000 years old — (Clark, 1970) as it is described as almost identical to the Boskop skull by L.W. Wells (1951) and as 'Bushmanlike' by C.S. Coon (1963). The dating of the Boskop skull itself, found in Transvaal, of a type of man believed to be ancestral to the Bushman, is not certain but it was believed by its discoverers to belong to the Middle Stone Age. It cannot even be said to be certain whether the Khoisan type originated in South or North Africa, but it is agreed that these people once inhabited most of north-east, east and south Africa. Sites where skeletal material similar to that of the San (it would perhaps be better to say Khoisan!) are shown on Map 4.1d as compiled by Professor P.V. Tobias. It is also clear that the differentiation from the parent stock, into the short 'San' (`Bushmen) and the taller Khoi (`Hottentots') type took place south of the Sahara and that the appearance of the San roughly coincided with the beginnings of the 'Later Stone Age' in South Africa (Inskeep, 1978a). The two groups continued to share certain characteristics — light skin colour, the occurrence of steatopygia (large accumulation of fat over the buttocks) and occasional presence of an inner eye fold — which differentiate them from the Negro peoples whose origin must now be briefly considered (Singer, 1978). Remains of the earliest Negroes, or rather ProtoNegroes, are unlikely to be found commonly if, as is believed, the type evolved in, and to suit, the tropical rain forest where bones are not often preserved: but one burial near Benin in Nigeria has been stated to be Negroid in character (Clark, 1970). It dates from about 9,000 BC.

As noted above the authority L. Cabot Briggs (1955) considered one of the strains of people associated with the Capsian cultures from about 8,500 BC to have some Negroid characteristics, picked up, he suggests, from the Sudan. Certainly the Sudanese Negro was established in the region of Khartoum on the Nile from the fifth millennium, if not before, and a type more clearly resembling the classic West African Negro extended to the west and into the Sahara (Clark, 1970). Closest in type to the modern Negro would seem to be the man of Asselar 250 miles northeast of Timbuktu dated about 4,440 BC. Other types, non-Negro, coexisted in the Sahara, which from the beginning of Neolithic times seems to have been a melting pot of races with elements from the northwest and from the Near East mixing with a Negro strain from the south. A skull falling within the Negro range of variation, found at Kalemba in Eastern Zambia shows that people of that race had reached as far south by about 6,000 BC (Phillipson, 1977). According to Inskeep (1978) no Negro remains in South Africa are older than the time of the Iron Age migrations, roughly 1,500 years ago, but this was disputed by Dr Hertha de Villiers who states that an infant whose remains were found at Bushman's Rock shelter in the Eastern Transvaal has features 'which align it with the South African Negro, rather than the Khoisan infant'. The remains were found in a Later Stone Age context and are datable as about 10,000 BP, some 8,000 years before the arrival in that area of Iron Age technology (De Villiers, 1979). R.M. Gramley (1978) also argues for Negro presence in Southern Africa before the Iron Age appeared there. Much clearly depends on how you define 'Negro'. Some American anthropologists would include all the Khoisan under that term. Although the Negro and Khoisan have been differentiated as races they share many characteristics. As Tobias (1972) puts it 'The Khoisan have more in common genetically with Negroes than either group has with any non-African peoples. The Khoisan are considered to have in greater degree those characteristics which are especially "African".' When the taller division of the Khoisan — the Khoi — became known to Europeans from 1488 they were nomadic herders of cattle and sheep, makers of distinctive pottery, living in portable shelters of poles and reed mats, and they were given the name `Hottentot'. There is good reason to associate them with the earliest introduction of sheep and pottery into the south-western and southern part of Cape Province about the beginning of the Christian Era and cattle some centuries later, and it has been considered most likely that they brought the domestic animals

24

The Peopling of the Art Regions

and their pottery-making skill with them in a migra- earliest semi-permanent settlements, as has been tion from Central Africa before the southward spread noted, were Mesolithic, dependent on fishing, as they of the Bantu-speaking Negroes. were in Europe and elsewhere. The hunter must David Phillipson (1977), however, argues that the follow the game, the pastoralist must seek new Khoi were already in the Western and SW Cape and pastures, the fisherman can settle on the seaside or living as stone tool using hunter-gatherers; and that lake-side — his prey comes to him they got their cattle and pottery by contact with a From about 5,500 BC the first pastoralists appear Western stream of Iron Age Negroes in southern in the Sahara. Where their cattle came from is still a Angola or SW Africa/Namibia. But the earliest moot point. The first Saharan dates are earlier by evidence for Iron Age penetration into Namibia is about a thousand years than any for cattle in Egypt. from the northern frontier and is dated to the ninth This might be because the earliest evidence for cattle century AD — far too late to account for the presence there has not been found — it was perhaps buried by of sheep and pots in the extreme SW Cape, 980 miles inundations; or the domestic cattle came from the (1,576 km) away and some eight centuries earlier. Near East by another route, across the MediterBetween these areas there is at present no archaeo- ranean; or again that the indigenous wild cattle of logical evidence in the form of cattle remains to fill North Africa were independently domesticated. All the gap. There is, however, a recent discovery of hairs three are possibilities: there were cattle and sheep in from a sheep, no doubt of the fat-tailed breed, in a Thessaly and Macedonia in the seventh millennium, deposit dated about 1,550 BP in a rock shelter at there were sheep in Cyprus, brought of course by sea, Miribib latitude 23° 27', 88 km from the coast. This is about 6,000 BC so the transport of cattle to, say, still too late to indicate the route of the earliest sheep Tunis cannot be ruled out. And wild cattle existed in herders to the Cape and the sheep were almost North Africa since early in the Pleistocene (Higgs, certainly Hottentot owned (Sandelowsky, Van 1967; Clark, 1970; Phillipson, 1977). Rooyen and Vogel, 1979). The evidence of the rock Some of the cattle herders were Negroid and some art in this regard will be considered later. The nearest were of the mixed Mediterranean type. Their NeoIron Age site of nearly comparable age to that of the lithic tool kits, including some ground and polished SW Cape sheep and pottery is in the Northern artefacts, have been found over most of the Sahara. Transvaal, over 900 miles (1,500 km) away, and dated The practice of cattle herding, however, did not, AD 270. So for the first introduction of pastoralism, for a long time, spread south of about 18° N. lat. and in the form of sheep-herding, and pottery making we it is thought that in the moister climate of that period must look to other bearers than the first Iron Age a belt of tsetse fly infestation might have formed the immigrants: and for the earliest domestication of bar (Mauny, 1954; Phillipson, 1977). Consistent with animals we must turn our attention back to North that view it was only after the Sahara, and to a lesser Africa, and to the Near East. But it is necessary first degree the Sudan, began to dry up, that the first evidence for domestic cattle appears south of the to take a look at the Mesolithic Sahara. As noted in Chapter 4 about 7,000 BC a broad belt hypothetical tsetse zone. Radiocarbon dates from of lakes lay over the Southern Sahara to beyond Lake many sites in Western Kenya and Northern Tanzania Chad westwards, and beside many of them there were are claimed to indicate the presence of cattle from fishing settlements now revealed to the archaeologist about 3,000 BC (Bower and Nelson, 1978). Pottery is by the presence of bone harpoon heads and fishhooks generally present and often bowls made of stone. (Clark, 1970). These people were, of course, hunters There is evidence, as above mentioned, for pottery of animals and birds as well. Their stone tools varied much earlier, but whether pottery making and domeslocally. By about 6,000 BC these people, or some of tication spread together is not known. No metal tools them (Phillipson, 1977), had pottery. About the same are found and the stone implements are mainly time, and perhaps even earlier, pottery was in use on microliths with some Neolithic-type ground stone the shores of Lake Rudolf in East Africa and axes. Bones of wild animals indicate that hunting was elsewhere in the Rift Valley. This is almost as early as also practised but these at one site amounted to less pottery appeared in the Near East (Iraq about 6,700 than 5 per cent of the total animal remains (PhillipBC) (Butzer, 1971) and it has been suggested that it son, 1977). Of the remainder sheep or goats prewas independently invented in Sub-Saharan Africa. dominated over cattle. Human remains from burials — However that may be, pottery is taken as one of the usually under stone cairns — reveal a long-headed type markers of the Neolithic and the date of 6,000 BC can stated to be 'basically Negroid'. be taken as the beginning of that period. But the David Phillipson (1977) has brought together

The Peopling of the Art Regions 25 impressive evidence indicating that the pastoral way of life was introduced to the stone tool users of the area via North Kenya by small movements of people speaking a Cushitic language from the ancient centre of that tongue in Ethiopia. They do not seem to have moved any further south nor to have gone westwards to the shores of Lake Victoria. The cattle remains found are not sufficient to show their breed of cattle. We shall see that cattle herding was carried south and as far as Cape Province by Iron Age peoples but it seems likely that it was from this region east of Lake Victoria that an earlier movement of Stone Age pastoralists took cattle, sheep and pottery making to South-Western Africa and became one of the strains making up the racial composition of the historical `Hottentots'. The Cushitic languages are classified as part of a family called the Afro-Asiatic, including the Semitic tongues and having strong cultural ties with the Near East. It has been thought by linguists that some of the Hottentot languages show an affinity in certain respects to 'Hamitic' languages. The term 'Hamitic' has now been abandoned as a linguistic term in favour of 'Semitic'. Supporting such a relationship the late Dr M.D.W. Jeffreys (1968) demonstrated a great many resemblances between Semitic and Hottentot cultures — especially cattle customs — not shared by the Bantu-speaking peoples who later spread over most of the territory between NE Africa and the Cape. Jeffreys also pointed to the curious custom of the removal of one testicle formerly practised in Africa only by 'the largely Semitic Beja of the Red Sea' and by the Hottentots. The Bejas or Bedjas, according to A.H. Keane (1920), from the earliest times occupied the whole region between the Nile and the Red Sea bordering the Abyssinian plateau. That this mutilation, reported by early writers, was actually practised by the Hottentots was doubted by some later explorerauthors but has now been put beyond doubt by the discovery of R.J. Gordon's journals describing his observations of their customs on the Orange River. According to Stow (1905) who does not give his source, some families of Bergdama had the same custom but this was perhaps imposed upon them by their Hottentot (Namaqua) masters. Another custom common to Semites and Hottentots was the levirate — the taking of a widow by her husband's brother. The practice of iron working spread, presumably from Egypt and the Nile Valley across much of the Sahara and Sudan during the last few centuries BC (Shinnie, 1971). Meroe was an important industrial centre. Recently discovered evidence not yet fully reported seems to indicate that it reached Lake

Victoria as early as 500 BC and it reached Nok in Nigeria about 400 BC. Another route has been suggested for the bringing of iron technology to West Africa — that it was brought across the Sahara from Carthaginian colonies on the Mediterrean (Van der Merwe, 1968; Mauny, 1971). The dating makes this quite possible — the Carthaginians had iron from the sixth century BC — but it has yet to be proved. Certainly Iron Age culture was well established in the Lake Victoria region by the first century BC but on the presently available evidence did not spread eastwards into the territory of the Neolithic pastoralists for many centuries, probably because it was of no advantage to their way of life. By about 1,000 BC a settled culture existed over the Central Sudan presumably evolved from the Mesolithic and Neolithic stages preceding it in the region, and practised by Negroid people as before (Phillipson, 1977). Under the necessity of augmenting their dwindling supply of foods from fish and their herds they had learned to cultivate certain cereals of African, not Near Eastern, origin. Their language `central Sudanic' differed radically from the AfroAsiatic (Cushitic and Semitic) prevailing to the east of the region and from the Bantu language group evolving to the south, where it was spoken by stone tool using Negroes extending from the Cameroons along the northern fringe of the rain forest towards Lake Victoria. The Bantu-speakers might have had goats and have practised some cultivation before this time, but now, over a period, they acquired cattle, sheep and more cultigens, notably sorghum, from the Central Sudanic culture. It was some of these Bantuspeaking Negroes who, having learnt iron working, left relics of this industry and Early Iron Age pottery on the shores of Lake Victoria; and it has been generally accepted that it was this group of people who carried the Iron Age to Southern Africa. Linguist Christopher Ehret (1968) has, however, adduced evidence from his own discipline to show that it was speakers of the Central Sudanic language who were the first to do this; and was followed by the Bantuspeakers. But no archaeological evidence has yet been discovered to support this theory. The term 'Bantu' requires definition. It derives from `abantu' which simply means 'people' but was applied by linguist W.H.I. Bleek to a family of languages. Especially in Southern Africa it came to be applied to the 'black' people who spoke these languages. This has been objected to by educated Africans as the term acquired racialistic overtones. They and some anthropologists would rather call the Bantu-speakers 'Negroes' but most of them, in

26

The Peopling of the Art Regions

varying degrees, are unlike the typical Negro of West Africa, in physique, stature and colour. Many have obviously Khoisan admixture. And not all Negroes are Bantu-speakers! The term 'Bantu', purged of racialist or derogatory overtones, has a legitimate use as meaning the dark skinned people who spoke one of the Bantu languages, and I shall use it with that meaning but in inverted commas when not used in the purely linguistic sense. The problem of the routes by which various `streams' of 'Bantu' moved over Southern Africa is very complex and has not yet been brought to a generally accepted solution. It was certainly not a single, simple migration with offshoots, but of several with some counter movements (Phillipson, 1977). The theory that one of these, the 'Western Stream', took cattle to hunter gatherers of South-Western Africa to produce the pastoral 'Hottentot' culture has been mentioned above, and it was pointed out that, on the available evidence the movement was not nearly early enough to account for the sheep although it might have been to account for the cattle. The date of the earliest cattle in the South-West Cape is still uncertain. Against the theory of Hottentot cattle being obtained from any 'Bantu' is the difference in cattle breeds. The cattle of the Hottentots when first encountered by Europeans were a large-humped breed similar to the Zebu of Egypt and the Horn of Africa, whereas the cattle of the 'Bantu' were the Sanga, with but a slight hump, and they were a smaller breed. It is also unlikely that pastoralism was brought to the south-west by Ehret's hypothetical Central Sudanic people as they had metal technology and the Hottentots did not have it until after the coming of the white man, although they used 'native' copper as ornaments. And as Ehret points out the Central Sudanic people have the tradition of separating women from cattle, whilst among Hottentots women milked the cows and disposed of the milk. To sum up it seems most likely on the presently available evidence that pastoralism and pottery making were introduced to the South-West Cape by a migration of a stone tool using people with a 'Hamitic' element in their speech and a Negroid element in their physical make-up, who mixed with a Khoisan hunter population to produce the mixed 'Hottentot' racial type and culture. The movement, very likely a slow one, reached the SW Cape shortly before the beginning of this Era, and was probably set on its way by pressure from the Iron Age 'Bantu', perhaps a century or two earlier. Their precise route is uncertain.

Pre-Iron Age and no doubt 'Hottentot' pottery found at a cave in the Erongo Mountains 111 miles (180 km) NW of Windhoek has been dated with high probability — but not certainly — to about 2,600 BP (Wadley, 1976). Pottery nearer Windhoek of about the second century AD (Phillipson, 1970) and from Apollo 11 Cave in the south near the Orange River Valley of about the sixth century (Wendt, 1976), are the oldest so far found in SW Africa/Namibia that can be dated with confidence and these dates are too late to indicate the possible route to the Southern Cape. C.K. Cooke (1965, 1969) in a paper and a book has shown that rock paintings of sheep and of steatopygous human figures, figurines of sheep and pottery called Bambata ware considered to have affinities with Hottentot pottery, when plotted on a map extend in a narrow band from north-east to southwest of Zimbabwe, and he suggests that this may mark the migratory route of the Hottentots who then, he proposes, passed through northern Botswana and SW Africa. Linguistic evidence from place names is also used in support of the theory. Unfortunately the dating of the pottery shows it to range from the third century AD and thus to be contemporary with the Early Iron Age in that region — again too late to mark the route of the earliest Hottentot migration to the Cape. Moreover the Bambata ware is almost exclusively found in painted rock shelters and is much more likely to have been made by Bushmen in imitation of the Iron Age immigrants. This, however, does not invalidate Cooke's route as far as the other evidence is concerned. The highly mobile Hottentot way of life leaves few traces. They are not known ever to have used rock shelters and their open living sites are almost unknown. Only further discoveries will settle this question. It has been suggested that cattle might also have been brought by sea to the east coast perhaps by the Indonesian people who colonised Madagascar, but the linguistic evidence here is that the cattle of the island were obtained from Africa (Ehret, 1968). It is quite possible, however, that the zebu breed, originally Asiatic, was taken to NE Africa by sea. It was established in Egypt by 1,570 BC. There is evidence that over large areas the Iron Age people did not have cattle, at least at first, but only sheep and/or goats, probably because of tsetse borne cattle diseases to which the small stock was not subject. Once begun the spread of Iron Age culture was rapid and by about AD 300 had reached the Transvaal and the north coast of Natal (Map 10.3). The earliest certain evidence for cattle in Zimbabwe is of the sixth

The Peopling of the Art Regions 27 century AD (Thorp, 1979) and for cattle south of the Limpopo (from Broederstroom in the Transvaal) from the fifth century AD. Similar age is attributed to cattle remains from Lydenburg (Inskeep, 1978a). In both cases bones of small stock were also present. Iron Age people had reached the position of East London on the south-east coast by the eighth century (Maggs, 1980). They eventually extended their territory to some distance west of the Great Fish River (Willcox, 1976). Iron Age settlement of the Orange Free State — only the northern half — appears to be late, beginning, according to the available radiocarbon dates, in the fifteenth century (Maggs, 1976), possibly because the climate and pastures were not attractive or perhaps because San (Bushman) hunter-gatherers in prior occupation were the deterrent. By the seventeenth century at latest they had reached the neighbourhood of the Kuruman River in the Northern Cape. There is no evidence of Iron Age penetration south of the Orange River west of its junction with the Caledon. In their expansion the Iron Age peoples who were unquestionably, at least in the latter stages, Bantuspeaking Negroes, overran vast territories inhabited, albeit sparsely, by Stone Age hunter-gatherers who were, according to what little evidence there is, generally of the Khoisan physical type. A dated example comes from Gwisho Springs in Zambia of about 2,500 BC where remains of 35 individuals of this type were found. They had the bow and there is evidence that they were already using poison arrows (Gabel, 1965; Clark, 1970). Judging by what happened in South Africa there was not, at first, hostility between the newcomers and their predecessors. There was plenty of room for all. But with increasing populations of Iron Age farmers and their domestic stock, competition for grazing and water led inevitably to conflict. Enclaves of the hunter peoples were left behind in the uncoveted deserts and defensible mountain regions. Their fate, and status as rock artists, will be discussed in dealing with the various art regions. Most were gradually annihilated or absorbed and in the process the Bantu-speaking farmers naturally acquired some physical characteristics of the Khoisan. Some remnants survive, though with admixture, to the present. The peopling of the Saharan region into the Iron Age has been outlined above as far as it is known. Much remains veiled. West of the Nile Valley its history, strictu sensu begins with Herodotus. This was a third hand account of some 'wild young men', Nasamonians of Cyrenaica, who drew lots to decide which five of their number should explore the desert

part of Libya, seeking to penetrate further than any had done before. Travelling first south and then east for many days over desert sand, they came to a plain set about with trees. Here 'dwarfish men', black complexioned, seized them and led them across marshes to a town by a great river flowing west to east. This was probably the Niger and the town Timbuktu. The date is uncertain but obviously before Herodotus wrote, c. 430 BC. Beyond the Nasamonians, south of the Gulf of Tripoli (now the Fezzan), lived the Garamantians or Garamentes who used four-horse chariots to chase 'the Troglodyte Ethiopians' who lived on snakes, lizards and other reptiles and whose speech 'like the screeching of bats' was unlike that of any other people — conceivably a remnant hunter people of the Khoisanoid type. Lhote (1961) and some other scholars, however, have suggested that they were the ancestors of the present inhabitants of the Tibesti, the Teda or Tibu. Other scholars believe the Tibu (Ti-bu = rock people) to be descendants of the Garamantes (Keane, 1920) and it seems to be more likely that this is true and that these people, generally classified with the Tuareg as Northern Hamites, ousted and succeeded the original inhabitants, suffering a cultural decline with the increasing impoverishment of the area. Other Libyan tribes also used horse-drawn chariots, among them the Asbystae and Cyreneans to the west of the Nasamonians. Beyond the Nasamonians lived the Atarantians and the Atlantes but in Herodotus' description of these people imagination is inextricably mixed with fact. Lhote would locate these people in the Tassili or Hoggar. South of the coastal regions says Herodotus, 'from Egypt as far as Lake TritOnis (in Tunis) Libya is inhabited by wandering tribes, whose drink is milk and their food the flesh of animals'. These are apparently in addition to peoples already specifically named. The Tuareg of all the existing Saharan peoples have the best claim to be the descendants of Herodotus' wandering Libyans, retaining some of the customs he describes, such as wearing their hair in a crest. It is interesting to note that according to Herodotus it was from the Libyans that the Greeks learned to yoke four horses to a chariot. This is possible as the horse, according to Lhote, was introduced into Libya as early as 1,200 BC by the Peoples of the Sea. Certainly the opening up of the Sahara to trade was due to the horse many centuries before the arrival of the camel, which Herodotus does not mention at all. When the camel was introduced is the subject of controversy. The existence of the animal in Egypt about the middle of the third millennium BC would

28 The Peopling of the Art Regions seem to have been proved by the finding of a double strand twist of cord in the Fayum. It was found 2 ft (610 mm) down in an undisturbed and culturally homogeneous deposit dated by its contained pottery as belonging to the third or early fourth dynasty; and exhaustive tests and comparisons showed it to be made from camel's hair (Caton-Thompson, 1934). But it is strange that the camel is not shown, as far as I know, with other domesticated animals such as cattle and donkeys in the early mural art. The first historical mention of the camel in North Africa seems to be in Caesar's account of the battle of Thapsus (in Tunis), 47 BC. During the first few centuries of our Era it spread over the Sahara.

From the beginning of the eighth century BC the Phoenicians were installed in Tunis at Carthage and dominated neighbouring tribes, but long before that they had traded along the coast. Carthaginian maritime influence extended from the Atlantic to Cyrene and their horse-drawn vehicles as well as those of the Libyans carried their trade deep into the western Sahara, where as we shall see, petroglyphs of these vehicles indicate their routes. The Arab conquests of the seventh and following centuries saw the end of rock art in the region except as crude graffiti, as Islamic law forbade the making of representations of living creatures. This was the prerogative of Allah!

The Maghreb and Sahara

The art region of North Africa has received the attention of a great many distinguished workers, mostly French, but with some Germans and Italians, resulting in a flood of publications. We shall take as our guides Lhote, Breuil, Vaufrey, Mauny, Monod, Frobenius, Rhotert, Graziosi, Mori, Lajoux and Bailloud, but not forgetting the contributions of the early pioneers such as Flamand and Obermaier. A very useful survey also has been that of Canadian P.E.L. Smith (1968). In the last few years there has been a resurgence of interest in the rock art and general archaeology of the Saharan region with more much needed fieldwork. Notable recent contributions have been those of Milburn, Nowak, Simoneau, Van Noten, Huard, Trost and Kunz. I am especially indebted to Milburn for reading the draft of this chapter, suggesting amendments and additions, and drawing my attention to some recent papers and articles published in some cases in little known journals and in various languages; and I am indebted to Franz Trost and Jurgen Kunz for photographs. Where these many experts differ (and this is often!) I have made my own attempt at the best reconciliations of their views. But having paid tribute to the savants of Europe I must add that their view southwards seems limited to the southern frontiers of their countries' former North African colonies, so depriving themselves of the light thrown by comparative study of African rock art as a whole. The exceptions have been Frobenius and Breuil who worked also in Southern Africa, and made valuable, if somewhat controversial, contributions (see Bibliography) Map 6.1 shows the chief centres of North African rock art. Innumerable other sites occur elsewhere in the Sahara and Sahel so it is practically true to say that wherever there are substantial exposures of rock in the region there is art, or at least graffiti. Another (Map 6.2) based on one by Karl Butzer (1971) shows

6

the state of the region during the wetter phases of the Holocene (say from 10,000 BP) with the extent of woodlands and the distribution of sites having evidence of settlements of the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods; that is Capsian, Capsian Neolithic and Neolithic of other traditions. Note the vast area of Lake Chad compared to its present extent. Most of the art except the latest was executed during the wetter periods. Whether some of it belongs to the late Palaeolithic, as some writers hold, will be considered later. According to Lhote there are more than 30,000 known engravings (but I think he means engravings and paintings!) in the Sahara, more than 15,000 of them in the Tassili-n-Ajjer alone. This, he claims, makes it the most important part of the globe for the quantity and variety of its rock art, but this is erroneous as the rock art of Southern Africa, that is the Republic, Zimbabwe and SW Africa/Namibia, from some thousands of sites — one site (Klipfontein, Cape) having more than 4,500 petroglyphs (Fock, 1979) and several caves in the Natal Drakensberg having well over 1,000 paintings in each — must run to some hundreds of thousands of paintings and glyphs. However, that the Sahara has the greatest wealth of Neolithic (pastoralist) parietal art is undoubtedly true. Southern Oran, the first region in which rock art was discovered in North Africa (1849) was also the first to be studied. The art comprises large rock engravings of wild animals and of human figures. Although many of the animals depicted, for example, giraffes and hippopotami, had long ceased to exist in the area the antiquity of the petroglyphs was not accepted by some on the grounds that the glyphs might have been made by travellers from far-off parts where the animals still roamed. But the recognition among the representations of the giant long-horned 29

30 The Maghreb and Sahara

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Map. 6.2: Northern Africa — Settlements During Wetter Phases of the Holocene (After K.W. Butler) buffalo Bubalus antiquus (also called Homoioceras), which had ceased to exist anywhere for some thousands of years and was known only from fossils, forced acceptance of their true antiquity.

The discoveries in Oran were followed by others in the Hoggar and, later, in the Fezzan and Tassili-nAjjer. In the two latter areas also the giant buffalo was depicted among the petroglyphs but not

The Maghreb and Sahara 31 apparently among the paintings. By the study of comparative patination it was possible to determine which of the other animal glyphs were of about the same age. Those of domestic animals were found to be less heavily patinated and therefore younger. Petroglyphs of the Large Wild Fauna have recently been shown to have a wider distribution, extending well south of the Hoggar and over much of the Western Sahara (former Spanish Sahara). In the former case there are at Touret (Map 6.1) three elephant glyphs measuring about 30 ins (75 cm) in style somewhat inferior to the best work of the kind, and at Oued Dabala there are a very large elephant (330 cm), and two smaller rhinos in similar style (Huard and Milburn, 1978). A possible Bubalus antiquus glyph has been noted in the In Guezzam area (Mark Milburn, pers. comm. and Plate 6.2). The same paper records more discoveries in the Hoggar itself of Large Wild Fauna art including rhinos, elephants, buffaloes (antiquus), giraffes and antelope, and also some bovines heavily patinated, some of which are thought to be domestic cattle. The rock art of Jebel Uweinat, which lies at the junction of the border of Egypt, Libya and the Sudan, was first discovered by Hassanein Bey in 1923, and was studied by Prince Kemal el Dine (el Dine and Breuil, 1928). The 1933 expedition of Frobenius with Rhotert (1952) and others made further studies and Winkler (1939) visited some of the sites in 1938. Now we have the well produced and illustrated work of Francis Van Noten (1978) reporting the findings of a Belgian expedition in 1968-9 — see also discussion by A. Muzzolini (1980a). The expedition concentrated mainly on the valley Karkur Talh but made comparisons with neighbouring sites. A supplement was added by Hans Rhotert on the similar rock paintings of Ain Dua south-west of the Uweinat Mountains. The Uweinat art comprises both paintings and petroglyphs, on sandstone, granite and gneiss. No direct dating was possible and the earliest C 14 date for artefacts (Neolithic) in the neighbourhood is 4,165 BC. The internal evidence and comparative preservation of the art led Van Noten to postulate three periods: (1) Petroglyphs depicting only wild animals — chiefly ostriches, giraffes, gazelles and Barbary (wild) sheep. No human figures. (2) Petroglyphs of wild animals with hunting scenes and domesticated cattle of the longhorn, humpless, kind. Because of the cattle the author would date the period as beginning after 4,500 BC which he takes to be the time of

their earliest appearance in Egypt. Weapons shown are sticks and spears with no bows. (3) Paintings, with cattle predominating as subjects, these being of the shorthorn brachyceros breed showing that the period should be post 2,500 BC if the cattle came from Egypt. Their appearance, however, was much earlier in the Sahara as will be noted later. Men are shown using bows. The earlier petroglyphs are not of the technique or quality of those of the Large Wild Fauna period to the west and do not include Bubalus antiquus or most of the big wild fauna, for example elephants and rhinos. The impression given is that the art began somewhat later than in the Western Sahara, after the local extinction of the big pachyderms. By the time of the adoption of painting it seems likely that the giraffe had become rare in the vicinity as it is only once represented. The evidence of the art is that with growing desiccation — and no doubt overgrazing — goats gradually displaced cattle. Late petroglyphs also occur, some depicting dromedaries. The human figures are generally too stylised to permit racial identification but some at Ain Dua show steatopygia. Upper Egypt and Nubia have a great many rock art sites, almost entirely petroglyphs. The art is not as well known nor as interesting artistically as that of the Sahara and Maghreb. Studies by Winkler and others have been usefully supplemented by the publication, with an analysis, of the results of an expedition led by Frobenius in 1926 (C' ervi6ek, 1974; Smith, 1975 for review). Believed by Cervie"ek to date from the fourth millennium BC into the Christian Era, it appears to have remained largely independent of outside influences. As the art is mostly coeval with the Pharaonic dynasties it has been possible to establish a sequence by the objects depicted, for example, Nile boats and domestic animals, aided by comparative patination and cases of superimposition. Whether any of the art is the work of pre-agricultural huntergatherers is doubtful. In the Western Sahara (former 'Spanish Sahara' now 'Republica Arabe Saharaui Democratica') rock art sites have been known since 1940. Herbert Nowak (1975, 1976) has reported many new sites in two papers and with Sigrid and Dieter Ortner in a handsomely produced and well illustrated book has described the known sites in detail with a full bibliography (Nowak and Ortner, 1975). This comprehensive book cannot be adequately summarised here. The region has both petroglyphs and paintings. The petroglyphs differ much in style, technique and

32 The Maghreb and Sahara apparent age and none of those illustrated equal in naturalism the best of the Large Wild Fauna art; but some are executed in the same deeply grooved technique. Animals represented include elephants, giraffes, rhinos, antelope and some bovids not easy to identify; also ostriches and reptiles, one of them probably a crocodile. A few stylised and schematic human figures also occur. There are some amorphous glyphs — meanders and curves and at one site some spirals described in inverted commas as 'megalithic' because commonly found in that association. The relatively few paintings of that region were discovered in the southern part of the Western Sahara (formerly 'Rio de Oro' and now called `I.Jad Dahab' by the Saharian population) in the mountains of Leyuad, Eiy and Legteitira. Only a few of them are in a naturalistic style (Legteitira, Leyuad); most of them are stylised and schematic paintings of riders, animals, etc. (Leyuad, Eiy, Legteitira). One site is known in the region south of Smara (Saguia el Hamra-Province). For the later phases of the art the internal evidence — what was and what was not depicted — has greatly aided dating; for example the appearance of the horse and the camel, the disappearance of the giant buffalo and the large pachyderms: and the different human types accompanying the animal representations confirmed the sequences by their varying dress, weapons and activities. Another line of evidence was offered by the kind of associated artefacts, for example, Capsian or Neolithic whose limits of age were approximately known. As pointed out in Chapter 2 this can be misleading in individual cases — the art may not have been the work of the people who left stone tools lying around — but where the same kind of artefacts are consistently found associated with a phase of art and is the only kind present, it is virtually certain that the tools and the art were the work of the same hands. This method was used by Vaufrey (1939) who found that in 32 cases in Algeria archaeological material classified as Neolithic of Capsian tradition, datable from about 5,500 BC, lay scattered in the vicinity of petroglyphs of Bubalus type or of the same apparent age. There was no pottery so this was an early form. It was thought that their apparently Neolithic age was confirmed by the depiction of domesticated animals such as horses and sheep but these have been shown to have been present in the region in the wild state before any domestication was practised. Some of the animals are shown with head ornaments, collars or neck ornaments but as these also appear on representations of unquestionably wild animals such as

elephants, rhinoceroses and giraffes this is no convincing evidence for domestication either. That some art in a style similar to the Bubalus engravings is at least as old as the Neolithic of Capsian tradition is shown at a cave at el Arouia in Algeria where an engraving of an equid, probably a wild ass, was found buried by a stratum in the deposit containing that industry. The Neolithic of Capsian tradition, in spite of its name, has the character of a hunter culture and the close observation of wild animals shown in the art supports this conclusion. There was, as we shall note, art of a kind in the preceding Oranian and typical Capsian cultures. Another report of a petroglyph covered by a dated deposit comes from Abka about 20 km south of Wadi Halfa in the Nile valley where a much worn glyph of a geometrical kind was covered by a stratum dated about 7,200 BC. All the petroglyphs at this site (site XXXII), with the exception of one which might represent an antelope, are of geometrical type and include a cross-in-circle, other circular designs, and a set of four concentric semicircles and amorphs (Figure 6.1). At another rock shelter site at Abka (site IX) C 14 dates, again from a cave deposit covering petroglyphs, here described as 'python-like', show that the latter must have been executed prior to 4,000 BC. The numerous other petroglyphs at this site include representations of elephant, rhino, oryx, wild bull, giraffe, stylised human figures, etc.; also a baobab tree and possibly a fish trap (Myers 1958, 1960). Among them were some incised hand representations considered probably to date to 6,000 BC, and if so to Figure 6.1: Petroglyphs from Abka, Site XXXII (after O.H. Myers)

The Maghreb and Sahara 33 be the oldest of their kind known in Africa. Myers claims the Abka XXXII site as the earliest dated rock drawing site in Africa and this appears to be correct if the dating can be accepted. The material used for the radiocarbon determination was shell and this has sometimes yielded unacceptable results. He considers the art to show affinities with that of Mesolithic Spain and suggests the North African coast and the Nile valley as the route for invaders. There is no evidence for work of this kind in the Sahara until many thousands of years later and unless some intermediate sites of similar age with similar art are found this must be regarded as a local and surprising development of independent origin which did not spread southwards or westwards. Less direct evidence of the antiquity of some petroglyphs is reported by P.E.L. Smith (1967, 1968) from Gebel Silsila on the Kom Ornbo plain in the Nile Valley. They represent wild animals — antelopes and hippopotami — birds, and cattle in large numbers. The latter are presumed to be wild as there is no evidence of domestication and no other domestic animals appear. The art is naturalistic and quite unlike petroglyphs generally in the Nile Valley; and it is heavily patinated and eroded, with the appearance of great age. Direct dating was not possible but the only archaeological sites in the vicinity have microlithic industries resembling the Oranian and considered to belong to the final Pleistocene. The few human figures accompanying the animal glyphs are stylised and exhibit the marked steatopygia (enlarged buttocks) common in the Khoisan peoples (Figure 6.2). As will be noted animals undoubtedly domesticated, chiefly herds of cattle, were found in great Figure 6.2: Petroglyphs from Kom Ombo -- Figures with Steatopygia (after P.E.L. Smith)

numbers, both painted and engraved, among later art in all the sub-regions of the Sahara. Indirect dating evidence for the pastoralist rock paintings comes from several sites in East Central Sahara north of Tibesti and in the Tassili-n-Ajjer. Here the remains of stone fire-places have been found which there seems good reason to attribute to nomadic cattle breeders. Nineteen radiocarbon dates range from about 7,500 to 4,200 BP and very probably indicate that the paintings of the region which can also be attributed to these people were executed over this period (Gabriel, 1973; Milburn, 1978a). The human figures associated with the early Bubalus period are usually shown naked and, like those of Kom Ombo, exhibit steatopygia. Some figures from South Oran also show another Bushman characteristic, the penis rectus, semi-erect penis (Frobenius and Breuil, 1931). The trait of steatopygia persisted in later phases of the art, though less commonly, and the later figures were shown clothed. At Zemmour, on the border of what was then Rio de Oro (later the Spanish Sahara), in paintings described by Monod (1952) the humans are nude or semi-nude and show the trait in pronounced degree. Some are shown armed with bows. Following the Bubalus period and perhaps overlapping with it is a phase in which the humans have round heads, usually featureless. These representations are apparently limited to the Tassili-n-Ajjer, Acacus, the Fezzan, Ennedi and Jebel Auenat; and appear only among the paintings, not the petroglyphs. Guesses as to the identity of the 'round heads' range from visitors from outer space wearing their helmets by the lunatic fringe, to Negroes as Lhote (1961) believes. In the later art the human depictions are more detailed and naturalistic and it is sometimes possible to identify items of dress as historically known. A curious element associated with late pastoral art was recorded by Almasy at Wadi Sora, Gilf Kebir (Map 6.1). A number of stylised human-like figures appear to be swimming (Almasy, 1936), or conceivably meant to be flying. They have some resemblance to controversial figures in paintings at the other end of Africa but this, of course, is probably coincidental. The difficulties of absolute dating of rock art have been discussed in Chapter 2. Scraping off enough paint for radiocarbon dating if it contains organic material is possible, at the cost of destroying the painting but has not, to my knowledge, been done. Next best is to find something in a datable context in the associated deposit which can be certainly linked with a painting on the wall, for example, the

34 The Maghreb and Sahara preliminary sketch, which has been done in France. Finding pigment is not good enough: it was probably used for painting the body and skins long before there was any parietal art. Another possibility arises from the fact that some petroglyphs similar to those on naturally occurring rock faces also occur on stone pillars and the like in some cases associated with burials, which may be dated (Milburn, 1978a). This method has yielded firm evidence of petroglyph age from Kenya (Chapter 8). Objects of art mobilier found in a deposit can often be given a secure date, though it has to be made sure that they were not buried, where found, from a higher, younger level. Such objects as we shall see, have been found in South Africa in the case of the so-called gravestones and other painted slabs with sensational results. It does not follow that any parietal art nearby, or anywhere in the region, is of the same age but, given the irresistible human urge to paint or mark walls, it is highly probable. There was art mobilier in North Africa in final Pleistocene times. At Taforalt in Morocco, J. Roche found in an Oranian deposit radiocarbon dated 10,120 BC a quartzite nodule carved to represent male and female sexual organs. Higher in the deposit and dated 8,800 BC was found a pebble with an engraving of an

elephant on it and a grindstone with other engravings difficult to interpret (Smith, 1968). At El Mekta in Tunisia in a typical Capsian deposit dated about 6,800 BC art mobilier was recovered in the form of carved stone pendants representing human masks, phallic and other objects, also a rough representation of the head of a horned animal carved on a piece of limestone (McBurney, 1960). But it must be stressed that the art mobilier of Taforalt and El Mekta cannot certainly be linked with any parietal art. Fabrizio Mori's work in the Acacus Mountains of the Fezzan has yielded minimum ages for certain phases of art. At a site Uan Muhuggiag by a fortunate circumstance a piece of rock with paintings on it had fallen away and was found buried below a layer radiocarbon dated 4,730 BP. The paintings were of cattle of a style late in the sequence of cattle paintings. Other paintings had been executed on the scar left by the rock fall and these, of course, could be given a maximum date. At another rock shelter Mori found some paintings which he classifies as belonging to the 'Round Head' style covered by a layer dated 6,754 BP. Elsewhere he found grindstones with paint on them about 8,000 years old, but the paint, as remarked before, may not have been used for rock art. There was some pottery

Figure 6.3: 'Large Wild Fauna' Petroglyphs. (A) Crouching lion, Tassili (B) Elephant protecting calf from leopard

(C) Two Bubalus antiquus fighting (D) Lioness and cubs at kill of wild boar

A

The Maghreb and Sahara 35 of the same age, among the oldest found in Northern Africa. Radiocarbon dates obtained by Lhote and others have firmly dated the later phases of the pastoral (Bovidean) period as belonging to the fourth and third millennium BC. Putting together all the evidence of relation and absolute dating, content, sequence and archaeological association, the savants, beginning with Flamand (1921) and Monod (1932) with modifications by Breuil, Lhote and others, have arrived at a classification and temporal sequence fairly generally accepted. Making some compromises between differing authorities over details, this will now be set forth. (1) Bubalus or Large Wild Fauna Phase (6,500? BC — ?) Also called the Hunter Period but this is somewhat misleading as the later pastoralists did not abandon hunting altogether. The art consists of large naturalistic petroglyphs of Bubalus antiquus, rhinoceros, elephants, hippopotami, giraffes, ostriches, lions, antelope, and cattle and sheep (both presumed wild), etc. (Figure 6.3). The glyphs are cut deep and often polished. There are no paintings attributed to this period. The accompanying human figures, some steatopygous as already mentioned, and some having animal heads (presumably hunting masks), are shown armed with clubs, sticks, axes or bows, not with javelins. The artists who may have been Khoisanoid were apparently Neolithic as far as their stone implements were concerned but probably had not yet adopted pottery and the domestication of animals, although they might have caught and kept alive some of them. Some figures are ithyphallic and there are some copulation scenes. The art of this phase is found chiefly in Southern Oran, the Hoggar, Tassili-n-Ajjer and the Fezzan but may exist elsewhere without Bubalus because that animal was not locally present. A possible example south of the Hoggar has been noted above. The end of the Bubalus phase cannot be given even an approximate date applicable to all the subregions in which it is found as the type species cannot have died out simultaneously over the vast area with its differing ecologies; and there is evidence that it lingered on even into the second millennium BC in the Southern Sahara. In a recent paper A. Muzzolini (1981) argues for the contemporaneity of the Bubalus phase with the Bovidean (see below). The differences between the art of the two phases

seem to me to make this unlikely but considerable overlap in time is certain. (2) Phase of the Round Heads (6,000 BC — 5,000 BC) The dating of this phase is controversial but most authorities including Breuil have placed it between the Bubalus and the Bovidean periods with some overlap both ways. Commonest in the Tassili it occurs also in the Fezzan and at Ennedi. Mori could only find one certain example among the many paintings of the period in the Acacus, and Van Noten only one instance at Jebel Auenat, and these may have been of later date than the 'phase' generally. This phase seems to be limited almost entirely to paintings. The animal representations depict much the same fauna as before but without Bubalus. The human figures range from small to gigantic in size and are often in polychrome. They vary in style but usually have round featureless heads and are sometimes masked. Lhote is emphatic that this is Negro art, the figures having Negro build, Negro scarification and wearing masks similar to those worn in West Africa; but Mori and others do not accept this. The art is often of a high technical standard, drawn with flowing lines and showing in detail dress and ornaments. This makes more puzzling the fact that faces were left blank without features and suggests that there and with hunter art elsewhere in Africa there was a taboo on recognisable portraits. It is possible, however, that facial details were put in with different paint which has disappeared. Mori thinks that this was so in the case of the chariot people (see below) (Milburn, pers. comm.). This certainly happened in South Africa where faces painted in white have faded away leaving hair in a dark colour defining the back and top of the head — the so-called `hook-heads'. Both Lhote and Mori consider this art to be `magico-religious' in spirit, depicting rituals. If this is so perhaps the execution of the painting formed part of the rite. (3) The Bovidean Pastoral Phase (5,500 — 1,200 BC) Characterised by many polychrome paintings of herds of cattle, obviously domesticated, and often shown with their herders and milkers. The wild fauna is much the same as before and there are some hunting scenes, but rather rarely. The animal depictions become on the whole less naturalistic: with their preoccupation with their herds

36 The Maghreb and Sahara the artists were losing the hunter's eye. Engravings were also executed but generally smaller and less deeply cut than during the preceding phases — a result no doubt of the evolution of the far less laborious techniques of polychrome painting. The cattle are shown with much variety of colour and horn shape. Some are clearly Bos brachyceros, a slightly humped breed with short horns bending forward. A frontal bone of this breed was found by Mori in the deposit at Uan Muhuggiag dated at 5,952 BP. Others are shown with long horns taking various forms but commonly lyre shaped. These might be the result of deliberate deformation as still practised by herders in North Africa (Cole, 1964). Also until recently by Zulu, Xhosa and Sotho in South Africa (Barrow, 1801; Lichtenstein, 1928; Bryant, 1949). As remarked in Chapter 5 it is debatable whether these breeds were introduced from the East or were bred from the local cattle Bos primigenius and Bos ibericus. Primigenius bones have been found in deposits. Remains of small shorthorn cattle dated about 3,800 BC were found in the Air Mountains (Clark, 1971).

The human figures are usually shown nude or only with a band around the waist but a few wear drawers, or a sort of short rear apron or what Breuil describes as vetements de fibres. In the eastern mountains as at Gilf Kebir and Auenat figures are shown wearing a sheath over the penis — the Libyan sheath or Karnata — worn in different forms by various African peoples, including the Hottentots, southwards to the Cape. The qualities of the art, as such, will be discussed later in this chapter. The authorities agree that there was a decline in quality towards the end of the Period, the art becoming more schematic in character. The Bovidean phase plainly corresponded with one of the wetter periods (sub-pluvials) of the Neolithic when cattle herding was possible on at least the higher ground over most of the Sahara. Cattle paintings are found in all the art sub-regions from Ennedi to Zemmour except the Air Massif and Adrar des Iforas, which, however, have cattle petroglyphs. In and around Air there are in fact thousands of cattle glyphs (Milburn, pers. comm.). These are late in style, showing influence from the Hoggar (Lhote,

Map 6.3A: Hypotheses of Routes of Neolithic Influences from the Middle East into North Africa (After R. Mauny). The dot-dash line indicates the northern limit of the tsetse fly about 4,000 BC. The limit began to move southwards with the drying up of the region from about 2,500 BC to the lower line shown. Solid arrows and lines indicate movements before approximately 2,500 BC. Open arrows and lines indicate movements after the dessication from about 2,500 BC.

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The Maghreb and Sahara 37 1961; Breuil and Lhote, 1954). Those who believe that the Neolithic elements of pottery making and pastoralism were introduced from outside Africa have proposed hypothetical routes for the bearers. Raymond Mauny (1967) suggests two routes from the Near East via Egypt (Map 6.3A): one along the southern shore of the Mediterranean to the Maghreb penetrating southwards over the higher, better watered, ground into the Tassili, Hoggar and Zemmour: the other from the upper Nile along the pasture land at the southern edge of the Sahara (the Sahel) at about latitude 20°. The southern stream people were able to extend their range southwards as the tsetse fly belt receded with the drying up from the fourth millennium. There are difficulties in this theory! As already noted no evidence of domestication in Egypt has been found as early as in the central Sahara; and his southern route passes the Air Massif where depictions of cattle have been considered late. But Mauny himself states that the hypothesis needs verification by more archaeological research, especially dating.

Rhotert (1952) suggests only a route very close to Mauny's southern one but starting from Southern Arabia, with penetrations northwards and into Egypt in the east (Map 6.3B). It has the same objection of the absence of early evidence for cattle in the Air. These people would presumably be `Hamites' but might have absorbed a Negroid element from the south on their westward migrations to account for its apparent presence in the Bovidean culture. The Neolithic immigrants, the theories hold, learned the practice of rock art from their hunter predecessors. According to Rhotert these had brought the practice from eastern Spain. This theory will be discussed later. Lhote (1961) also believes that 'the wave of pastoralists that streamed into the Sahara came from the adjacent Upper Nile region' first to the Tibesti then to Tassili and the Hoggar, bypassing the Air. Butzer (1958) argues for a similar route northwestwards from the Upper Nile. Which of the suggested routes is nearest to the truth will only be shown by a great many more firm radiocarbon dates obtained from excavations.

Map 6.3B: Routes of the Cattle-herders and Channels of Diffusion of Rock Art (after H. Rhotert)

Caravan routes of today or historically known Wild animal pictures of the early hunters >— — Migrations of the cattle breeders Rock pictures before the cattle pictures )--- =

38 The Maghreb and Sahara Domestication of sheep and goats — earlier in the Near East — seems to have developed or arrived in North Africa at about the same time as cattle pastoralism. The problem of dating is compounded by the difficulty of distinguishing the bones of domestic breeds from the wild species long present in the region: but by 5,000 BC people at Haua Fteah on the coast of Cyrenaica, Neolithic in their tool kit, were getting about 80 per cent of their meat from domestic sheep or goats. There was no evidence that these people had cattle (Clark, 1970). The chronology for the early phases of rock art in North Africa given above represents I believe a consensus of present opinion but other views place its beginnings much earlier. Professor Graziosi, reporting on discoveries of rock art at the Grotte de Cyrene, Cyrenaica, which are not datable but which might be of Capsian age, argues on stylistic grounds that they belong to the same period as similar art in France, Spain, Italy, Sicily and other sites within what he calls the Province Mediterraneene and to which art of an age of about 11,000 years can be assigned. Conclusions based on stylistic similarity are very difficult to evaluate especially when the art is naturalistic or semi-naturalistic and the subjects are the same. Two representations of, say, a giraffe, one in South Africa and one in the Sahara, made by Stone Age artists with the same means, are bound to have a degree of resemblance. Whether this exceeds what is likely must depend on subjective judgement. Some actual dates therefore will be required before this hypothesis is generally accepted (Graziosi, 1968). Professor Mori bases his argument for Upper Pleistocene age for the beginning of the Bubalus phase on comparative patination. He is well aware of the dangers of the method — the many variables involved — but argues that it can, and should, be applied to engravings with different degrees of patination on the same rock face. If for example the patina on a glyph of a kind known to be about 6,000 years old is slight, then one completely darkened must be many millennia older, perhaps twice as old. On these grounds he dates the earliest art as preNeolithic. The existing people most closely related to the Bovideans are considered to be Peuhl or Fula (also called Fulani, Fulbe), nomadic pastoralists now spread along the Sudanese steppe. They appear to be of mixed race, not predominantly Negroid as they have long fairly straight hair and olive coloured skins. They have a distinctive headdress of the kind called the 'Phrygian cap' which Mori has fotind commonly depicted in the rock paintings of the Fezzan, and

Lhote found at Jabbaren in the Tassili. Keane (1920) classifies them as 'Northern Hamites' or 'NegroHamites'. They have no rock art now but the fact that they embraced Islam might account for that.

(4) Horse Period, also Called Caballine Period (1,200 BC — AD 300 ?) The domesticated horse is believed to have been first introduced into Africa by the Hyksos in Egypt about 1,500 BC and its introduction into Libya to have been somewhat later by the mysterious Peoples of the Sea, Bronze Age people who dominated the Aegean in the thirteenth century BC and ravaged the Egyptian Delta. They made a settlement in Cyrenaica and apparently formed an amicable relationship with the Libyans. Lhote (1961), to whom I am chiefly indebted for what follows, would divide this period into three subperiods all, as the general term implies, having representations of horses, and the vehicles they draw. The art comprises both petroglyphs and paintings. (a) Chariot Sub-Period (1,200 BC — 400 BC) The large pachyderms have disappeared except for the occasional elephant. Other wild animals decrease in numbers of species but include antelope (oryx) and ostriches. Some domesticated cattle still appear, also moufflons and dogs. The style, at first seminaturalistic, becomes more stylised. The older chariot glyphs show two wheels and only one shaft, designed for two horses which are generally depicted in the lateral aspect with legs at full stretch in the so-called (but impossible!) flying gallop — a convention that also appears in the Mycenaean art of Crete. But often the horses were shown in other conventional ways with no attempt at realism, for example, as seen from above, one each side of the shaft and back to back: and very often they were not shown at all, but only the chariot or car (Mauny, 1952, 1954). The flying gallop style (Figure 6.4) appears to be limited to the Central Sahara on tracks leading from the Gulf of Sirte and there is good reason to attribute them to the warrior Garamantes who used them for their sport of hunting 'Troglodytes'. Some pictures, however, show that the light chariot was used for hunting other prey such as antelope. Little attempt was made at realism in the depiction of the vehicles — the artists could not master the perspective — and resort was had to highly schematic

The Maghreb and Sahara 39

Figure 6.4: Petroglyph: Light Chariot with Two Horses (after H. Lhote) Figure 6.5: Petroglyphs: Chariots and Carts (A, B, C and D after R. Mauny; E and F after P.J. and C.A. Munson)

40 The Maghreb and Sahara representation (see Figure 6.5). There are also examples with two or more shafts and four wheels, and some where the draft animals are oxen, not horses (Munson and Munson, 1969). Some were plainly carts, not light war chariots, used for transport and no doubt trade. The human figures shown with the vehicles are also much stylised or schematic, often in the later examples with the body reduced to two triangles like a diabolo. They are armed with javelins and round shields, rarely with bows, and sometimes with a knife tied to the forearm (Figure 6.6). For some reason, possibly to mark the routes, the travellers carved (seldom painted) the schematic pictures of their vehicles profusely along the way all Figure 6.6: Petroglyphs: Human Figures of Horse Period (after R. Mauny)

over the Sahara and Maghreb, except apparently in the east at Aouenat. They are found abundantly in Oran, Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria, Tassili, Fezzan, Hoggar, Adrar des Iforas and Zemmour: see Map 6.4 based on R. Mauny (1952). Since Mauny's study examples have been reported in the Air Massif (Roset, 1971; Milburn, pers. comm.). It is important to stress, however, that the vehicles especially the chariots are far from being identical in type throughout the Sahara. No remains of carts, cars or chariots have been found in archaeological surveys or excavations so the dating of these depends only on the dating of the rock art and from this it seems probable that about 1,000 BC the Libyans were trading as far as the Niger. It was possibly along one of these already established tracks that Herodotus' Nasamonian 'wild young men' made their journey of exploration. During the last two decades doubts have arisen regarding the reality of chariot routes and transSaharan trade (Swanson, 1975). Jean Spruytte has actually reconstructed 'chariots' as they must have been made, has considered what load they could carry, how far in a day a horse (presumably unshod) could travel in a day, and the difficulties of finding fodder and water en route. These considerations give rise to serious doubts which are discussed by Mark Milburn (1979) with an account of Spruytte's findings. But personally I can see no other explanation for the `chariot' glyphs. (b) Horseman Sub-Period (400 BC? — AD 100) Chariots are few, being superseded by mounted men. The diabolo convention of the human figure is general and the weapons the same but the men commonly wear plumed headdresses. The fauna is much the same but even less naturalistic in style. The ridden horses include some in the flying gallop manner. It is assumed that these pictures are later than the time of Herodotus (c.430 BC) since he does not mention the riding of horses by Libyans, although he has much to say about the chariots. In the central Sahara the Libyco-Berber script appears and is believed to have been introduced by the horsemen, probably about 200 BC (Mauny, 1954). (c) Horse and Camel Sub-Period (AD 100? — AD 300) In which both animals appear, otherwise with little change from Sub-Period b. There is some controversy regarding the time of the spread of the camel across North Africa but it was almost certainly not later than AD 300. By then the

The Maghreb and Sahara 41

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Tifinagh (also written Tifinar) script or the Arabic scripts. The human figures are increasingly schematised and their weapons are javelins, swords or firearms. This Period is not yet ended as present peoples still make graffiti on the rocks. Artistically the work shows general degeneration, the animals, like the human figures, much schematised, probably because of the Moslem commandment against realistic representations of living creatures. Some geometrical designs also appear.

(5) Camel Period (AD 300? — Present)

The camel appears without the horse, except in peripheral regions where it could still be used; and with the animals still existing in the Sahara: that is various antelope, ostrich, giraffe (in the South), moufflon, and the domesticates — zebu cattle and goats. The work is commonly accompanied by the

The scripts mentioned above, according to Dr David Diringer (1962) the renowned expert on forms of writing, derived indirectly from the Phoenician alphabet, through the Carthaginian (Punic) script of the Maghreb to produce the Libyco-Berber or early Libyan script which was the progenitor of the Tifinagh script.

42 The Maghreb and Sahara The modern language spoken by the Saharan peoples is call Tamahak in the Hoggar and Tassili-nAjjer, and Tamachek in the South Sahara. The Tifinar/Tifinagh script can be written and read by present day Tuareg as a general rule. Older (LibycoBerber) inscriptions were written in a language readable by, but unintelligible to, the Tuareg (Milburn, pers. comm.). Cup-and-ring petroglyphs which appear to be unique in the region have been found in Western Air (Morris and Milburn, 1977). There is the usual difficulty of dating and their close resemblance to Bronze Age glyphs of Scotland and elsewhere in Europe might be fortuitous (Morris, 1977, 1979). Morris and Milburn mention the sets of small cupules in geometrical patterns used in North Africa and elsewhere for a well-known game. This is similar to the Nine Men's Morris played in Europe which in all probability came to Europe with the Moors (Morris = Moorish as in Morris dancing). We shall note this game with variants right down through Africa. Target-like sets of concentric circles painted in red, yellow and black have also been found in Western Air on the ceiling of a rock shelter. They are considered to be Arabo-Berber and modern in date (Milburn, 1978b). It is doubtful whether any useful generalisations can be made regarding the 'race' of the artists. The earliest type of man who can be associated with any kind of art in North Africa — the Oranian — was most probably, according to Briggs (1955), related to Combe Capelle man of Western Europe, but by the time of the Capsian art of El Mekta he had mixed with other strains described as Negroid and `Boskopoid' (Briggs, 1955) or 'similar to Bushman' (Coon, 1963). But the Mekta and Tafaralt finds were all art mobilier, not parietal art. Among the earliest rock art of North Africa, on the presently available evidence, are possibly the petroglyphs of Kom Ombo described above. No skeletal remains can be associated with the art but the human figures represented show the marked steatopygia of the Khoisan. Apparently next among datable parietal art is that of Abka of about 7,200 BC but there are no physical remains that can be regarded as those of the artists and the human figures do not help. The fact that many have pin heads, or no heads, shows that no attempt was made at naturalism. Judging race by the internal evidence of the art — the bodily and facial features and skin colour depicted — has to be done with much caution. In African rock painting generally the human figure was stylised in varying degrees, heads often featureless or mere

blobs, and with little regard for bodily proportion. As an example of the latter, calculated by the normal width to height ratio some paintings, undoubtedly of Bushmen, show people three metres high. Some characteristics clearly shown such as steatopygia and facial prognathism can be true indicators. Representation of the human figure was plainly also subject to artistic fashion and personal idiosyncrasy in the artist. Colour is used largely arbitrarily without regard to actuality, red often being preferred to the real colour of the object. Elephants, for example, are more often shown as red — or as white, black, or even yellow — than as the natural grey. It is clear also that human figures are often shown with body paint. Obviously the colour used to paint a human figure cannot be taken to be the actual skin colour. To talk of 'white ladies' or 'red-haired people' as Breuil has done is unjustified and misleading. So is the description of figures as 'tall people' In the best period of the Neolithic Bovidean art, however, much care was given to accurate representation of the human form and facial features were shown, so inferences regarding race may be made. It is doubtful though whether it is justified to make judgements such as those of Lhote (1961) speaking of that period. In the painted human figures, which are sometimes life-size, the profiles reveal different racial characteristics. Some of them are European and others Negroid, but the majority have long straight hair and copper-coloured skin, and apparently represent an intermediate type similar to the modern Ethiopians. Lhote also argues that there is no indication of Negro features in the early engravings of Southern Oran and Tassili, and that the people shown are clearly `Europoid' but he is definite that the Round Head paintings of the Tassili show a Negroid population. Other authorities doubt the legitimacy of these identifications (Smith, 1968; Mori, 1965). Says Smith, `My own feeling is that it requires the eye of faith to see any clear indications of race in such simplified human profiles.' Mori is of the same opinion and rejects Lhote's view of the race of the Round Heads. The eye of faith is also necessary to accept the Abbe Breuil's interpretations of races shown in the South African rock paintings. On the scale used the profiles average 3 cm and in the cases cited are on rather rough and speckled granite on which a clear controlled line was hardly possible. Yet the Abbe unhesitatingly identifies 'a typical Mediterranean

The Maghreb and Sahara 43 perhaps Cretan profile' (the 'White Lady of the Brandberg'), 'distinctly Semitic' features (Shamavala, Zimbabwe); and 38 other examples from the Brandberg as 'clearly Semitic'; others 'with long straight nose, also foreigners' or having 'a European type of face' (Breuil, 1949a, 1952c). Mori, writing with regard to the Acacus and the Fezzan generally, summarises the findings by Sergio Sergi in Pre-Islamic tombs of the area, whose occupants he thinks were undoubtedly the people of the rock art. Four main groups were distinguished — one tall, long-headed, and not prognathous, one tall

or of medium height, not prognathous, with wider nose bone, definitely non-Negro, one with combined `euro-african' and Negroform characteristics, and one where Negro features predominate. All these he includes under the terms Europoid or Mediterranean. In reviewing the facial types in the art Mori offers some comments. The figures (see Figure 6.7) are executed on sandstone and the profiles fairly clear, though obviously stylised. In the earliest art in the region, especially of the Round Heads, it is not feasible, he considers, to identify human types. With the coming of the pastoralists the human profiles

Figure 6.7: Facial Types in Saharan Rock Art (after F. Mori) (A-G) In the Round Head Phase art

(H-W) In the Bovidean Phase art (X-Y) In the Horse Phase art

44 The Maghreb and Sahara become more characterised. Many of them are clearly Europoid and the absence, or slight mixture, of Negroid traits is confirmed commonly by the long hair. But that some Negroid element existed in the population is shown by the Negroid mummy of a child found at Uan Muhuggiag and dated about 3,500 BC. The faces show increasing stylisation leading to schematisation with passing time, culminating in the Phase of the Horse where some show a painted blob of a head on a long neck. As to bodily form some features in the pastoral art such as large buttocks, protruding stomach and incurved back, remind one of Khoisan or, as Breuil (Breuil and Lhote, 1954) pointed out with regard to Tassili, more specifically of Hottentot physique. In the Horse Phase the figures, as previously noted, are frequently bi-triangular (diabolo) in form. In some cases the long hair is shown yellowish and Mori argues that this was the true colour as there is other evidence for a blond strain in the Libyans from Egyptian records and mummies; and Kallimachos of Cyrene (third century BC) speaks also of blond Libyans. Mori sees somewhat stronger evidence for Negro representation in the late Bovidean art, but on the whole finds little evidence for it, especially in the art of the Acacus. Breuil (Breuil and Lhote, 1954) interprets some scenes from Tassili as showing Negroes and Whites in various relationships — including that of slaves and masters — but these are certainly subject to many possible interpretations and his intuitive approach both in North and South Africa has been generally reprehended. In the Tassili, for example, he believed he could distinguish a 'tavern scene' and scenes of marriage, courtship, accusation, circumcision, and the exchange or sale of women (one labelled 'Josephine vendue par ses soeurs'), among many others. Both Smith (1968) and Monod (1964) point out that such confident interpretations are not warranted. Breuil finds in the Tassili Bovidean figures some clearly Negro, some Semites, others with big noses neither Semitic nor 'Bushmen', and many with 'dog muzzles' not racially identified. These correspond to Mori's illustrations: Figure 6.7; H, I, L, M, P, Q and R. In general the internal evidence of the art accords with what is known from skeletal remains, early history and the recent ethnographical situation. To sum up it seems one can only say that during the period of the rock art the Central Sahara was inhabited by a very mixed 'Mediterranean' race largely Europoid, but with a Negroid and probably a

Khoisanoid admixture. Mori comments 'without doubt the morphological types remind us of the modern Tuareg'. But many of them are also to be found among the Peuls of the Sahel, who, as already noted, have a good claim to be the descendants of the pastoralists — no doubt with further racial mixture. The problem of whether the rock art of the Maghreb and Sahara was of purely African origin and followed its own course of development, or whether in its beginning, and subsequently, it was influenced from outside is one of the questions most keenly debated by the specialists in that field. The Palaeolithic rock art of France and Cantabria had its beginnings some 20,000 years before the earliest art (as far as we know) appeared in North Africa and — it must be remembered — had outliers in Malaga just across the straits from Morocco. All European and African hunter art shows certain general characteristics not possessed by art of the same culture stage elsewhere in the world, for example, America and Australia. This will be discussed in a later chapter. Yet the earliest African art, both mobilier and parietal, though also the work of hunters is seen when examined in detail to differ in some respects from that of Palaeolithic Europe. Most importantly Palaeolithic rock art almost totally ignores the human figure and in African art the latter features predominantly from the beginning. But this feature — human scenes — is shared with the so-called Levantine or Eastern Spanish parietal art generally considered of the Mesolithic period dating from about 6,000 BC (Walker, 1971, 1972). Another element, the use of the bow (doubtfully present in the Palaeolithic art) in hunting scenes, is common to both art regions (Figure 6.8). Graziosi's hypothesis, on stylistic grounds, of cross-Mediterranean influence at the end of the Palaeolithic has been already noted. Intercourse across the Mediterranean is a virtual certainty by 6,000 BC or earlier, as there was trade in obsidian and cattle with the Greek islands and the obsidian was exported to North Africa by that date. Nevertheless the views of the experts regarding Levantine Spanish influence on North Africa's rock art are contradictory. Graziosi (1942), Breuil (Breuil and Lhote, 1957; Breuil, 1957a) and Bosch-Gimpera (1955) argue for it. So does Rhotert (see Map 6.3B) who proposes a route of artistic diffusion from Spain through the Maghreb to the hunters of the Central Sahara from whom the incoming Neolithic pastoralists learned the practice. Monod (1964) is critical of the theory pointing out the huge distances between, for example, Tassili and

The Maghreb and Sahara 45

Figure 6.8: Examples of Levantine Spanish Rock Paintings (A after J.M. de Barandiataran; B and C after H. Kuhn) (A) Hunter and stag, Vallorta (B) Hunters with hinds and stag, Vallorta (C) Hunters and pig

the Spanish Levant and the presence only of petroglyphs, without paintings, between these regions; and that the petroglyphs are of the Bubaline type with virtually no resemblance to the Levantine paintings. Lhote (1961) also expresses the view that 'the great Bubalus engravings owe nothing to European art and the analogies to be found in the engravings are probably only accidental'. Certainly the scale of the Levantine work is very small (human figures as tiny as 5 mm) compared with the Bubaline art. Michael Walker (1971) in a very thorough recent study totally rejects the idea 'that the Levantine rock paintings have North African associations'. He points out that the Capsian of North Africa cannot be compared with the Post-Palaeolithic of the Peninsula and that the Capsian is an inland industry not to be found in the coastal areas nearest to the Peninsula

from which migrants from Africa would embark. To me this is perhaps going too far. Not a movement of a group but only one or two adventurous men could have carried the idea of representational art either way leaving no physical traces en route. And as the shores of Spain and Morocco are so clearly visible each from the other, and given questing human nature, I believe men must have crossed to the other side very early in pre-history and at the latest in Mesolithic times simply 'because it was there'. As above noted there were seagoing craft in the Mediterranean from at least as early as 6,000 BC. Long before that time, by 40,000 BC or earlier, men had crossed the wide strait between New Guinea and Australia. If we suppose that the influence was in the South to North direction there may be a little more to commend it. It would account for the bow — almost

46 The Maghreb and Sahara certainly an African invention — in Levantine art. resemblances, rather more likely also to indicate Perhaps some engravers from North Africa crossed influence in the reverse direction. The animal-headed the straits, came into contact with the rock paintings human is a general African concept as shown by of Malaga, experimented with paint, adapted their art masked dancers in West Africa and in the rock art of to the new medium, mingled with the local people and Tanzania and Southern Africa. It is not necessary to produced the Levantine art. suppose an Egyptian origin. Was there influence from the Near East? As noted in Chapter 1 there is much rock art in the form of petroglyphs from Turkey to Southern Arabia though The Art of North Africa none of it can be shown with certainty to be older than the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, say seventh millennium The qualities of the art of North Africa, as such, and BC. By this time, or shortly afterwards, the earliest that of the other regions will be discussed in a later known mural art (paintings) was executed at Catal chapter on a comparative basis but some comments Hiiyuk in Anatolia. Rhotert hypothesises that one are appropriate here. One must generalise but it stream of art flowed from Southern Arabia to Africa should be remembered that, as at all times there have (see Map 6.3B) but the age of the Arabian glyphs is been exceptional and especially individualistic artists, uncertain and probably not great enough to predate there are exceptions to every generalisation. The early petroglyphs of animals reflect the the nearest African rock art; and there is little stylistic resemblance (Anati, 1968b). This must be regarded as observant eye of the hunter who spends so much of an unsubstantiated hypothesis as no doubt Rhotert his time watching and stalking them. Examples are realised. the taut stance of the crouching lioness about to The relationship between Egyptian culture and art spring, the mother elephant protecting her calf from a and the Saharan art is also a long and inconclusively leopard, the clash of the giant buffalo bulls, the debated subject. The petroglyphs of Kom Ombo in lioness with her cubs at a kill of wild boar and with Upper Egypt are old enough and naturalistic enough attendant jackals (Figure 6.3). These petroglyphs, in style to be the work of people who may have moved however, also show the technical limitations of the into the Sahara during the wet phase and initiated the artists. The animals' bodies are shown only in lateral engraving art there. The subjects included cattle in profile with only the two near-side legs; the heads great numbers and according to Smith (1968) the either also in profile or turned full face (as the lioness people were possibly in 'a very incipient phase of in Figure 6.3D). The horns of the bulls are in 'twisted cattle domestication' although this is not certain. It perspective'. A three-quarter view involving foremight be wild cattle that are depicted. Perhaps, then, shortening was beyond the artist's powers, but the these people conceived, or learned from others, the scene of the lioness and cubs at the kill shows some practice of cattle herding and needed to move out of advance towards perspective. Another remarkable feature of the work is the the valley with their stock on to the grassy steppe of the time. Some human figures as already noted show scale. The lioness, the elephant and the fighting buffaloes for example are life-size; elsewhere many the steatopygia of the Khoisan. The rock art of Abka in the Northern Sudan near glyphs are larger than life. In the Wadi Djerat of the the border with Egypt is of the geometrical kind Tassili there are rhino over 26 ft (7.9 m) long, giraffes (Figure 6.1) and cannot be related to the nearest up to 23 ft (7 m) tall, and humans 11 ft (3.4 m) tall, Saharan work. Nothing like the Bubaline or Round but among them are others very much smaller than Head art is found in Egypt and it now appears that the life-size (Lhote, 1961). In the Round Head phase the art consisted of Bovidean art of the Sahara was well developed before there was anything comparable in the Nile valley. It paintings with few, if any, engravings, and the therefore seems that any later influence there was painter's art developed rapidly. Many colours were came from the West to the East, but the weight of brought into use, white, yellow, black, even green, opinion seems to be that there was some later although red remained the favourite. The use of two or more in the same painting was common to produce feedback in dynastic times. Certain motifs, such as 'solar' discs between the the bichromes and polychromes. The delicacy of the horns of animals and animal-headed human figures, painting could have been achieved only by using a fine found in Saharan rock and Egyptian mural art, have hair brush. Many paintings of humans are outlined in been thought to show influence from Egypt westwards white: whether this was painted as a line, or is the but on the dating evidence seem, if not fortuitous edge of a white primer showing, is not clear from the

The Maghreb and Sahara 47 reproductions. The latter is fairly common in South are in rock shelters and petroglyphs on open sites. This rule, with very few exceptions, applies throughAfrica. In contrast to the Bubaline engravings in which the out Africa from the Maghreb to the Cape. We cannot human figure is depicted less frequently and less know whether paintings were also executed on exnaturalistically than the animals, the human figure posed rocks — and have disappeared — or whether acquires foremost importance, and, except for the some of the engravings were coloured in, but we do featureless heads, is often beautifully drawn with know that petroglyphs are rare in caves and shelters. close regard to anatomical detail and good propor- Two reasons for this may be suggested. If the artists tion. Complex scenes showing everyday and cultural were masters of both techniques it was easier to paint activities are involved. The human figures, small at than carve the rock and the kinds of rock of which the the beginning of the period, increase with time and shelters are formed, for example, sandstone, granite reach as much as 16 ft (4.9 m) in height, and the and schist, do not yield to the engraver a good animals are often life-size, making these representa- contrast when he makes his cuts. This is well tions, as Lhote points out, among the largest pre- exemplified at Twyfelfontein in Namibia, one of the few sites in Southern Africa at which both paintings historic paintings in the world. In the Bovidean art, especially in the paintings, the and petroglyphs occur. As the Rudners have pointed tendencies of the Round Head phase are further out the exposed slabs of sandstone, weathered to a developed. The art is more humanised than any red colour, were used for the engravings. The almost preceding rock art; social scenes are common, and the white unweathered rock in shelters was used only by human figures are depicted so realistically in some the painters (Rudner and Rudner, 1970). There is cases as to give the impression of being actual evidence from two sites where engravings were made portraits. As the early art of the Near East was much in sandstone and schist rock shelters — at Balerno in stylised, and so was the Palaeolithic art and the the Transvaal and at Chifubwa Stream in Zambia Mesolithic art of Europe as far as the human figure respectively — that the artist was not happy with the and face were concerned, the Bovidean may be result, as he then coloured in some, at least, of his regarded as the first realistic representations of people glyphs. We can infer that the artists preferred the less in the history of art. Many are exquisitely drawn. Burchard Brentjes (1969) goes as far as to say 'the laborious and more expressive art of painting, but most beautiful renderings of the human form that also that they wished their work to last and generally prehistory can show'. The scenes are full of life and did not paint in unprotected positions. There the movement and often show 'depth' with some measure chosen technique was engraving. A theory to account for the differing situations of of perspective, but the horns of cattle are still shown the paintings and petroglyphs in South Africa — where in 'twisted perspective'. There is some good naturalistic work in the the two forms of art are almost entirely separate paintings of animals, more so with wild than domestic geographically — was first put forward by G.W. Stow animal subjects, but on the whole there is a falling off (1905). He proposed that they were the work of in this respect. This difference embodies an interest- different peoples or different tribes of Bushmen: noning reversal. In the Palaeolithic art of Europe and the painting engravers who lived on the plains and hunter art throughout Africa the animals are generally koppies and non-engraving painters who lived in the depicted naturalistically with human figures more rock shelters of the more mountainous regions. This stylised, but the Saharan Neolithic art (with some theory implies a degree of artistic specialisation, with notable exceptions) shows rather more concern for whole tribes whose artists only painted and other accuracy of proportion and detail in the human figures tribes who only engraved, which I find impossible to accept, especially as the two arts were coeval for than in the animals. The petroglyphs are less detailed and generally many centuries and in contiguous regions; mixing, physical and cultural, would certainly have taken show decline in artistic merit. Towards the end of the Bovidean period and place. It is also difficult to suppose that nomadic during the subsequent phases, the art, paintings and hunters would have remained within fixed boundaries petroglyphs, and with regard to both animal and so strictly and so long. It could be argued that the human subjects, became progressively more stylised painters, accustomed to living in rock shelters, would not wish to leave the areas in which the shelters are and finally schematic. Regarding the situation of the works of art in found, but there seems no reason why the engravers North Africa the general rule can be noted: paintings should not wander into these areas also, as we know

48 The Maghreb and Sahara historically they did (and see Willcox, 1963a, 1973a). If the theory could be sustained for South Africa it certainly cannot be for the Sahara where, in the Hoggar, Tassili and Fezzan, paintings and petroglyphs of the same periods occur together. One other difference in the mode of occurrence of paintings compared with petroglyphs is also common to African rock art generally. Superimpositions of petroglyphs, although they do occur, are rare, but very common among rock paintings. Lhote mentions one site in the Tassili at which he distinguished no fewer than 16 layers, and in South Africa up to five or six have been noted. Making one's picture over another mars both, so, whilst the rarity of the occurrence among petroglyphs is understandable, the frequency among paintings is hard to account for. The question will be considered in a later chapter.

The Canary Islands The art of another area, belonging to North Africa but commonly overlooked, must be glanced at before carrying our survey southwards — and that is the Canary Islands. The name of the archipelago — to the Romans Canariae Insulae — has been explained by a remark in an ancient report preserved in the writings of Pliny according to which King John II of Mauritania on an expedition about 40 BC found huge dogs on islands in the Western Ocean. In fact the aborigines of the Canary Islands had dogs of several breeds, but none of them was exceedingly large. One of them, on the contrary, was a small hairless breed, fattened for eating — a custom that was shared by tribes in West Africa and Mexico. It is, however, uncertain whether canes (dogs in Latin) really had anything to do with the Canary Islands; more probably there existed an ancient name of uncertain origin beginning with kan — that in historical times led to a legend of 'dog islands', as it reminded the reader of the current name for dog. The name applied to the white-skinned aborigines of the Canary Islands is `Guanches', although it originally meant 'The Ones of Tenerife' only. The history of the population of the archipelago is widely disputed, as some authors stress very ancient traits having regard to comparative religion, the total absence of metal, carts and wheels, archaic stone architecture and the affinities of the language spoken before the Spanish conquest. Other scholars point to apparently Roman handmills used before the conquest and argue that the islands could have been populated in rather recent times, from the African

Northwest, as there are affinities between Berber cultural and physical traits and those of the Canary islanders (personal communication from the multidisciplinary `Institutum Canarium' in Hallein, Austria). In fact there can be no doubt that the Canary Islands were visited occasionally by Carthaginians — Hanno is said to have been there, but whether Hanno's voyage ever took place has been seriously doubted by scholars (Davies, 1980) — and by Roman traders who lost and left amphorae in the ocean near the shores of the islands. Although the islanders apparently made little use of seagoing vessels (only one source mentions dugout canoes with mat sails) probably slave traders' raids from the Mediterranean were responsible for the aborigines' retreat from the shores. Obviously the islands must have been peopled by seafarers originally. But when did they reach the islands? Most probably in different waves in different times, the most ancient wave being a heavy-boned physical type with Cr6magnoid features, and a later one with Caucasoid features and a more elegant appearance. Fair-haired and blueeyed individuals among the aborigines were often reported by the conquerors. Petroglyphs on the Canary Islands are common and the most archaic appear to be concentric circles, `labyrinths', and spirals closely resembling glyphs at Neolithic and Bronze Age sites in North-Western Europe. These petroglyphs, appearing on the island of La Palma at some 30 sites, are very similar to those of Galicia, Brittany, Ireland and Scotland, and the resemblances almost compel belief in connections between all these areas by 'megalithic' seafarers who seem to have reached the several shores earlier than 2,000 BC. Other types of petroglyph considered probably more recent include schematic human figures, squares, 'ladders', 'trees' and perhaps a ship. There are also inscriptions in the strict sense, made probably by transient visitors, the more archaic resembling some Cretan signs, the more recent reminiscent of the ancient Libyan script. There have been attempts to read some of the latter as if they were Tifinagh but because of the difficulties of interpreting 'ancient Libyan' scripts in general these readings are hardly convincing (Herbert Nowak, pers. comm). Milburn (also pers. comm.) is even more definite in saying that `Tifinagh does not occur'. Certainly some of the characters do not appear in Tifinagh. A summary of the petroglyph and rock painting sites — for which I am indebted to Nowak — is as follows:

The Maghreb and Sahara 49 La Palma. More than 40 sites; Fuente de la Zarza, Zarzita, Buracas and Belmaco are the most important ones (mainly spirals, concentric circles, labyrinths, meanders and `serpenti-forms'). Gran Canaria. Geometric paintings (triangles, rectangles, circles, etc.) in `Cueva Pintada' (Galdar), `Cuatro Puertas' and a few other caves, and also schematic human figures on Majada Alta. Petroglyphs of 'Libyan' inscriptions, human figures, vessels and ligatures, etc., in the well-known Barranco de Balos. Lanzarote. Several sites with combinations of signs suggesting inscriptions, some geometrical signs and scribblings in Guenia and also in the south of the island. Concentric circles in Zonzamas. Since all these sites were recently discovered, research work has just been started. Fuerteventura. Only one site is known at present. Many stylised footprints towards the summit of Mt Tindaya. Hierro. In El Julan there are 'megalithic' petroglyphs and three other differentiated inscriptions on a single slab. Further inscriptions of this kind are found in La Caleta, Barranco de Candia and Tejeleita. New discoveries have just been announced. Tenerife and La Gomera. No inscriptions, no petroglyphs. Nowak adds that a thorough analysis of the petroglyphic material may give new insight into the fascinating history and pre-history of the Canary Islands, the `Insulae Fortunatae' (Isles of the Blest) of

the ancients, which were visited by Europeans from the Middle Ages but finally conquered by the Spaniards at the time when Columbus found the New World. The last Guanches of Tenerife were conquered in 1496, four years after Columbus' first voyage. It appears that the conquistadores forcibly closed a museum of archaic cultures on the margin of the Old World. Antonio Beltran (1975) in a recent paper makes one particularly interesting observation regarding the position of the petroglyphs, especially those of La Palma. In rock shelters near a water source, according to him, they involve spirals and concentric circles associated with meanders; whereas on cliffs by the sea circular or semi-circular designs predominate. He suggests that rainmaking rites took place at the water source sites. This association of rainmaking rites with the execution of concentric circle designs is supposition, but it is at least a curious coincidence that the same association of such rites with at least the presence of the circles occurs, as we shall see, in Uganda and Tanzania; and other rituals of unknown purpose are known to have occurred at other sites similarly decorated in Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia and Mocambique. Resemblances of some of the glyphs to others on the North-West African mainland have been pointed out by I. Schwidetzky (1976). The even closer resemblance of the older petroglyphs to those of the Atlantic coast of Europe has been mentioned. The equally close resemblance especially of the spirals, multiple circles and meanders to those of various sites in Namibia/SW Africa — which will later be described and illustrated — tempts one to a still more daring theory of a voyage down the coast of Africa by the same seafaring people who took this combination of motifs to the Canary Islands.

SO The Maghreb and Sahara

Plate 6.1: Rock painting site, Ti-n-Aboteka, Tassili Courtesy of Jurgen Kunz

Plate 6.2: Petroglyph. This beast 2 m long has been thought by some to represent the extinct buffalo. Apart from the size, however, it could be a hyena with ears, not horns, shown. South Algeria. Bubaline Phase Courtesy of Mark Milbum

The Maghreb and Sahara 51

Plate 6.3: Petroglyph. Bird and antelope. The odd figure, centre right, has been interpreted as a trap or net, but could perhaps be the rear view of a fat human being. Morocco. Bubaline Phase Courtesy of Mark Milburn

Plate 6.4: Painting of masked woman. Sefar, Tassili. Round Head Phase Courtesy of iiirgen Kunz

52 The Maghreb and Sahara Plate 6.5: Archer (1.80 m high) with companion and small antelope. Bovidean Phase (?) Courtesy of Jurgen Kunz

Plate 6.6: Part of a battle between archers. Figures almost life-size. Sefar, Tassili. Bovidean Phase (?) Courtesy of JUrgen Kunz

The Maghreb and Sahara 53 Plate 6.7: Bovid in white (probably unfinished), also goat (?) painted over small animals. Sefar, Tassili. Horse Period (?) Courtesy of Jurgen Kunz

Plate 6.8: Bichrome painting of antelope. Sefar, Tassili. Period uncertain Courtesy of Jurgen Kunz

Plate 6.9: Dancers, part of group of eight similar figures. Sefar, Tassili. Round Head Phase Courtesy of Jurgen Kunz

54 The Maghreb and Sahara Plate 6.10: Petroglyphs. Concentric arcs and spirals. Fuente de la Zarza, La Palma, Canary Islands Courtesy of Jean McMann

Plate 6.11: Petroglyphs. Spirals. Fuente de la Zarza, La Palma, Canary Islands Courtesy of Jean McMann

Bovidean Outliers: the Horn of Africa, Kenya, Southern Sudan and West Africa

The Horn The rock art of the Horn which is here taken to include Ethiopia, Eritrea and the territory of the Afars and Issas (Djibouti) as well as Somalia, consists, as far as it is representational, very largely of paintings and petroglyphs of domesticated cattle. The time of the beginning of cattle herding in the region, therefore, determines the maximum possible age of these representations. The date, unfortunately, is not known with any certainty. As noted in Chapter 5 there is some evidence for cattle in Western Kenya from about 3,000 BC, and David Phillipson (1977) has argued on linguistic grounds that these and their herders probably came from Ethiopia. If this is so then clearly the practice of cattle herding was even earlier there; but there is no direct evidence to confirm this. Desmond Clark considers the 3,000 BC date to be very doubtful and thinks 2,000 BC to be more likely for the first appearance of cattle and perhaps ovicaprids (sheep and goats) in Ethiopia (Clark, pers. comm.). Phillipson mentions cattle remains from a cave at Lalibela near Lake Tana (Map 7.1), dated to the first millennium BC, as the earliest archaeological evidence, but considers the identification to be inconclusive. Recent work (Desmond Clark and G.R. Prince, 1978) carries the date of the introduction of cattle herding in the region somewhat further back. A trial excavation by Clark in a rock shelter at Laga Oda found cattle bones in a level dated to 1,500 BC and this, of course, could be far from the beginning. Also of great interest in that dig was that the radiocarbon dates ranged from 15,000 BC to AD 1500 and the whole associated stone industry was fully microlithic. Of equal interest was the fact that examination of the cutting edges of the microlithic blades from their earliest appearance to the latest showed the kind of

wear caused by cutting plant materials, probably wild cereals. The occupiers and presumed painters of the cave were not solely dependent on their herds for food, but collected wild foods and no doubt hunted as well. Clark (1954) looks at the historical evidence afforded by the mural paintings in Queen Hatshepsut's temple at Deir el Bahri, Thebes, recording the famous expedition to the Land of Punt. This shows the people of that land as having two breeds of cattle and the date would be about 1,500 BC. Punt is considered by Breasted and most other authorities to have been on the African coast towards the southern end of the Red Sea. Clark also informs me in correspondence that paintings of fat-tailed sheep occur at a cave called Serkama as well as being reported from other cave sites at Laga Oda and Laga Gafra (see below); but the time of the introduction of this stock, almost certainly from Arabia, is also uncertain. Petroglyphs of these sheep are common in Central Arabia where they are dated by Anati (1968b) as between about 3,000 — 1,000 BC, the petroglyphs that is, not the sheep, which continued to be herded and were mentioned by Herodotus as being there in the fifth century BC. When they were first taken across the narrow sea is again not clear, but there was extensive intercourse between Arabia and the Horn from about 1,000 BC and Anati (pers. comm., see Willcox, 1966) thinks probably in the first half of the first millennium BC. At the Cape of Good Hope the first sheep historically known were of the fat-tailed kind and as sheep bones there, presumably from the same breed, are dated to about the beginning of our Era, this leaves reasonable time for the long drift of sheep herders to the Cape. In short the archaeological and historical evidence serves only to date the beginning of the rock art in the Horn of Africa within very wide limits: any time after 55

56

Bovidean Outliers: the Horn of Africa, Kenya, Southern Sudan and West Africa

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Map 7.1: North-East Africa — Rock Art Sites

about 3,000 BC is possible, but about 2,000 BC is more probable, for cattle representations; and after about 1,000 BC but most probably about 300 BC for the sheep. The time of introduction of the camel is even more speculative. Nor can we look to the rock art to establish the time of the introduction of cattle or sheep herding: this too is datable only within wide limits. The breed of cattle shown in the early art is humpless and long-horned resembling cattle known from Egyptian records to have been present in Nubia early in the third millennium BC. (Although the cattle are shown long-horned in the rock art and the Egyptian murals Desmond Clark reminds me that the actual cattle remains found in the Sahara are shorthorned.) The cattle of Arabia were also short-horned. On the probabilities, it was from Nubia that herding was brought to Ethiopia and Kenya by people of the Bovidean culture who introduced at the same time their practice of rock art. The existing paintings and

petroglyph§, however, could be very much later in execution. Zebu humped cattle are the only breed now herded in the region, at least among the Galla and Somali peoples. Representations of zebus are known from Axumite sites of the early centuries AD (J.D. Clark, pers. comm.). As the migrants did not take the horse with them it is probable on this ground as well as others that the movement of the cattle-herders was before the domesticated horse appeared in North Africa, that is before about 1,200 BC. In favour of great age for the earlier cattle representations it has been argued (Graziosi, 1964) that as they do not depict the zebu (Bos indicus), believed to have been introduced by Semitic-speakers from Arabia in the first millennium BC, they probably predate their coming. But this is an unsubstantial argument! Cattle-breeders tend to be highly conservative and the appearance of a new breed in the

Bovidean Outliers: the Horn of Africa, Kenya, Southern Sudan and West Africa 57 region does not mean that they will necessarily adopt it or, if they do, will abandon the old breed. This indeed is exemplified among the later pastoral scenes in the paintings in which either breed or both together occur. Some rather doubtful examples of zebu cattle do occur at Laga Oda (Cervieek, 1971) but in contexts and in styles that do not relate them certainly to the paintings of the straight-back breed, so they might as well be later additions. One of them certainly is, as it is superimposed on a straight-backed animal. As early as 1914 Leo Frobenius led an expedition to Eritrea which copied by ink drawings petroglyphs at a number of sites in the Hamasen region west of Asmara. These and the field notes on situation, patination, size and technique are in the possession of the Frobenius Institute, Frankfurt, and have only recently been published (Cervieek, 1976). A description of these petroglyphs will be given later in this chapter. The Ethiopian rock art next to be recorded is situated in three limestone rock shelters near Harar at the sites Genda-Biftou, Porc-Epic and Laga Oda. The Porc-Epic shelter was visited by the famous palaeontologist and controversial theologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who dug a test trench in it to determine the associated cultural material. The industries in the deposit were a 'Wilton' type overlying Magosian (Clark, 1954). The other two sites were discovered by Father P.F. Azaiz. The two first named were studied by the Abbe Breuil (1934b) and a note was added based on information sent to him by Azafiz regarding the Laga Oda site. Three nearby sites, Saka Sharifa, Bake Khallo and Errer Kimiet, discovered by Count Bjorn von Rosen were later reported by Desmond Clark (1954) and another very recently by Pavel Cervieek and Ulrich Braukamper (1975) at Laga Gafra. The Porc-Epic paintings in red, brown and yellow comprise a score of human figures, much stylised, but one showing steatopygia (which is common in Somali women) and one wearing a skirt. The animals range from semi-naturalistic to schematic and are identified by Breuil all as wild animals including elephant, antelope, buffalo, jackal, perhaps ostrich, and — surprisingly — a stag, believed as far as Africa is concerned to be now confined to the Atlas Mountains. Breuil mentions rumours that the animal still exists in forests around Lake Tana and remarks on the existence of a painting of one in a church at ZaraBrouk in the Addiet district of Ethiopia erroneously called by the artist an eland. This picture, which is recent, was in all probability taken from a book. The Porc-Epic painting which is not datable might have a

similar origin, but at Bur Eibi in Somalia a dig by Graziosi in a rock shelter disclosed what was thought to be the bone of a cervid (deer) among those of giraffe, elephant and other more typically African fauna. This is now believed to be very unlikely and a misidentification (J.D. Clark, pers. comm.) and the continued existence of these animals near Lake Tana has not been confirmed. Clark considers the PorcEpic paintings to be late and quite unlike the early style art. At Genda-Biftou Breuil claimed to distinguish eight series of paintings and to have established their sequence in time. He does not give the evidence or reasoning in detail. Clark has simplified his eight series into two: an earlier naturalistic series (I would say semi-naturalistic) and a later schematic one. In the earlier series a feline and perhaps some of the other animals are wild (antelope?) but the majority are herded long-horned and humpless cattle, some with suckling calves. Among the herders, who are shown full face with legs apart, one man has a bow and is shooting at the feline in protection of his herd. He appears to be wearing the Libyan sheath. Breuil identifies buffaloes among the herded beasts. This animal is not known to have been domesticated in Africa and this may rather depict another example of the North African practice of horn deformation. The cattle are depicted in the lateral aspect with variegated colouring and with only two legs shown, one front and one rear (Figure 7.1). The horns are in `twisted perspective'. The udders of the cows are carefully painted. The intense concern of the pastoralist with his cattle shows through. It is notable that there are no hunting scenes if the protective action of the bowman is excepted. In the 'schematic' series the cattle are somewhat more stylised and the human figures extremely schematised, looking like a thin capital H. Some of them according to Breuil seem to be engaged in a `corrida' with two bulls (or perhaps antelope) (Figure 7.2). Clark points out that the dress and weapons of the more naturalistic human figures are consistent with those of the present 'Hamitic' inhabitants of the area. In his remarks on Laga Oda Breuil justly points out the stylistic similarity of the cattle paintings to those at Djebel Ouenat (Auoenat). The site has two rock shelters, double storey fashion one above the other, the upper stage having, according to Breuil, a 148 ft (45 m) panel of paintings numbering about a thousand. In addition to pastoral scenes there are stated to be pictures of elephants, rhinos, giraffes, antelopes, buffaloes, lions, leopards, hyenas, etc. As

58

Bovidean Outliers: the Horn of Africa, Kenya, Southern Sudan and West Africa

Figure 7.1: Rock Paintings of Genda-Biftou, Sourre (after H. Breuil)

Figure 7.2: Rock Paintings of Genda-Biftou, Sourre (after H. Breuil)

at Genda-Biftou some cows are suckling their calves, and there is a scene of defence of a herd against wild animals. In 1941 the site was visited and the paintings photographed by W.B. Fagg who also made some copies. From Fagg's material and information Clark (1954) added his comments. As shown by many cases of superimposition the paintings form two series, the earlier naturalistic and predominantly of domestic cattle, and the later schematic, also as Genda-Biftou. One animal, probably an ox, seems to have a rider. Some of the schematic paintings show humans with shields or with bows and arrows. Surface material indicated a Wilton industry. Clark's summary of the Laga Oda art, based on second hand observations, has been superseded by the publication of the report of another expedition of

the Frobenius Institute in 1950/2 headed by Adolf E. Jenson, which studied and recorded the rock art in detail (Cervi'&k, 1971). Possibly because many of the paintings had been obscured by soot from fires lit in the shelter, which is still used, the expedition was unable to find any of the elephants, rhinos, antelopes, buffaloes, lions, leopards or hyenas, or the scene of the defence of a herd against wild beasts mentioned by Breuil. Nor could J.D. Clark who does not think they are there (pers. comm.). Nor could they find the painting of a human figure probably riding an ox; and the total number of paintings turned out to have been exaggerated. In general the paintings conform to the classification given above for Genda-Biftou, with a seminaturalistic series, mainly of cattle, and a later schematic one (Figure 7.3). There are some fat-tailed

Bovidean Outliers: the Horn of Africa, Kenya, Southern Sudan and West Africa 59

Figure 7.3: Rock Paintings of Laga Oda: Early Series, long-horned cattle; Later Series, zebu cattle and man (after P. ervieek) Figure 7.4: Rock Paintings of Laga Oda. Cattle, fat-tailed sheep and man (after P. CerviZek) Figure 7.5: Rock Paintings of Laga Oda. (A) Ant-bear (B) Giraffe (C) Camel (after P. Cervie'ek)

Figure 7.6: Rock Paintings of Laga Oda. Branded cattle (after P. Cervfeek)

Figure 7.7: Rock Paintings of Laga Oda. 'H' figures (schematised humans ?) and geometries (after P. Cervi6ek)

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Bovidean Outliers: the Horn of Africa, Kenya, Southern Sudan arid-West Africa

sheep, in one case appearing with and in the same colour and style as some of the cattle (Figure 7.4), and there are some goats. Also there is a semi-naturalistic ant-bear and more schematised giraffe (Figure 7.5) and possibly ibex. Unlike the cattle, the goats, the giraffe and the ant-bear have all four legs painted. As mentioned above there are also two or three cattle which might be zebus and one undoubted camel (Figure 7.5c). Some of the cattle have marked on their rumps or shoulders what are most probably cattle brands (Figure 7.6). Among the anthropomorphs there is one stylised man resembling those at Genda-Biftou and holding an object which might be a shield; and there are several of the highly schematised capital H figures as also noted at Genda-Biftou. The latter are shown in scenes with cattle except in one case where a figure stands alone, and another where five of them are associated with a circle-and-ray 'solar' disc and two irregular ovals also with 'rays' (Figure 7.7). The most numerous and most puzzling designs are 250-350 ovals each with one to four dots within it and usually with a vertical stroke on the left side. These have been thought to represent 'soles of feet' or sandal imprints, or shields, or even tombstones. They are, however, found in orderly rows of up to 30 together with cattle and my own guess would be that they are cattle brands used as tally marks to record the numbers of an owner's herd, the number of dots depending on the identity of the herdsman (Figure 7.8). Figure 7.8: Rock Paintings of Laga Oda. Cattle and probably cattle brands used as tallies. Also a camel (after P. Cervi6ek)

Still more information should become available regarding this site as Clark in 1975 led an expedition himself from the University of California and with Alison Galloway traced all the paintings in both shelters at Laga Oda, and made a trial dig in the lower shelter as already mentioned. The report remains to be published in full but some notes on the paintings, together with an analysis of the stone industry, have appeared (Clark and Prince, 1978). Von Rosen's (1949) sites were also described by Clark and illustrated with photographs in the major work The Prehistoric Cultures of the Horn of Africa (Clark, 1954) which laid a firm and broad foundation for the archaeology of the region; and described the rock art at all the sites known at the time. At Saka Sharifa the paintings include some rather poorly drawn cattle, more like those of Porc-Epic than those of Genda-Biftou and Laga Oda; a few human figures, a possible hunting scene in which a bowman aims at an ostrich, a naturalistic jackal, a possible elephant in outline, and also some better drawn line drawings of cattle, one with a calf and one clearly showing a brand mark. Bake Khallo has a few paintings in outline only and described by Clark as paired 'soles of feet', curving lines partly joined together and meeting at a single point, rectangular motifs like a child's drawing of a window, kidney-shaped or heart-shaped designs, and what is considered by Von Rosen to be a naturalistic painting of a butterfly. The Errer Kimiet site has two shelters with paintings which are not described in much detail. At

Bovidean Outliers: the Horn of Africa, Kenya, Southern Sudan and West Africa 61 one shelter there is a group of humpless long-horned cattle, and human figures possibly bearing bundles on their heads, among other motifs. These are in redbrown paint. At the other shelter the paintings are all in white, mostly domestic cattle of the usual type but with a feline and some schematised human figures which Clark compares to the capital H paintings at Genda-Biftou. Again the associated industry is Wilton. The most recently discovered rock painting site in the Harar district is Laga Gafra (Cervieek and Braukamper, 1975). The paintings all appear to be of about the same age, and as at Errer Kimiet they are in reddish-brown. They are rather crudely executed although there is one long-horned cow with a suckling calf which compares with those of Genda-Biftou. Others are more stylised. Some figures, not very clear, are interpreted as fat-tailed sheep, and as a humped bovid. The human figures are so schematised that little can be learnt from them. Cervieek interprets some as having 'hypertrophied phali' but I would suggest that what is represented is more probably the Libyan penis sheath. Another group of limestone rock shelters with paintings exists in Northern Somalia on the fault scarp of the Gulf of Aden, at places named Tug Gerbakele, Tug Khaboba, Dombosleh, Balleh and Gala-Ad (see Map 7.1). These were described by the well-known prehistorian the late M.C. Burkitt and his associate P.E. Glover (Burkitt and Glover, 1946) and their accounts were also summarised by J.D. Clark (1954). The paintings have enough in common to be considered and described as a whole. They are in various colours — black, red, white and grey — and they are almost entirely representations of wild animals, with possibly a few cattle, executed in stylised to schematic manner. There is nothing here that I would call even semi-naturalistic. The animals are not always easily identifiable but are thought to include elephants, giraffe, lion, kudu, oryx, wild ass, baboon, a bird — the hornbill — and perhaps a frog. Human figures present are much schematised but one exhibits steatopygia. There are a few geometrical and amorphous designs considered very late and mostly tribal marks. The most interesting site archaeologically is Tug Gerbakele because petroglyphs occur there with the paintings and in superimposition. The sequence is: oldest, paintings in black, over which are vertical and horizontal scratches; then pecked representations of animals which might be cattle or camels; over these animals in red and geometrical motifs. This shows that painting and petroglyphs were being executed

here at about the same time. At none of the sites was occupation material recovered as evidence of the identity of the artists. Another site nearer the tip of the 'Horn' at Karin Heganeh was reported by Mr Stephen Stock to Desmond Clark and by him to us. The paintings, as described, sound more like those around Harar than those of the group last discussed, as a scene of a herd of cattle is depicted — the cows hornless but the bulls long-horned — with the herdsman shown naked. There is, away from the main scene, a small painting of a camel, which is in poorer style and may be later. These paintings, as far as I know, have not been copied, so further comparison is not possible. No associated industry was recorded but is probably present as there is a floor deposit in the shelter. In Southern Somalia a pair of painted shelters at Bur Eibe is also reported by Clark. Most of the work is geometrical, chiefly groups of parallel lines, but two motifs might possibly be long-horned cattle extremely schematised. The tribesmen with Clark, however, thought them to be of a hunter with his bow or a forgotten tribal sign, so the interpretation is far from certain. One is shown in Figure 7.9 from Clark's book illustrating the degeneration of cattle paintings in the region from semi-naturalistic to schematic. Also present on one of the shelters were tribal marks still in use, Italian names and initials, and a few geometrical motifs. Near the port of Karora in the extreme north of Ethiopia paintings from another group of shelters were described in 1956 (Vigliardi and Micheli, 1956) and a number of sites in the Akkele Guzai region south of Asmara were reported by Dr V. Franchini in several articles from 1951. The rock art of Karora and of Franchini's sites were visited by Graziosi (1964) and described with illustrations and with a valuable general discussion on Ethiopian rock art generally in two articles. The paintings of Karora, in three granite shelters, comprise human figures and bovids, the latter in varying styles from semi-naturalistic to stylised and in white, red, or in both colours. They are not humped and the long horns, somewhat exaggerated in size, are shown in twisted perspective as are many among the Harar group with which Graziosi finds the Karora works to have 'obvious affinities'. The human figures, some armed with spears, seem to be guarding the cattle. There is nothing in this group of paintings to show other than a pastoral economy. Of the many rock art sites of the Akkele Guzai region the most important is that of Sollum Ba'atti. Here again the subjects comprise almost exclusively

62

Bovidean Outliers: the Horn of Africa, Kenya, Southern Sudan and West Africa

1

2

A semi-naturalistic

3 r ear---4-N ctLi 5 6

/fir

B stylised

C schematised

8 D schematic

Figure 7.9: Examples to Show Degeneration in Paintings of Cattle (adapted from J.D. Clark and P. Graziosi)

bovids and human figures with a few figures probably representing goats. The cattle are more stylised than at the sites above described with almost rectangular bodies and only one leg of each pair (Figure 7.10a). The human figures are so schematised as to be hardly recognisable (Figures 7.10b and 7.11) and resemble examples from the Iberian Peninsula (Graziosi, 1964). At the similarly named Ba'atti Sollum shelter the cattle are semi-naturalistic, very like some of those at Genda-Biftou, and as at that site commonly showing a

suckling calf (Figure 7.12). There are no accompanying human figures. The shelter at Zeban Ona Libanos has paintings of a different character. The few cattle are much stylised and the emphasis is on presenting humanised scenes including one of milking. Some of the men are armed with spears and shields, others appear to be playing musical instruments (Figure 7.13). As Graziosi truly says the scene has something of a `Bushman' look. The much stylised human figures with blob-like heads, and all in action, do have the

Bovidean Outliers: the Horn of Africa, Kenya, Southern Sudan and West Africa 63

A

Figure 7.10: Paintings from Sollum Ba'atti (after P. Graziosi). (A) Cattle (B) Cow with schematised human figures

Figure 7.11: Comparisons of Schematised Human Figures (after P. Graziosi). (A) From Sollum Ba'atti (B) From the Iberian Peninsula

B

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Bovidean Outliers: the Horn of Africa, Kenya, Southern Sudan and West Africa

Figure 7.12: Paintings of Cattle at Ba'atti Sollum (after P. Graziosi)

character of much South African work but there is so much variety in the representations of the human figure in Bushman art that to talk of a 'Bushman' style, even in quotes, is hardly justifiable. Features of special interest from other sites are humped bovids at Adi Qanza, as at Yavello to be described, which might mean a later date; and the extraordinary degree of schematisation of cattle and of human figures at Ba'atti Abba Keisi (Figure 7.14). These symbols, simplified to the utmost degree, are found also in Kenya and further south and indeed, in Europe and elsewhere, but with such basic forms no cultural connection need be inferred. Two sites, Hulum Bareto and Gobah Abah have only geometrical paintings as described by Graziosi, circles (single or concentric, and sometimes filled with dots), rays, crosses, and star-shaped figures — all without any apparent meaning. He considers them to belong to a late period, probably of the Christian epoch. As in the case of the Karora rock art there is nothing in the paintings of the Akkele Guzai to indicate the work of hunters. The mass of it is pastoral

art and the late geometrical art probably the work of people of Iron Age culture. In his summing-up regarding Ethiopian rock art Professor Graziosi adopts a diffusionist approach and sees certain stylistic affinities with the rock art of both North and South Africa; but also a style entirely Ethiopian in the bovid paintings, particularly in the narrowing of the body near its middle and the apparent twist of the head to show the horns as seen from above. There is also a close stylistic resemblance to the petroglyphs of cattle at Onib in Nubia (Parker and Burkitt, 1932; see Map 6.1). Graziosi's observations plainly do not apply to all the cattle figures. He points to the similarities between the Ba'atti Sollum bovids (Figure 7.12) and some paintings at Auenat (Jebel Uwenat) in the Sudan and compares the extremely schematised representations of cattle (Figure 7.12) to some petroglyphs at Monte Bego in the Maritime Alps; and those of humans to Mesolithic and later work in the Iberian Peninsula (Figure 7.11b). Breuil also pointed to the similarity of the Auenat cattle art and that of the Harar region. Another shelter in the same neighbourhood as

1 Petroglyph of pair of ostriches. Bubaline Phase, Ti-n-Terirt, Tassili (Jurgen Kunz)

2 Petroglyph. Bubaline Phase and later (Jurgen Kunz)

3 Petroglyph. Rhino. Amessera West, Ahaggar, Bovidean Period (Franz Trost) 4 Archer, one figure from a large fresco. Ti-n-Tazarift, Tassili, Round Head Phase (Jurgen Kunz)

5 Petroglyph. Bovine. Tagarttoget, Ahaggar, Bovidean Phase (Franz Trost)

6 Part of group of six cattle. Weiresen, Tassili, Horse Phase (Jurgen Kunz)

7 Herd of cattle with various hornshapes. Tissebouk, Tassili, Bovidean Phase (Jurgen Kunz)

8 Painting. Two rams with herder. Irhirmane, Tassili, Bovidean Phase (Jurgen Kunz)

9 Painting. Female figures with body paint in various patterns. Sefar, Tassili, Round Head Phase (Jurgen Kunz)

10 Painting. Two-horse chariot. Weiresen, Tassili, Horse Period (Jurgen Kunz) 11 Male figures 'diabolo' type. Tan-ikeban, Ahaggar, Horse Period (Franz Trost)

12 Petroglyphs. Wild and domestic animals. Adar-itigaren, Ahaggar, Horse and Camel Periods (Franz Trost)

13 Cattle and fat-tailed sheep. Serkama, Ethiopia (J. Desmond Clark)

14 Cattle and fat-tailed sheep. Serkama, Ethiopia (J. Desmond Clark)

15 Painted rock shelter. Kisese, Central Tanzania (H.A. Fosbrooke)

16 Extraordinary panel of paintings from Diana's Vow, Rusape, Zimbabwe (copy by E. Goodall; reproduced by courtesy of National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe)

17 Group of figures interpreted as foreigners. Impey's Cave, Rumwanda, Zimbabwe (Copy by E. Goodall; reproduced by courtesy of National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabu 18 Typical larger cave. Nanke, Matopo Hills, Zimbabwe 19 Several layers of paintings including vertical shapes of uncertain interpretation. Nanke, Matopo Hills, Zimbabwe

20 Various human figures and animal-headed snakes. Silozwane, Matopo Hills, Zimbabwe

21 Running humans superimposed on drawings of wildebeest. White Rhino Shelter, Matopo Hills, Zimbabwe

22 Polychrome giraffe and zebra on older paintings. Nswatugi, Matopo Hills, Zimbabwe

Bovidean Outliers: the Horn of Africa, Kenya, Southern Sudan and West Africa 65

Figure 7.13: Paintings from Zeban Ona Libanos (after Graziosi)

P.

Ba'atti Sollum was earlier described by Graziosi (1941) in another paper and the paintings were also described and illustrated with the site named as Ba'atti Focada by Mrs S. Drew (1954), wife of the Administrator of Eritrea at the time (see Plate 7.1). The paintings appear to be of varying ages and include a scene of bowmen and spearmen hunting three lions, or more probably beating off an attack by

them. Later paintings show a man ploughing with two cattle (top right) and — probably very recent — schematised paintings possibly of a camel and a baboon. A few metres away there are paintings of a bull in a 'rectangular' style (bottom right), two shorthorned cattle (one humped), a goat, and four schematised humans very like Figure 7.11b, second figure from left (bottom left).

66 Bovidean Outliers: the Horn of Africa, Kenya, Southern Sudan and West Africa Figure 7.14: Paintings from Ba'atti Abba Keisi. Highly schematised bovids (after P. Graziosi)

Figure 7.15: Paintings at Yavello (after J.D. Clark). 1-4 in red, 1 perhaps schematised bovid; 5 in dirty white schematised humped cattle

INCHES

I

, a 3

t

Bovidean Outliers: the Horn of Africa, Kenya, Southern Sudan and West Africa 67

Plate 7.1: Paintings from Ba'atti Focada

The rock art site at Yavello in the south of Ethiopia, mentioned above, was visited by Desmond Clark (1945) while serving with the East African forces during World War H (Figure 7.15). Two series of paintings were noted — the underlying one in red, and hardly to be distinguished, appears to be non-representational amorphs, but one might be a highly schematised bovid. The other series, shown by superimposition to be later, is in dirty white and nearly all of them appear to represent humped cattle. Clarke notes that the pigment is still `fatty' and cannot be of great age. Digging in the cave deposit revealed the following:

(1) Top 4 inches (10 cm) microlithic debris and sherds of coarse pottery. (2) Next 12 inches (30 cm) a few implements and debris of a microlithic industry classified as Wilton, sherds of a somewhat finer pottery, two small pieces of beaten copper and some lumps of haematite and manganese ore which would serve as red and black pigments. The haematite pigment in layer (2) suggests that the red series of paintings and the Wilton implements were the work of the same people, and the white paintings were probably done by the makers of the

68

Bovidean Outliers: the Horn of Africa, Kenya, Southern Sudan and West Africa

coarse pottery of the top layer. The presence of copper objects shows that the implements of Wilton type continued to be made well into the Christian Era, a fact now confirmed by the radiocarbon dates from Laga Oda. The rock art so far described consists of paintings except for the petroglyphs accompanying paintings at Gerbekele. There are not many petroglyph sites in the region and none is reported among the denser concentrations of rock art in the Harar and Akkele Guzai regions. We will begin with Clark's sites described in his all-embracing book. At Bur Dahir in South-Western Ethiopia in two gypsum rock shelters and on fallen rocks there are petroglyphs. Helped by differing degrees of patination as well as style Clark was able to distinguish three series. The two later ones are largely copies, crudely executed, of the earlier work, but include also an Amharic inscription and geometric scratchings with a metal knife. The early series made by a pecking technique and all schematic (see Figure 7.16) include representations of humped and humpless cattle, other animals probably calves or goats, perhaps dogs and a rhinoceros, and camels; also human figures each holding a spear and a round shield. The occupation deposit and the surroundings yielded a microlithic industry.

In the same district is another gypsum shelter, El Goran, where, by the same means, Clark was able also to distinguish three series (Figure 7.17). The first, very like the earliest at Bur Dahir, includes cattle, camels and an elephant, but with these, and judging by patination about the same age, there are a few curvilinear glyphs. The second (later) series had no identifiable representations and comprised parallel cuts, concentric semi-circles, circles single and paired, H shapes, some curvilinear amorphs, and a barred semi-circle like some already noted among paintings at Ba'atti Abba Keisi, but with an attachment (Figure 7.17, series 2, as marked by arrow). There is also a set of shallow pits used for playing the almost universal African game here called garre but given various other names elsewhere. Some of the signs were definitely identified as tribal marks. The final series had other garre boards, finely incised geometric motifs, and glyphs of hands. In Northern Somalia on limestone rocks in the pass of Jid Banan there are some geometric glyphs, a schematised human and another hand. They are of varying ages, newcomers having copied earlier work. Some, including the human figures and the hand, appear to be very recent. Desmond Clark's survey did not extend to Northern Ethiopia.

3

Figure 7.17: Petroglyphs at El Goran (after J.D. Clark)

0 1 2 3 4 S 6 In. 1

I

I

1

I

I

Figure 7.16: Petroglyphs at Bur Dahir (after J.D. Clark)

Bovidean Outliers: the Horn of Africa, Kenya, Southern Sudan and West Africa 69 There are in the Asmara region many inscriptions exercise, but others are fairly clear, for example, E, F in ancient script along the old trade routes of the and G as bovids, one (G) a zebu, and H as ram's Kingdom of Axum to the Red Sea ports, routes used horns. I is interpreted as a camel and J as a camel with possibly by even earlier traders. There are some rider. The sign K, which occurs several times, is glyphs which fall within our purview of rock art: some regarded as an ovine (sheep) bucranium. As already meander patterns also recorded by Mrs Drew (1954), noted signs virtually identical have been interpreted north of Asmara and, to the west of that city at elsewhere as highly schematised human figures. Hamasen, the petroglyphs, already,, mentioned, reThe petroglyphs are darkly patinated but the kind corded by Frobenius and his team (Cervi'dek, 1976). of rock is not stated. By analogy with similar signs at The predominant motif is what was interpreted as other petroglyph and mural art sites in NE Africa and bucrania. A bucranium is strictly speaking an ox-skull the Near East Cervi6ek takes the most probable date but the term is used in the notes to mean the head of these engravings as the first half of the first with the horns of a bovid or a sheep. Some of these millennium AD. interpretations, for example, Figure 7.18 (A-D) Simple relief carvings of cattle, humpless and longrequire more imagination than I am prepared to horned, occur at Chabbe in Southern Ethiopia. They Figure 7.18: Petroglyphs at Hamasen (after P. Cervi6ek)

C

K

TO Bovidean Outliers: the Horn of Africa, Kenya, Southern Sudan and West Africa are not datable on archaeological grounds (Anfray, 1967). In the 'Conclusion' of his book Clark (1954) defined early naturalistic and semi-naturalistic series of paintings followed by 'schematic' and 'conventionalised' series: the former specialising in pastoral scenes with long-horned humpless cattle, the later series with zebu and perhaps the camel. Subsequent work within the area of his explorations, and work in Ethiopia beyond it, only serves to confirm and amplify his generalisations. The evidence from the superimpositions, the apparent age, and the animals and objects depicted, all hang together well to support the view that parietal art comparable to the Neolithic paintings of the Sahara was introduced by people from that region and gradually degenerated to schematic forms. To illustrate this process Clark gave the examples shown in Figure 7.9, numbers 3 to 10. These show the cattle with only one front and one rear leg, but paintings otherwise similar and classified as seminaturalistic have since come to light which have all four shown so I have added examples of these as numbers 1 and 2. Cattle are shown with either two or four legs in the later series also, so this is not a certain indication of the phase of art, but rather of the attitude of the artist. I have lettered the stages A to D and attached adjectival terms. The cattle in Stage A are all humpless long-horns, in Stage B the humped zebu first appears together with the humpless breed, and both appear in Stages C and D. Assuming that the paintings of fat-tailed sheep are the same age as the accompanying cattle they belong also to Stage B — giving some support to the belief that they and the zebu were introduced about the same time. The petroglyphs all appear to be late, coeval with Stage D, and the geometrical and amorphous paintings also to Stage D and later, with some overlap with Stage C. Except for the single painting at Karin Heganeh and one at Laga Oda which might be late, and a possible one at Amba Focada which certainly is, the camel does not appear in the paintings, but does occur commonly in the petroglyphs. As has been noted the time of the introduction of this beast is not known but judging by the rock art it was later than the zebu and the fat-tailed sheep. As might be expected it appears near the desert areas of Northern Ethiopia and Southern Somalia. As is generally true of African rock art south of the Sahara human figures are less naturalistically -portrayed than animals, ranging from stylised to schematic. In the scenes they are behaving as pastora-

lists more than hunters. Some are armed with the bow which continues in use in Somalia and some with spears which might be stone-tipped in the earliest cases but are plainly metal-tipped by Stage C times. The culture that produced the earliest paintings was a widespread one with little difference in the Stage 1 cattle between Karora in the extreme north of Ethiopia and Harar. Wherever a stone industry is found in reasonably certain association with the rock paintings as at Errer Kimiet, Yavello, Laga Oda, Porc-Epic and Chabbe it is of 'Wilton' or closely similar type, and it now appears beyond doubt that the Wilton people were the pastoralists and the painters; that they brought little of Neolithic stone working tradition with them and developed their own industry from the microlithic one they found already being used in the area. This association of 'Wilton' or Wilton-like stone implements with early manifestations of rock art will be noted as we continue the survey southwards. In the present state of knowledge it is hazardous to attempt to date the phases of rock art in the Ethiopian region but tentatively the following chronology is suggested. Probably about 2,000 BC for the beginning of rock painting of the kind designated phase A, followed about 300 BC by phase B in which zebu cattle and sheep first appear and which lasted until the third century AD, followed by phase C for a few centuries degenerating into phase D in which camels appear and which has continued mainly as the inscription of tribal marks and graffiti with some use of paint until the present. The wholly geometrical and amorphous work at Hulum and Gobabah most probably dates from about the end of the first millennium AD. Only more digging and radiocarbon dating will establish an accurate chronology. Possible outliers of the Bovidean culture and its practice of rock painting have been found in Kenya, the Southern Sudan and West Africa. Kenya In the west of Kenya very near the border with Uganda 8,000 ft (2,438 m) up on Mt Elgon (Map 7.1) a painted rock shelter was discovered in 1960 (Wright, 1961; Cole, 1963). The chief motif is cattle of the long-horned, humpless kind, resembling in style many of the Ethiopian examples. As in Ethiopia some are in white, some red, and some are bichromes in both colours. One of them, with split horns, has been interpreted as a stag which is unlikely but perhaps not impossible so far south. The question has been

Bovidean Outliers: the Horn of Africa, Kenya, Southern Sudan and West Africa 71 discussed above in connection with the stag at PorcEpic. In one or two cases Wright considered the shape of the horns more likely to indicate an antelope, but the horns of the undoubted bovids take many unnatural forms and it seems at least probable that these, and the split-horned case, are other examples of the deliberate deformation of cattle horns practised in Africa. In support of the 'stag' interpretation Wright cites Breuil's mention of the stag painted in the church at Zara-Brouk. It is contemporary and proves nothing. There are a few human figures, one perhaps holding a bow and arrow. There is no occupation deposit in the shelter to aid dating but it is virtually certain that the paintings antedate the coming of the present Kenyan tribes and they are probably of similar age to their Ethiopian counterparts. Wilton material has been found in another rock shelter on the mountain. Very recently another painting site has been briefly reported from Kakapeli on the western slope of Mt Elgon at 4,660 ft (1,420 m) (Odak, 1977). The paintings show some layers of work and might have been executed over a long period. Among many nonrepresentational designs and crude paintings of wild animals of the kinds typical of the Central African Art Zone (Chapter 8) are some of humpless cattle, one of them with long horns, very similar to those mentioned above and showing only the two 'near' legs. There are recent pottery and grindstones on the surface of the cave deposit which, as Osaga Odak points out, need not be linked to the paintings, all of which he suggests were made before the coming of the present (Kalenjin) inhabitants of the area. It is of great interest that, with one possible exception in Zambia (see Phillipson, 1977 and Plate 8.3) and except for very recent and crude work there and elsewhere, the Mt Elgon sites have the most southerly examples of cattle in rock art until South Africa is reached. There are none of comparable age at the hundreds of sites in Tanzania, or Zambia except for the possible example noted, or at the even more numerous rock art sites of Zimbabwe (Willcox, 1971a). The Stone Age pastoralists of SW Kenya apparently did not practise rock art and, if they did, left no representations of their cattle. In South Africa they occur only among late paintings and in a few, probably also late, petroglyphs. The reasons for the huge gap will be considered later. Southern Sudan Very recently a discovery of rock paintings a short

distance to the south of Torit was announced (Kirwan, 1980), see Map 7.1. As described by Peter Robertshaw (pers. comm.) the paintings comprise four rather schematised paintings in white, coarse and thick paint of what was taken to be humped cattle, but which a local informant suggested were scorpions. Elsewhere in the same shelter was the outline of a humped cow painted in black. This was done in naturalistic style with head to the left. The shelter also had many recent graffiti in black lettering. There was a surface scatter of sherds and flaked quartz but the deposit was so shallow as to preclude digging. This discovery would seem to be the first of its kind in the Southern Sudan. West Africa Nigeria From 1954 rock paintings have been known in granite shelters at Birnin Kudu near Komo in Nigeria and they were described by Bernard Fagg (1957) in 1955 — and see Map 7.2. Apart from one design which might represent a cattle kraal the subjects are domestic cattle, mostly the long-horned humpless breed long extinct in the area but with some, shown by superimposition to be later, of a short-horned breed identified as Bos brachyceros, also humpless. At the main site a test dig was begun by the late A.J. Goodwin and completed by Fagg. It revealed a stone industry stated to be unidentifiable, a large number of pottery sherds, iron objects including spear and arrow points, and a quartz lip-plug. Radiocarbon dating was not then available but Fagg infers that the paintings belong to the period of transition between the Neolithic and Metal Age in the region. This would be about the fourth century BC. Fagg noticed a slab of rock near the paintings that had apparently been repeatedly struck blows. This and others nearby proved to be rock gongs believed used to provide music for some religious cult which might, or might not, have been connected with the rock art. In one of the caves it is still the custom for a Moslem bride on her wedding day to spend some hours before the ceremony, for some reason forgotten, or undisclosed to the investigator. There is strong evidence that painting the rock and sounding the gong were connected from the continuation of the performance of these acts as part of the same ceremony among the Marghi of Northern Nigeria. Here it is done as part of a marriage rite and perhaps other rites of passage. The paintings are made by the

72

Bovidean Outliers: the Horn of Africa, Kenya, Southern Sudan and West Africa

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Map 7.2: West Africa — Rock Painting Sites men and depict their interests, stick figures of men, weapons, shields and some animals, but no longer of cattle (Vaughan, 1962). At one site Fagg invited the local drummers to try out the old and no longer used rock gongs. After some experiment they were able to get good results even approximating closely to their drum language messages (Goodwin, 1957). Goodwin makes the interesting observation that this ability might indicate the use of such gongs in other parts of Africa, not only to make music but also to send messages, but he thought the latter use would be restricted mainly to fundamentally tone languages. Rock gongs will be noted at other rock art sites in Central and South Africa in some cases also associated with rock art. It is not uncommon down through Africa for painted rock shelters to have become places for the performance of rituals connected with initiation and rainmaking although the performers usually had, or

professed, no knowedge of the artists. We shall note many such cases in Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia and further south. In Zimbabwe, and in various parts of South Africa, the Bushmen, with their knowledge of the local weather signs, become for a fee the raindoctors for the Iron Age immigrants who still leave offerings in some painted shelters whence the Bushmen have long since departed. In 1960 Hamo Sassoon (1960) of the Department of Antiquities of Nigeria reported other painting sites near Bauchi some 80 miles (128 km) south of Birnin Kudu. Here the paintings included wild animals — antelope and monkeys — as well as cattle and humans, and also some horses and unidentified objects. The long sweptback curved horns of most of the antelope point to the roan antelope as the subject, and in two or three the even longer curves of the horns might indicate the related sable antelope. One, with long straight horns, appears to be the oryx. The 40 to 50

Bovidean Outliers: the Horn of Africa, Kenya, Southern Sudan and West Africa 73 amorphs. As one of the mounted figures and the three standing ones carry the circular object this is no doubt a shield of the 'target' type. The row of these designs (1) Painted in solid red pigment: (a) antelopes, 11; might therefore be a tally of available warriors. Some (b) cows, 5; (c) monkeys, 2; (d) men, 2; pise de terre structures in the cave and the style of the paintings led the Carters to compare them with the (e) unidentified, 6. (2) Painted in red outline: (a) cows, 8; (b) horses, recent paintings of the Dogon in Mali. The paintings cannot be dated but, as remarked above, the horse 1; (c) unidentified, 1. (3) Painted in outline and striped: (a) cows, 2; came to West Africa only from about AD 1500: they might be very recent. (b) antelope, 1.

paintings, all in red, are classified by Sassoon as follows:

The antelope and one cow are painted in a seminaturalistic style, other cows and a horse much more schematically. The temporal sequence of the styles is not shown by superimpositions. The cattle are humpless and are thought to represent a cross between the local variety of the Hamitic long-horn and the small short-horn, Bos brachyceros. The human figures, both apparently clothed, are not identifiable as to race. There is little in these paintings to indicate an age for the oldest but the horse paintings are probably not older than about AD 1500. No excavation was made to determine possible associated material. Roan antelope still exist in the savannah country of Nigeria and oryx in the Sahara: sable are now restricted to eastern and southern Africa, but appear to be certainly represented in Saharan rock art, and during a favourable climatic phase might have extended their range southwards in fairly recent times. Sassoon informs us that many of the paintings, and the only one (a cow) at the nearby site of Gudun, have had most of the paint chipped off by the Fulani who occupy the district seasonally. They mix it with human and cattle food, believing it to promote fertility. Far to the south in Lesotho a similar belief in the magical properties of paint scraped off rock paintings has resulted in the destruction of many of them. Ghana In the north of Ghana, right on the border with Togo, cave paintings have been reported on the Gambaga Escarpment (Carter and Carter, 1964). They comprise a row of four stylised horses with riders, three in white and one in red, all faded; a row of thirteen pairs of concentric circles and four others, two of which have the inner circle filled with dots; three stylised men carrying similar double concentric circles, and some

Ashanti In Northern Ashanti three caves are known with engravings, generally amorphous, but in some cases perhaps representing arrow or spear points. It is thought that these petroglyphs are all of the Iron Age and fairly recent and probably connected with puberty and other rites (Davies, 1967). Sets of pits also occur for playing the widespread African game already noted in Western Air and in Ethiopia. Mali In Mali, just south of the great bend of the Niger in the tribal lands of the Dogon there are a number of rock shelters with paintings apparently connected with initiation rites (Mauny, 1954 and Map 7.2). They have the appearance of being very recent and comprise geometrics (largely shield-like forms) and much schematised animals. Around Kita in south-west Mali there is similar crude work, one shelter having also some hand imprints, negatives in white (Zeltner, 1911). Upper Volta At a site referred to as Cercle Banfora at Toussiana petroglyphs are reported (Haselberger, 1968). Judging by the illustrations, these fall into two age groups. The later include what looks like an Iron Age axe, and a cross-in-circle design: the earlier include `solar discs' composed of concentric circles often with `rays'. Some of the designs are connected by channels and the interesting comment is made that they give the impression that a liquid might have been made to flow from one 'solar disc' to another during some ritual.

The Central African Art Zone

From Uganda southwards to the Zambezi and from there westwards to Angola, and eastwards into northern Mocambique, with a few exceptions which will be noted, and excluding one region in Central Tanzania, the rock art has certain characteristics in common and differs markedly from the hunter/ pastoral art to the North and the hunter art to the South. The earlier rock art of Central Tanzania, which will form the subject of the next chapter, has, on the contrary, affinities of style and subject with the hunter art of North and Southern Africa. The vast region now to be considered includes Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Malawi and small parts of Mocambique, Angola and the Republic of the Congo. For its prehistoric rock art sites J. Desmond Clark has used the expression of 'Central African Schematic Art Group' but much of the art is geometrical or amorphous as I have defined these terms, without representations, schematic or otherwise. Delicacy of execution is exceptional and most of the work hardly merits classification as art at all. It comprises both petroglyphs and paintings and we will review first the distribution of the former. Distribution of Petroglyphs In Kenya there is a group of petroglyph sites at the southern end of Lake Rudolf (now renamed Turkana). In 1944 the late Joy Adamson, famous as the author of Born Free, and other works, made a foot safari to the lake and discovered three engraving sites on basalt rocks and cliffs. Copying as many as the limited materials with her permitted, she later published her copies with a note (Adamson, 1946). The subjects comprise a variety of wild animals and birds — elephant, rhino, buffalo, several kinds of antelope and flamingo — and some 'stick' figures of men. The only domestic animal depicted is the camel. There are

8

some circles and other glyphs interpreted by Mrs Adamson as cattle brands but as there are no bovids among the subjects this is perhaps doubtful. The immediate area is now extremely inhospitable and is uninhabited by humans and the kinds of big game represented. The age of the petroglyphs remains doubtful but judging by the light patination and the camels it is not likely to be great. The nearest Africans she could question offered no explanation regarding the origin of the petroglyphs except to suggest that they might have been made by the South African troops who were in the vicinity during World War II. But one can hardly suppose that they would have chosen those subjects and added no names or date. In 1980 the Cambridge South Turkana Expedition had as its objectives the relocation of Adamson's sites and the complete recording and study of the petroglyphs. Her Sites 1 and 2 in the vicinity of the Sirima water hole and other sites nearby were found but unfortunately not Site 3 to the south with more varied and developed petroglyphs. The expedition's report confirms that the only domestic animal certainly identifiable is the camel and possibly the goat and donkey. The representations are stylised to schematic and mostly difficult to identify. The animal most often represented was the giraffe. The local Turkana claimed to recognise many other wild species including many kinds of antelope, hyena, jackal, elephant, leopard, lion and cheetah. If the geometrical glyphs are indeed brand signs it would seem more likely that they are camel brands. The predominance of wild animals among the representations seems to indicate, as the report suggests, that the economy of the engravers was at least partly based on hunting. If the making of these representations formed part of hunting ritual the absence of glyphs of domestic cattle might not mean that the people 75

76

The Central African Art Zone

Figure 8.1: Petroglyphs on Mt Porr (from photographs by G. Cubitt)

The Central African Art Zone 77 concerned did not possess them. It would seem that an ecosystem that could support the wild animals depicted would also permit cattle herding. In parts of Southern Africa where cattle were present they were not painted by the Bushmen artists, perhaps because of a taboo. This question is discussed in Chapter 22. Human figures were also found, one at least holding a bow. Questions put to the Turkana people (pastoralists) elicited a claim that their tribe were the artists and that their grandfathers had referred to the petroglyphs as made for the instruction of young hunters. One would expect more naturalism in that case. The expedition members decided to treat the Turkana comments 'with a certain scepticism'. A further report is to be issued. About 30 miles (48 km) northwards, right next to the lake, lies Mt Porr, the sacred mountain of the local Elmolo tribe who perform unknown ceremonies on its heights. Here more petroglyphs have been found and were reported on by R.C. Soper (1968a) of the British Institute of History and Archaeology in East Africa. The glyphs are coarsely pecked and lightly patinated and consist of small circles, mostly in sets, pairs of concentric circles, a stick figure like one illustrated by Adamson, and another interpreted by Soper as an arrow but just as likely, in my view, to be

another schematic man (Figure 8.1, bottom right). The sign described as a barred half-circle or as an anchor sign already noted at Ba'atti Abba Keisi in Ethiopia, and interpreted by Graziosi as a schematised man, occurs here also but one of these is accompanied by a small circle very near it. In marked contrast to Adamson's sites there are no representations of animals, wild or domesticated. It is not known whether the Elmolo tribe made these glyphs or whether they regarded the hill as sacred because of their unexplained presence. Either is possible or just coincidence. Some 50 miles (80 km) south of Lake Rudolf in Western Kenya on a basaltic hill at Ng'amoritung'a, near Kangetet (Map 8.1) is another petroglyph site described by Soper in the same paper thus: On this saddle are approximately fifty circles formed of stone slabs of irregular shape set edge to edge in continuous rings and usually standing about 50 cm high, though individual slabs are up to 1.50 m high. The circles vary between 1.60 m and 4.0 m in diameter and in the better preserved examples the interior is up to 30 cm above the surrounding ground level. They are all within a small area, many of the circles being actually

Map 8.1: Central African Art Zone a• Arpo,)?

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78 The Central African Art Zone contiguous. There was no pottery or other occupation debris visible on the surface with the exception of three small chert flakes; there are several plain stone cairns on the side of the saddle. . . . Many of these upright slabs and nearby rock outcrops are decorated with shallowly pecked designs of geometric or stylized type, most of which are well patinated. The commonest motifs are circles, either single ones or two or three concentrics; one stone with a surface of 110 x 30 cm is covered with double concentric circles about 10 cm in outer diameter. Other motifs include crossed or barred circles, spirals, small circles with one or more lines radiating from the lower half of the circumference and one possibly human form. On one stone are two circular panels, one of which encloses two more possibly human figures. (Figure 8.2E)

the burial pits and elsewhere in the excavation and it seems certain that these can be linked to the burials, and that the people were, in part at least, pastoralists. The burials have recently been radiocarbon dated to about 300 BC (Lynch and Robbins, 1978). The physical characteristics of the skeletons have not been described, but males and females were found. The male graves were always larger in diameter than those of the females and — most interestingly — petroglyphs were found on standing stones around some of the 'male' graves and on none around the 'female' graves. This seems to me to make it almost certain that the petroglyphs were executed at the time of the burial, or soon after, as other people coming on the scene later would not know to which sex each grave belonged. The investigations have established that the petroglyph designs, of which there are about 1,000, almost all geometrics, correspond in large part with cattle brands recognised Soper points out that it is not known whether the and given names by the Turkana pastoralists. Other petroglyphs were executed by the people who con- pastoralists of East Africa, the Masai, Samburu and structed the stone circles, or whether they were later. Pokot also used some of the symbols in the same Subsequently this site and another a short distance manner. A man might 'own' several brand signs. They away have been further investigated and described are handed down from father to son and may be (Soper and Lynch, 1977). The stone circles are now acquired by conquest (Lynch and Robbins, 1977). It known to surround graves and there are at least 162 of therefore seems reasonable to suppose that the glyphs them on the main site. There are also cairns of various on each of certain graves were those used by the man types and 'hut circles'. The original surface into which buried in it. In view of the small proportion with the graves were dug was apparently littered with Late petroglyphs (5 out of 25 male graves excavated) it also Stone Age artefacts but there might not have been seems likely that they were important people — any connection between the makers of these and the headmen or at least owners of many cattle. The `grave people'. Large numbers of tooth fragments petroglyphs, however, were not found only on the from sheep or goats and domestic cattle were found in grave stones but also on nearby rock outcrops. Figure 8.2: Petroglyphs from Ng'amoritung'a (A to E after R.C. Soper; F to N after M. Lynch and L.H. Robbins)

The Central African Art Zone 79 The name of the site means 'people of stone' and •Mago& Loteteleit • according to a legend of the local Turkana the Bwanja-Bugombe standing stones were originally people and were 2 Mwanza Gulf turned into stone by the devil when they were 3 Teso-Buketh dancing. I have heard the same explanation for circles Lokapeliefhe • Painting sties 0°4', of standing stones in England. The Turkana do not Nepedha Hill• * Petrogiyph sit use this kind of grave but cover burials with stone cairns. Soper and Lynch find the closest parallel in burial customs among the Galla living in southern Ethiopia who are believed to have moved there from the Lake Rudolf region about the sixteenth century AD. Lynch and Robbins in the paper above-mentioned report another site near the western shore of Lake Turkana (Lake Rudolf) to which they gave the name Namoratunga 11, another way of writing Ng' amoritung'a (Map 8.1). This has at least one grave with stones, some of which had the same brand symbols engraved upon them. There were also 19 large standing stones which the authors sought to 100 Km prove were used for astronomical observations: but with that we are not here concerned. 100 Miles At the time of writing the petroglyphs described above are all those known in Kenya, but no doubt more will be found. AtterChaplin At Loteteleit in the Karamoja District of Uganda (Map 8.2) concentric circle petroglyphs have been Map 8.2: Lacustrine Sub-Region reported (Morton, 1967). According to Chaplin (1974) one set comprises nine rings but his editor on the slopes of Kilimanjaro until about AD 1900 as Harlow has described this as a spiral in agreement part of an initiation ceremony. After the usual with Morton's description and illustration. They are hardships of living in the bush without clothes or carved on a rock on a small hill at whose base there shelter, selected initiates were taught the secret are hut circles. In the setting therefore the site meanings of meandering lines and cup marks already resembles Ng'amoritung'a and both sites have the present on the rocks, and one of the boys was made to spiral glyph. cut a short line on the stone. Another part of the rites In Uganda there are also many sets of small cup required the boys to run anti-clockwise around the marks cut in flat rock surfaces as boards for playing rock and then spit into a hole already cut in it by their the African game called bao or mweso and in Zambia instructor. This was regarded as taking an oath not to chisilo or manacala. Their occurrence as the game reveal the secrets they had been taught (Fosbrooke garre has already been noted in Ethiopia and they and Marealle, 1952). occur as far south as the Transvaal; and there are Malawi has but two reported petroglyph sites and some larger cupules of unknown purpose (Lanning Zambia only a few, restricted to the north-west of the 1956a,b; Wayland, 1938). At one site there are country except for one site near Lusaka (J.D. Clark in petroglyphs representing iron hoes of pre-European Summers, 1959). One Malawi glyph at a cave site type. forms an irregular closed curve which was thought by Tanzania is little better off for petroglyphs. Bao its discoverer Mrs M. Metcalf (1956) possibly to boards on rock are again common and there are some represent an insect. It is described as 'made by pitting larger cup marks. At another site there is a spiral and the rock with small cavities' and as 'hard to make out'. what might be a schematic representation of an insect. At the other site, also rather unusually in a cave, the Engraved animals are reported from another site but subject is 'a large engraving of a reptile about three not described (Fosbrooke et al., 1950). feet long' also executed by pitting. What might be a survival of earlier and perhaps Only one petroglyph is reported from Mocamhalf forgotten practices continued among the Chagga bique. The site is south of the Zambezi outside the

80 The Central African Art Zone Central African Art Zone (Oliviera, 1976) at Zembe, Mount Chimbanda (see Map 10.1). It is interpreted as a bovid but part of the glyph is admitted by Oliviera to be formed by natural cracks in the granite. Some lines might have been added but this is somewhat doubtful and no other examples have been found in the locality. Artificial or entirely natural, however, it is approached ceremonially by the local tribesmen. In Zambia the two most important petroglyph sites are at Munwa Stream, a tributary of the Luapula which forms the boundary with the Congo (Zaire); and Chifubwa Stream near Solwezi (see Map 8.1). The former is an open site on sandstone and the latter a small shelter in quartz-mica schist rock. The glyphs at Munwa Stream run to hundreds among which the circle is the dominant motif, most commonly in concentric sets and in a few cases with `rays' within or outside the circumference. See Figure 8.3 for a selection of examples which include also concentric arcs and V designs, meandering lines, sets of dots, 'ladders', possibly one barred half-circle, and one design, no. 8 in Figure 8.3, which is to be found, as are many of the circle designs, also among the petroglyphs of Angola. There seem to be no definite spirals and no certain representations (Chaplin, 1959).

Figure 8.3: Petroglyphs at Munwa Stream (after Chaplin)

J.H.

Local tradition recorded by Chaplin links the site with the Butwa, a dancing cult whose practices seem to have been taken over from a Negroid people preceding the present Bantu-speakers in the region (Clark, 1950c). The petroglyphs are considerably weathered, a process which takes place quickly on fully exposed sandstone. The petroglyphs of this site, in their forms, degree of weathering, technique and mode of occur-

rence on exposed beds of sandstone next to a stream, bear an extraordinary resemblance to those at Redan in the Transvaal, which will be illustrated later. The Chifubwa Stream engraving site is, in many ways, the most interesting of those in Zambia. Firstly, the glyphs are on the wall of a rock shelter and were, when found in 1929, partly buried by a deposit containing a Stone Age industry and some datable pieces of charcoal. Secondly, some have had paint applied to them. Professor R.A. Dart, the renowned anthropologist, accompanied the Italian scientific expedition which visited the site in 1930 and was much impressed by the glyphs. He reported them as appearing to be representations of human figures in a processional arrangement surmounted by symbolic and mystical signs, which may originally have formed an inscription (Dart, 1931). A later paper (Dart, 1953) amplified this by describing the glyphs as 'representations of numerous stylized, long-haired or hooded human figures'. The shelter was partially excavated by local people in 1929 and further excavations under the expert supervision of J.D. Clark were conducted in 1951 when charcoals were taken for radiocarbon dating and the stone industry, described as Nachikufu 1, was recovered near the base of the deposit, much of which had been washed into the shelter (Clark, 1958). It was at first thought that the date disclosed (4,359 BC) could be applied to the industry and to the petroglyphs, but Clark sounds a note of caution: It must also be noted that the charcoals which gave this date were quite small fragments and were scattered throughout the deposit and did not come from any recognisable hearth or large lumps of charcoal. It is possible, therefore, that they might have been old, or 'fossil' charcoals that were washed into the deposit from the top of the gorge with the orange-yellow sand. Such a possible 'false antiquity' has to be borne in mind and before we can finally accept these engravings as dating to the fifth millennium BC it will be necessary to obtain confirmatory evidence from other sites. (Clark in Summers (ed.), 1959 and Willcox, 1963a) The date is now known to be anomalous for Nachikufu 1. Nor is it quite certain that the stone industry and the petroglyphs belong to the same culture but as there is only one industry present it seems at first sight probable that this is the case. The question will be referred to again when discussing rock paintings undoubtedly associated with Nachikufan industries.

The Central African Art Zone 81 As for the art we cannot do better than quote Clark's description. The back wall is covered with a mass of superimposed motifs. These have been traced and the engravings repeat each other with monotonous regularity, there being few variations on the forms found. These consist of long and short vertical lines; inverted 'U's or hairpins, both with and without a vertical line in the centre; and numbers of fairly shallow cup depressions ground into the wall with no apparent relationship with each other. Variations on these themes are horizontal lines, loops, a long engraved band with a line down part of the centre and two short rows of cup markings. It can be seen that there are no long-haired or hooded human figures. On the latter point the reader can decide for himself from the photograph (Plate 8.2). The commonest motif is the one we have called the barred half-circle and which Clark calls an inverted IT with a line down the centre. Dart is right that this can conceivably be interpreted as the extreme schematisation of the human figure but the long hair or hoods and the procession go beyond reasonable inference. The Nachikufan industries and their makers will be discussed when considering the authorship of the rock paintings of the region. A few somewhat similar glyphs are recorded from a site at Chitungulu Hill some 120 km west of ,the Chifubwa Stream shelter (Chaplin, 1962) under a rock overhang and some of these too show traces of red paint. That this was the case at Chifubwa Stream has been mentioned. The only other petroglyphs certainly painted, except one which will later be noted, are also in rock shelters (in Zimbabwe and the Northern Transvaal) where the paint would be preserved, and one cannot but wonder whether at least some of the petroglyphs on open sites were not also painted but have lost all traces of the pigment. Chaplin in the same article describes another petroglyph site in the same district at Nyambwezu Stream where a vertical rock face is pitted haphazardly with deeply punched dots accompanied by numerous finely incised lines. These he compares to the petroglyphs at Kiantapo in the Katanga, 125 miles (200 km) away which will be described later. At a site near Lusaka, Ayrshire Farm, there are peckings, obviously Iron Age, mostly representing the crescent shaped or winged axes used by recent tribes and there are a few others of uncertain subjects — if they are representations. Sets of cup-shaped

depressions for the game chisolo are also found on the flatter surfaces. Not far away in the Zambezi valley at Nabulimbwa and elsewhere are a number of other Iron Age petroglyph sites. Here the designs include an axe, a circle with radiating lines, 'broad arrows', chevrons, and more gaming boards. African names in Latin script in much the same state of preservation show that these glyphs cannot be very old (Clark in Summers (ed.), 1959). So much for the petroglyphs of Zambia! We turn to the somewhat similar work in Angola. This occurs in two well separated parts of the country, the extreme East and the extreme South-West. The Eastern group, near Calunda, comprising three open sites, has been studied and described with illustrations by Jose Redinha (1948). At one of them, Bambala, there are four glyphs only (Figure 8.4, 1-4), one of them similar to the amorphous work at Munwa Stream. Also similar is the pair of concentric circles, no. 4, except that the circles are quadrated. No. 1 is remarkable for the double lines and the 'under and over' techniques where they cross, reminiscent of basketry. A second site occurs at Capelo where the art is similar in style. Among the glyphs is the club-like design as Figure 8.4, no. 5 and, occurring twice, the design Figure 8.4, no. 6, a very much simpler version of no. 1 at Bambala and another 'over and under' glyph as shown in no. 7. These are an intriguing design unknown to me among petroglyphs anywhere else. (I was intrigued when recently visiting a Roman villa excavated at Dorchester to find the identical design in a mosaic pavement. I would be grateful to hear from any reader of its occurrence anywhere else.) They are unusual too in that their extremities if joined form a square and 'squareness' is virtually nonexistent in African rock art and most unusual in African decoration or architectural design generally. The circle is the dominant geometrical concept. European influence is possibly discernible here: one tends to forget that the Portuguese were in Angola from the fifteenth century. The third site, at Calola, is the largest, with more than 40 engravings. They again include concentric circles, one set having six, Figure 8.4, no. 8, a set of three with 'spokes', no. 9, a set of two joined by double lines, no. 10, and complex sets as no. 11. Here there seems to be an obsession with circles. One design, no. 12, somewhat resembles one at Munwa Stream (Figure 8.3, no. 8) but out of so many incorporating circles chance similarities are probable. The present inhabitants, the Bantu-speaking Luachindis, questioned as to the identity of the

82 The Central African Art Zone

The Central African Art Zone 83

Figure 8.4: Petroglyphs at Calunda (after J. Redinha). (1-4) Bambala (5-7) Capelo (8-12) Calola

artists, described the glyphs only as the work of God. Redinha finds them too much patinated to be very recent but nevertheless considers the petroglyphs at Bambala and Capelo to be the work of 'Bantu'. Those at Calola he attributes to pre-Bantu Negroes or to Bushmen: in view of their similarity to the not very distant Munwa Stream glyphs it seems likely that they may be attributed to the same people, by tradition the Butwa — either Negro or a Khoisan-Negro mixture. Many of the designs, for example, the quadrated circles and the double circles joined by parallel lines, are found in facial or bodily tattoos in the region and concentric circles are common in wood carving. Redinha interprets all the motifs as solar symbols; the single or double quadrated circles, the 'rayed' circles, and sets of concentric circles even when there are six of them. I have already questioned that there should be so many different symbols for the same thing. The double concentric circles in a pair or three

joined by double lines he sees as showing the trajectory of the sun from rising to setting. Reports of the SW Angolan rock art began to appear from 1953 (Franca, 1953; Bauman, 1954) and a more authoritative account was published in 1962 (Breuil and De Almeida, 1962) after a visit to the two hills at Tchitundo-Hulu (written by them Txitundu Bulu) about 94 miles (150 km) south east of Mocamedes, and another site called TxipOpilu at Camuctlio 100 miles (160 km) north-east of that town. The descriptions are unfortunately brief, the illustrations few, and the site location vague. Rock paintings were inspected in two shelters in the Tchitundu-Hulu hills. The paintings at one shelter are described as of various geometrical forms, circles disposed in pairs with rays, star-shapes, 'ladders', etc., as among the petroglyphs; also possible schematic human figures in the form of a horseshoe, some quadrupeds naturalistic or sub-naturalistic, a snake and — most interesting — a bird on its nest as seen from above. The latter looks very fresh. The paintings are in white, red, or both colours, with black rarely added. At the other shelter the paintings are in the main similar but with numerous (dizaines) of circles with `rays' like petals, long or short. From another source (Teixeira, 1952) we learn that the hill of Tchitundu-Hulu is called the 'sacred hill of the Mucuisses' (also Cuissi or Kwisi). These people — we will call them Cuissi — are a Negroid people apparently preceding in their occupation of the region the other Negroid tribes, who look down upon them as the Twa-Matari, the stone people, because some of them live in caves and live by hunting and gathering wild foods (De Almeida, 1965). Some of them live in the Tchitundu-Hulu region and there is evidence that they still use the caves in which paintings are found or did until very recently. In view of the freshness of some of the work the Cuissi are almost certainly the artists and as they have been long in the region, it is highly probable that they were the makers of the very similar petroglyphs of their sacred hill. The Cuissi call themselves Twa and are possibly the same people as the Butwa associated by tradition with the Munwa Stream petroglyphs (Clark, 1966). It is a pity they cannot be located and asked various questions about the rock art, such as their motives as the artists, and the meanings, if any, of the designs, for they seem to be the only rock artists in Africa still living with, and possibly still executing, their art. But in the present troubled state of Southern Angola this is not possible; and there might be no Cuissi artists left to question!

84 The Central African Art Zone The Cuissi have also been compared to the Berg Dama, another little-known Negro people of the northern part of SW Africa/Namibia, who also predated the black Bantu-speakers in the region and who the Rudners suggest (Rudner, 1970) might have executed some of the cruder rock art there. They were still using stone implements when first encountered. Their languages cannot be compared as both people have lost their original tongues and have adopted a Bantu language in the case of the Cuissi, and a Hottentot language in the case of the Berg Dama. The authors of the paper, Breuil and De Almeida, describe the petroglyphs of the Tchitundo-Hulu sites as (translated) designs representing multiple figures, some abstract, others geometric, rectilinear or curvilinear, parallel or not, concentric circles totally or partly with rays; star-shaped forms, beside others of uncertain contour, difficult or doubtful in interpretation. They are of varying ages engraved upon a patinated rock (granite) surface much affected by erosion. Some human and animal figures are also mentioned, of a schematic or semi-schematic character difficult to identify but perhaps the animals are a hare and an ostrich, and two giraffes in a more naturalistic style. Execution was thought to be with a hard stone by percussion and with subsequent polishing. The site described by Breuil and De Almeida as near the Txipopilu River in the text and as at Camuctlio in the illustration, and as on the west slope of Mount Chela, seems to be the same one mentioned by Mr and Mrs Rudner (Rudner, 1970) as ten kilometres north of Lungo of which they obtained a description and photographs from Dr N.J. van Warmelo, the well-known enthnologist. They later visited the site themselves (Rudner, 1976). Breuil and De Almeida describe the petroglyphs as comprising representations of footprints, human and feline, and of the horns of antelope; 'clizaines' of iron hoe representations and one axe; and more geometrics, circles, ovals, 'D' shapes, etc. The tool glyphs are clearly of the Iron Age like the similar ones already noted in the Zambezi valley, but the footprints and geometric designs might be of earlier periods. A similar human footprint at Pungo Andonga in Central Angola was shown in 1854 to Dr Livingstone (1857). He did not as has been stated (Rudner, 1976) mistake it for a fossil footprint, but described it as carved on the rock and said by the local people to be the footprint of a famous queen of the Jinga who had lived in the seventeenth century. It is not impossible

that it was modelled on her footprint but, if so, she had a small foot. Jalmar Rudner visited the spot in 1960 and found it to be 9 ins (22.5 cm) long. There were other similar petroglyphs in a less finished state (Rudner, 1970). On a later visit the Rudners noted material of a Later Stone Age Wilton-like industry on the surrounding rock floor and also some potsherds, but whether any of this material can be related to the footprints is, of course, not demonstrable. An engraved footprint was reported to the Rudners near Porto Ambion (Rudner, 1976) and others near Quilengues and at the Epupa Falls on the Cunene River, but these were not actually seen by them. Other human footprint glyphs occur in Northern Cape Province, in Namibia/SW Africa (MacCalman, 1964; Scherz, 1970) in Botswana (Wilman, 1933) and in Zimbabwe (Summers, 1959). Animal 'spoor' petroglyphs are common in Namibia/SW Africa (Scherz, 1970) and some occur in Zimbabwe, Botswana (Wilman, 1933), Northern Cape (Rudner, 1970) and in the Northern Transvaal (Wilman, 1933); Schoonraad, 1960; Willcox, 1963). None are known to me in Zambia. We have further descriptions and more illustrations of the Tchitundu-Hulu rock art from Carlos Ervedosa (1974) after an expedition to the sites accompanied by Professor J.R. dos Santos-Junior whose work on the rock paintings of Mocambique will receive attention later. The descriptions of the art agree with and complement those of Breuil and De Almeida, and a selection of the illustrations is reproduced in Figure 8.5, engravings A to H and paintings Ito S. Ervedosa interprets all the circle designs as 'solar symbols', a common assumption which I shall question later. There are apparently no spirals. In the main rock shelter with the paintings an excavation was made and 'Wilton' or similar microliths and ostrich eggshell beads were found at all levels. From near the top of the deposits a fragment of

The Central African Art Zone 85

86 The Central African Art Zone

Figure 8.5: Rock Art of Tchitundu-Hulu (after (C.M.N. Ervedosa). (A-H) Petroglyphs (I-S) Paintings

pottery, an arrow head, and a bead of European origin were recovered. Charcoals taken from the lowest level were radiocarbon dated 2,600 BP and the author states categorically that some of the paintings on the wall must be at least that old. Why they are equated in age with the oldest part of the deposit (or as older still) instead of the upper part is not explained and appears to be unwarranted! Stone circles attributed to the Cuissi were found nearby, one with pottery sherds and stone artefacts scattered about. The Berg Dama have left similar stone hut circles, which is another reason for linking these two tribes. A few rock art sites occur in the Katanga region of Zaire not far from the NW Zambian sites. The work is mostly in caves of which the best documented is one at Kiantapo (Breuil 1952b; Mortelmans, 1952). The art — if so it can be termed — is mainly amorphous or geometrical, but with some schematic representations. The petroglyphs consist largely of dots, apparently drilled, spaced apart, sometimes randomly but mostly outlining animal or human figures, birds, fish and perhaps huts. Others are incised and include crosses, perhaps a tree, and a snail-like spiral. Their age varies. Some are patinated, some recently cut with a metal tool. Mortelmans would link the older work with a Stone Age people but there is very little evidence as to its age or the artists. The late work must be attributed to the Bantu-speaking Negroes at present in the region. The few paintings occurring with the petroglyphs are of similar designs. In northern Zaire a large ensemble of petroglyphs has been found, chiefly cup depressions but with some representations of felines, birds and antelope and (rarely) human figures. Most frequent are footprints and glyphs of iron tools and weapons. This is probably

fairly recent Iron Age work but it might have had a Stone Age beginning (Maret in Van Noten, 1981). In the south numerous sites have been reported with black and sometimes ochreous paintings but these have been little studied. Apparently they include amorphous designs and crude anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figures not certainly datable but probably recent (Maret, ibid.). At one site, the cave of Mbafu, rock painting of a kind is still practised. It apparently dates from the time of the first Christian evangelisation of the region and includes as subjects various Christian symbols such as crosses. Mortelmans with R. Monteyne (1962) has described and illustrated the work which is again geometrical, amorphous, or crudely representational (Figure 8.6). Some of it might be somewhat earlier but most must date from the sixteenth century. Metal and ceramic objects found in the cave deposit, and local history, support this conclusion. It is doubtful, therefore, whether the rock art owes anything to African tradition and should be considered as art of the Central African Zone except geographically. Its appearance in the area might be entirely due to the Christian missionaries with their pictorial and sculptural art. Other rock paintings were reported by Mortelmans in the same neighbourhood but not described. The organisers of the Congress Panafricain de Prehistoire held in Leopoldville in 1959 arranged an excursion to three of the painted grottos. In one of them (Mbafu) the visit provoked a dangerous incident. Dr Oliver Davies, who was present, described what happened (pers. comm.): During the visit one of the party with his geological hammer struck a rock-pillar in the cave, which gave out a booming sound. This pillar was locally regarded as a god, and the sound was thought to be a threat from him. So after the party had left, one of the leaders, Monsieur R. Monteyne, was nearly mobbed in the village. The pillar was no doubt a rock gong of the kind already noted at Birnin Kudu, used for ritual purposes. In Central Africa broadly defined, but beyond the Central African Zone as here demarcated, in the Cameroon on rocks spread over several hectares are petroglyphs of circles grouped or concentric (Maret, ibid.). We must now return to Central Africa to review the distribution of the rock paintings and note their relationship in style and subject to the engravings.

The Central African Art Zone 87

Figure 8.6: Rock Paintings of Mbafu (from G. Mortelmans and R. Monteyne, 1962)

Distribution of Rock Paintings The paintings on Mt Elgon have been described. They are the only ones with any claim to antiquity in Kenya. Others are known but all appear to be the very recent, and still continuing, work of Eastern Nilotic speaking pastoralists such as the Masai. R.M. Gramley (1955) has established that rock shelters in which these paintings occur are used by the Masai (and also the Samburu) warriors for meat feastings, as by tradition they may not eat meat at their kraals. At these places termed il-puli (singular ol-pul) the main concern was feasting, but paintings were executed also, including linear designs and many which have been identified as similar to cattle brands. Among these is the 'rayed' circle and the barred semi-circle already noted as common among the petroglyphs. At two shelters at Leshuta typical Masai shields are represented. At a site, Seronera, some 60 miles (96 km) to the south-west there are other paintings of shields and cattle brands undoubtedly of Masai origin (Bower, 1976). The paintings are crudely executed, usually in white, but sometimes red, the paint

apparently applied with a finger or a stick, often superimposed and smudged. The linear and brand paintings occur at several ilpuli on Lukenya Hill and the general distribution of the brand signs in rock shelters corresponds well with the territory formerly inhabited, or still occupied, by Masai and related Eastern Nilote pastoral tribes. The oldest known ol-pul is considered to be no more than 110 years old: older ones may be found but no paintings of this kind are likely to be more than two or three centuries old. A test pit at the main Leshuta rock shelter revealed cattle and sheep or goat bones, numerous pottery sherds, and beads of the nineteenth century or later. One obsidian flake was found a few metres below the surface and more were collected from the surface indicating probable brief occupation of Stone Age people in the not very remote past. It might well be that the first pastoralists to use the shelter for their feasts found a few rock paintings already there to suggest the practice to them. They were accustomed to the use of paint on leather and hut walls. Another test dig at a shelter on Lukenya Hill yielded similar

88 The Central African Art Zone

Figure 8.7: Rock Paintings at Fock's Farm, Kenya. (A) after R.C. Soper (B and C) from photographs by D.H. Penner

results but included bottle glass and many bone artefacts, but no stone flakes. A painting site on Fock's Farm on the Uaso Nyiro River, Eastern Kenya, is mentioned by Soper (1968). The paintings he illustrates, finger painted in white, show much schematised human figures forming part of linear designs (see Figure 8.7A). David Penner (pers. comm., 1971) has reported his discovery of two more painted shelters on the same hill. The paintings, a single one in one shelter and 15-20 in the other, executed in red or in yellow, were of 'stick' men and amorphous linear designs of which two are illustrated from Penner's photographs, kindly sent to me (Figure 8.7 B and C). The floor of one painted shelter was strewn with Later Stone Age waste material and artefacts of obsidian and other silicious stone; and similar material was found by Penner in the immediate vicinity of the other shelter. Indications of occupation by 'Bantu' tribes are also common throughout this area so it could be them or the stone tool users who made the paintings: there is nothing in the paintings

to establish a link with either group. Even very recent execution by Mau Mau cannot be ruled out as numerous spent .303 cartridges and their clips were found in the shelters having most of the paintings. The likelihood that the rock paintings of Leshuta, Lukenya Hill, and probably those of the Fock's Farm neighbourhood, belong to a different culture to that of Mt Porr and Kangetet petroglyph sites, is increased by the absence of the concentric circle motif and the rarity of any circular designs except cattle brands at the painting sites. More rock paintings of the same general kind have recently been reported at a shelter on Mt Elgon which also has cattle paintings (Chapter 7) and at a group of sites in the Ndalat Hills, Eldoret District (Odak, 1977). With the possible exception of what might be schematic human figures the work is non-representational comprising many of the motifs common in the Art Zone — circles and sets of concentric circles or ovals usually with rays, spirals, crosses, 'combs', etc., which here as elsewhere are used as brand marks. So much for the few and artistically unimpressive

The Central African Art Zone 89 rock paintings of Kenya. Uganda also is not well endowed with this form of art, but some exists mainly in the south near Lake Kyoga. It has similarities to rock art in Tanzania near the western and southern shores of Lake Victoria and it will be best to consider this area as the Lake Kadoga/Lake Victoria or Lacustrine Sub-Region of the Central African Art Zone. In this we are greatly helped by the general survey made by J.H. Chaplin in 1966 summarising his own and previous work, and completed just before he was killed by a hit-and-run driver. His survey was published in 1974, edited and brought up to date by M.A.B. Harlow to include details of other important relevant research (Posnanski and Nelson, 1968; Soper and Golden, 1969). The rock art, except at one site all paintings, falls, with a few exceptions, within three groups (see Map 8.2; the dots in some cases mean more than one site) with some local variations, but having certain characteristics and motifs in common. The sites outside these groups but belonging with them in artistic character and content are on two islands, Lolui and Mfangano, in Lake Victoria and at Magosi, north-east of Group 3. The common characteristics are partly negative — absence of any truly naturalistic representations and of any developed skills in execu-

Figure 8.8: Rock Paintings from Lake Victoria Region, Group 1 (after J.H. Chaplin and M.A.B. Harlow)

tion; absence of the human figure except in extremely schematised form; and absence of handprints (but that is common to the outlying Bovidean sites discussed in the previous chapter). Positively — that most of the work is linear, amorphous or geometrical, with circles and sets of concentric circles an obsessive theme among the latter. What is called circle and dot 0 I classify with these designs, taking the dot as a minute circle. The colours are various shades of red or `claret' and white with, rarely, yellow. Some of the sites of Group 1 in the Bukoba district were reported by missionaries and others from 1908 with the first detailed description by Arundel] (1936). Irregular arrangements of dots, numbers of dots in circles, ovals, or other shapes, and 'gridirons' are common — sets of concentric circles absent or rare (Figure 8.8). Distinctive of this group are the figures of which a selection is shown in Figure 8.8, L, M, N, 0. Chaplin interpreted these as schematised representations of cattle. Others have thought these figures, or some of them, to be, 'conventionalised humans' (Arundell, 1936; Fosbrooke, 1950) and it has been pointed out that very similar ones elsewhere were given that interpretation (Harlow in Chaplin, 1974). So it is necessary to take a close look at them. They are

90 The Central African Art Zone claimed to be represented as seen from above. As Chaplin points out there is an underlying common pattern:

saying that paintings 'with this degree of stylization could just as easily be humans with their legs shown together and a skin tied around their waists, as cattle forms'. From a central axis arise one, or sometimes two, Graziosi's examples from Sollum Ba'atti (Figure pairs of symmetrical (usually curved) lines, close to 7.11A, two figures on left) are mentioned by Chaplin the top of the upper end, more often than not as being interpreted as men; but Graziosi could be pointing upwards. One, or several pairs of lines wrong — the figures are accompanied by unquestiondescend from the lower end of the axis, although able but much less schematised bovids. Others at the this usually continues well below their lowest same site are even more simplified and could be point . . . As cattle, the upper projections become either. Somewhat similar figures from elsewhere in horns. Sometimes ears can be made out as well. Tanzania and from Zambia will be considered later. Body and neck become one, the legs are tucked The question remains open, but it seems to me that away at the back of the beast, with scant concern Chaplin was more probably right. Excepting one for number, and the projection of the axis becomes other possible case in Group 2 the 'cattle forms' do the tail. not occur elsewhere in the Sub-Region. In the paintings of the Group 2 sites the concentric Interpreted as men, he continues, they must be circle motif features more prominently and in sets of assumed to be headless 'and to a man, ithyphallic', up to six or more, some having short 'rays' or petaland the upper projection must be raised arms. This, like protuberances beyond the outer circumference; however, leaves in some cases too many other limbs and there are some animal representations, recogfor a human, but then there are sometimes too many nisable as such but not with certainty as to species. shown even for a quadruped. Harlow is undecided, In Figure 8.9A from Nyamasindi might be an antFigure 8.9: Rock Paintings from Lake Victoria Region, Group 2 (after J.H. Chaplin and M.A.B. Harlow)

The Central African Art Zone 91 bear or a pangolin, more probably the latter. A similar figure, but (surprisingly here) engraved, is reported from another site on Mwanza Gulf. The animals Figure 8.9B from Nyankira though rather short necked for the role are described as giraffes (could they be okapi?), C and D from Nyang'oma and E might be almost any quadruped. The giraffes, elephant and ostrich paintings are unusual for the Lacustrine Sub-Region in being filled in solid instead of being linear forms. A rhinoceros is reported from Mwanza Gulf but the identification is doubtful (Chaplin, 1974). The Nyang'oma site is unique in the area for having representations of iron hoes of a type pre-European but belonging to the last few centuries (Soper and Golden, 1969). In the Group 3 Art the concentric circle motif is even more emphasised and the petal-like protuberances also occur. In these respects and in general style the paintings have closer affinities with those of Group 2 than with those of Group 1. At the Obwin Rock site only one painting survives with a small part effaced, although there are remaining traces of others. The design is unusually regular of six concentric circles with probably ten 'petals' originally, and two legs (Figure 8.10). Peculiar to one site (with the possible exception of one example on Lolui Island) is the representation of canoes. The site — Nyero — is of great interest also for the profusion of the designs, the finding of art mobilier in the occupation deposit, and the local folklore and customs connected with it (Lawrence, 1953; Chaplin, 1974; Posnansky and Nelson, 1968). There are at least 47 sets of concentric circles or remaining parts of them, with as many as seven circles in a set. There are designs (Figure 8.11 A and B) interpreted by Lawrence as acacia pods, but which might be ladders such as must have been necessary to

Figure 8.10: Rock Painting from Lake Victoria Region, Group 3, Obwin Rock (after J.H. Chaplin and M.A.B. Harlow)

execute some of the paintings which are as high as 30 ft (9 m) from the ground. If however we take Figure 8.11A as ladders we must suppose B to represent a rope bridge which, however unlikely it may seem, appears in 'hunter' rock paintings in Zimbabwe and South Africa, as do undoubted ladders, and there is

Figure 8.11: Rock Paintings, Nyero, Site 1 (after M. Posnansky and C.M. Nelson)

A

• SCALE

NYERO SITE I

92 The Central African Art Zone

NYERO SITE 2 Ar

Figure 8.12: Rock Paintings, Nyero, Site 2 (after M. Posnansky and C.M. Nelson)

The Central African Art Zone 93 another probable example in SW Africa/Namibia. The canoes, of which there are six, at least in part— one when intact 2.5 m long — are much stylised but appear to have people and perhaps loads in them (Figure 8.12 A and B). This occurrence does not help much to date the paintings as it is not known when dugout canoes first came into use in the region. The floor deposit contained a Later Stone Age industry somewhat resembling, but distinct from, `Wilton'; some pottery of uncertain but preeighteenth century age; and a piece of bone with a set of three concentric circles engraved upon it. This is one of the very rare cases in Africa where art mobilier in a cave deposit may be linked with the mural art and it probably indicates that the users of the Wilton-like implements were also responsible for most, at least, of the paintings. But not with certainty as it might have been the work of a later visitor copying a design he saw on the rock wall. Two pieces of prepared ochre were also found near the bottom of the deposit and are further evidence linking the stone tool users with the art. According to Lawrence (1953, 1957) traditions of the local Teso people tell of small, pale skinned folk who hid among the rocks; which, of course, sounds like a remnant of Bushman-like Khoisan lingering there until the Teso moved in about two centuries ago. The rock shelter is still used for rainmaking ceremonies which may well, here as elsewhere, date back to the hunter-gatherer, possibly Khoisan, occupation. Another painted shelter in the neighbourhood, at Kakoro, is also used for rainmaking rituals. Taking account of all evidence from the deposit — the lithic material, pottery, ochre, and a cowrie shell from an Indian Ocean shore — as well as comparisons of the art with that of other sites, we can cautiously date the art and the artefacts as belonging to the last thousand years and most probably to the period AD 1250-1750. Of the island sites Mfangano has paintings typical of the Sub-Region, concentric circles and one with what is described as a flame-like pattern from the outer circumference. Also, and unusual for the area, some spirals. Lolui Island has several painting sites (Posnansky, 1961; Chaplin, 1974). Concentric circles are abundant, mostly circle-and-dot or with up to three rings. Some are in groups, touching, and very common are `dumbbells' formed of two sets of concentric circles joined by a double line (Figure 8.13 A to D). Of particular interest is a linear form which Posnansky interprets as a canoe (Figure 8.13 E). There is nothing

Figure 8.13: Rock Paintings of Lolui Island (A-D) `Dumbbells' (E) Possible canoe with sails (A to D after J.H. Chaplin; E after M. Posnansky)

surprising in this, of course, as the rock artists had to

have some craft to reach the island, but this one appears to have a sail. If this is the true interpretation the painting must have an age of not more than about four centuries for the idea of the sail and the cloth to make it with could not have reached Lake Victoria from the coast (on present evidence) before about AD 1600. Iron Age pottery was found but no Later Stone Age material. Lolui is unusual also in having some petroglyphs with the paintings which appear to express the same artistic impulse though in a different technique. One of the Lolui sites has rock-gongs, that is rocks which ring when struck and show evidence of having been used in that way. At the site Karakoro, in Group 3 mentioned above as used today for rainmaking rites, there is the same association of paintings and a rockgong, and at two other sites, Chole and Mwanajo in Group 2, a rock-gong and paintings again occur together (Soper, 1968b). These gongs are considered by the authorities to be most likely to belong to the Iron Age and fairly recent. The same association of rock-gongs, rock art, and some kind of cult activity, has already been noted at far off Birnin Kudu in

94

The Central African Art Zone

Nigeria; and rock-gongs occur at rock art sites in Zimbabwe (Robinson, 1958), South Africa (Fock, 1972; Maggs, 1973) SW Africa/Namibia (Scherz, 1970, 1975; Wendt, 1979). Magosi in Karamoja (see Map 8.2) has only one painting or group, in red (Figure 8.14). Chaplin describes it thus: The painting . . . consists of a circle, about 5 cm in diameter, surrounded by three squared circles, the outer one cut by an arc. The circle is touched by the tip of a 'phallic' shape coming from the top right: on the left is an angular outline drawing suggesting the head of an ox.

Figure 8.14: Rock Paintings at Magosi (after J.H. Chaplin)

The ox head is, of course, doubtful. The circle and concentric arcs may link the painting with the lake art. The site is famous as the type site of the Magosian industry considered to belong to the transition between the Middle and the Later Stone Ages but the cave deposit also contains late Wilton-like' material and there is nothing to connect the painting definitely with either; but on comparative grounds it is much more likely to be of the later period. The site at Loteteleit included by Chaplin in his survey and also in Karamoja has been mentioned when discussing Ugandan petroglyphs as here the motif — concentric circles/spirals — is carved not painted, and for this reason and because of the siting of an open koppie with hut circles, the art has a closer affinity to that of Kangetet in Kenya. Also in Karamoja in the southern part at Napeduh Hill some 50 miles (80 km) north of Mt Elgon a painting of two giraffes has been found (Robins, 1970). They have not been reproduced for publication but from the description appear to be in a seminaturalistic style. Cultural material on the slope

outside the cave includes pottery, an obsidian crescent and a broken bored stone. This occurrence and another giraffe painting in the same district (Wilson, 1970) contrasts sharply with the geometrical and amorphous art of the other Karamojan sites and with the Group 3 geometrical and amorphous paintings of Teso/Bukedi. Wilson's giraffe painting is at Lokapeliethe Hill which I am able to locate only approximately on Map 8.2. It also was not illustrated or described in any detail, pending another publication. Other paintings at the site include concentric circles and what is described as 'a number of hieroglyphs' presumably the same kind of motifs as found in the Lacustrine Art Zone to the south; also a 'vivid picture of a giraffe'. The author has adduced a mass of evidence to show that the rock art of Karamoja can almost certainly be attributed to a tribe called the Oropom who were virtually annihilated in the nineteenth century by the present Karamojong, although some people in the district claim descent from them. They once occupied a large area extending eastwards to beyond Lake Rudolf (Turkana) and southwards to Mt Elgon. By tradition they were in Karamoja when the first of the succeeding tribes moved in, perhaps five or six centuries ago. They are described as having mongoloid slant eyes and many have comparatively light skin colour and prominent rounded foreheads. Some had `peppercorn' hair. This of course is practically a description of Bushmen, or at least Khoisan, but they are not described as of short stature. They apparently wore the penis sheath and, unlike neighbouring tribes, did not circumcise. They were in a stage of transition, making and using stone tools and pottery, using but not producing iron tools and spears, and towards the end of their existence as a tribe they adopted pastoralism and the practice of 'training' the long horns of the beasts. Locally at least they built fairly elaborate huts. They had a reputation as rainmakers and wizards. Archaeological evidence and tradition associates them with stone circles such as that at Loteteleit, Kangetet, and elsewhere in original Oropom territory, in or around which they performed ceremonies. They use the concentric motif decoratively on pottery. It seems very likely that the Oropom or an offshoot of theirs were the users of the Nyero shelters and probably others in that area, as well as being the makers of the petroglyphs at Loteteleit and the paintings at Magosi. Determination of the age and authorship of the rock paintings of the Lacustrine Sub-Region (Map 8.2) presents all the usual difficulties. There is little in

The Central African Art Zone 95 the art itself, for example, depiction of clothing, weapons, bodily form, to identify the artists: and little also, except to some extent the canoes and the hoes, to help determine the age. So it is necessary to fall back on the associated artefacts in the rock shelter or the vicinity, with all the hazards this course presents. The results are contradictory. If the Nyero site gives reasons to attribute the art to people who left the Later Stone Age material, there is none of this associated with the similar art at Lolui Island. R.C. Soper and B. Golden (1969) have tabulated the materials associated with Group 2 Rock Art sites of the Mwanza district. One has Later Stone Age only, one has Iron Age only, three have both. Lolui has

Iron Age pottery. The local people disclaim all knowledge of the artists, which probably means that the latest paintings are at least a century old. It seems, on the probabilities, that Stone Age people, latecomers themselves, introduced rock painting into the region and that the practice was taken up by the first Iron Age immigrants and discontinued when the present inhabitants moved in from one to three centuries ago: and that all the art belongs to the last thousand years. The whole question of the purpose or purposes of prehistoric rock art and the motives of the artists must be considered in a later chapter. But what, in passing, can we infer from our look at the Lake Victoria/Lake

Map 8.3: Tanzania — Rock Art Sites I I1I

LAKE VICTORIA

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• KOLO • KONDOA

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Figure 15.2: Ladders and Bridges. (A-C) Cathedral Peak, Drakensberg (after H. Pager) (D) Harare, Zimbabwe (after

L. Frobenius, (E) Ameib, SW Africa/Namibia (after E.R. and H. Scherz) (F)

200 Art Sub-Region 4: Drakensberg-Maluti Massif and Surrounding Areas Natal Drakensberg, also wagons, trek oxen and slaughter cattle. A most interesting painting copied by Patricia Vinnicombe in the same area very probably records his passing (Plate 44). It is in any case very unlikely that any painting of a horse in the Drakensberg was made earlier than that. After the Trek of 1837 when Boers began to establish grazing farms under the Berg, horse stealing by Bushmen commenced and was in full swing by the mid-1840s. In the southern part of the Sub-Region farmers with livestock were well established south of the Orange River by 1800. The first horses seen on the Orange River above Colesberg might have been those of the first explorers, beginning with Gordon in 1777, or it might have been a little earlier as there is some evidence that farmers reached the Orange River before he did. Collins was on the south bank at the junction with the Caledon in 1809 and looking across the river observed horses, no doubt stolen, in a Bushman kraal. He remarks that the practice had for some years prevailed in the vicinity of the Bamboesberg and Zuurberg (Moodie, 1960), that is in the region of Steynsberg some 60 miles (96 km) to the south. Hunters and trek-Boers were crossing into the Orange Free State soon after the turn of the century. Griqua and Korana horsemen were raiding into the eastern OFS in the 1830s and Moshesh in self-defence started systematically to collect horses. The paintings shown in Plate 47 are of considerable historical interest. They occur on the farm Kwartelfontein on the Caledon River a few miles north of its junction with the Orange, and the paintings are known to have been there prior to 1835. The figures have muskets, powder-horns and horses, and they wear late-eighteenth-century or early-nineteenthcentury dress. One of the figures clearly wears kneebreeches, which farmers did not. They may well have been members of Gordon's expedition of 1777 or of Collins' of 1809, both of which reached the river confluence. If so, however, they were painted from memory, as they did not cross the river. This is quite possible and Collins was visited by Bushmen from the north bank. On the other hand the dress is very like Gordon's garb when exploring, as shown by his drawing of himself in the Gordon collection (Figure 15.3). The animated scene in Plate 45 shows a party of Bushmen cattle raiders being overtaken by a mounted commando. The men of the commando have opened fire with their roers, some from the saddle and some dismounted. Several Bushmen have been hit but one of them as least obviously escaped to paint this poignant scene. Some of the horses here as well as

Figure 15.3: Colonel R.J. Gordon (self-portrait as redrawn by A.A. Telford)

many from other sites are very well done refuting the idea that the late paintings of animals are 'degenerate'. Note especially the two horses at the top in threequarter foreshortened aspect. The scene is at the farm Beersheba on the border between Natal and Griqualand East on a well-known route of the rustlers, and it no doubt depicts an actual event. The date would be about 1840. Probably even later would be the scene in Plate 48 from the farm Bellevue in East Griqualand which shows men in military uniform hunting eland, probably illicitly. The observation is extraordinary: note the reins, bridle and bit, saddle and double girth on the top horse, and the way in which the too tight crupper has pulled up the horse's tail. In his excitement the soldier has lost his cap which lies on the ground next to him. The eland, however, are not in the best polychrome style. The shading is not well done, the

Art Sub-Region 4: Drakensberg-Maluti Massif and Surrounding Areas 201 bodies are elongated and the red paint from one of them has 'run'. The latter I have not observed elsewhere, and as the painting might be as late as 1870, it might even be 'store' paint. Another minor mystery attaches to a three-pronged object carried by Bushmen, especially when shown mounted. Probably it is a sharp goad: used chiefly to hasten stolen cattle during the getaway (Figure 15.4). Another category of paintings is especially common in this Sub-Region. They show creatures part animal, part human, and have been called therianthropes. Some have animal (usually antelope) heads on human bodies. These probably represent men dressed up for the practical purpose of stalking game — a well-known Bushman practice — or for ritual purposes such as the eland-bull dance of the Naron (Chapter 9). But some are human with hooves or other animal appurtenances, and these must be taken from myths or be individual flights of fancy. Bushman folklore is full of stories of human to animal transformations or vice versa. Other imaginary creatures are bogey animals with gaping jaws seen chasing little humans; snakes with ears or animal heads as in the other Sub-Regions; and spotted animals which the rain-doctors were supposed to lead over the land causing rain to fall. This appears to have been a personification, or rather animalisation, of the rain cloud (Willcox, 1963). Apparently limited to the Sub-Region is another kind of figure: animal-like, or humanoid, bodies with wing-like appendages or arms held in a similar position. Mostly they are quite unlike birds, bats or

Figure 15.4: Bushman Rider with Three-pronged Object (after P. Vinnicombe)

Figure 15.5: Winged Creatures and 'Arms-back' Humans. (A-B) Maclear, NE Cape Province (after 0. Moszeik) (C-E) Drakensberg, Natal (after H. Pager)

winged insects; and students of rock art have given their imagination free rein to suggest explanations. Moszeik (1910) appears to have been the first to comment on these figures, observed by him in the north-east Cape part of the Sub-Region (Figure 15.5A and B). He only refers to them, among other non-realistic but animal-like paintings, as 'monsters' but suggests that some of them might be 'caricatures' or creatures long extinct. The Witwatersrand Expedition of 1929 recorded other examples which were called flying buck (A.Y. Mason in Wells et al., 1933). I reproduced one of these (Willcox, 1963) but more cautiously called it `winged buck'. Lee and Woodhouse described and illustrated others (Lee and Woodhouse, 1964, 1968) with the suggestion that they symbolise the souls of the dead leaving the body. Woodhouse also drew attention to the rather similar humanoid figures kneeling with arms thrown back and points out that it is difficult to draw a dividing line between the many forms that these take and the 'flying buck'. The variety of forms is indeed very great: some have legs, some have not, some look more animal than human, some the reverse, some are bird-like. Pager (1971) illustrates many of the variations and appears to accept the departing soul theory (Figure 15.5C, D and E). The figures are quite common in the Natal Drakensberg and Vinnicombe also discusses them. She points to a connection in Bushman folklore between the deaths of animals and humans and a sudden wind which is symbolised by a bird: this seems to be much the same idea, but she does also suggest

202 Art Sub-Region 4: Drakensberg-Maluti Massif and Surrounding Areas that winged creatures are 'intermediaries between indicate some special relationship but to call them earth and sky' and — using Levi-Straussian language — `lines of magic force', as some students of rock art are that they are 'a symbol of mediation between life and now doing, is no help. The finding of more examples, death'. There is a serious objection to this 'departing and study to find out what they have in common, will soul' theory: the creatures are seldom shown in death perhaps throw some light on this problem. context. Its proponents are open to the criticism of Lewis-Williams' studies have already been menselecting their evidence. tioned several times and will be again in discussing his Lewis-Williams (1977b) goes more deeply into the theories of the special significance of juxtapositions problem with a closer scrutiny of the folklore and of and superimpositions (with which I have not been Bushman ritual and dance, first questioning whether able to agree); but his researches and fieldwork in the the creatures are actually in flight. He points out that Kalahari have led him to make more plausible the 'arms-back' position is adopted in dancing, with interpretations of certain paintings than had been put the body leaning forward, often ending by the dancer forward. In particular he has shown that the recorded falling to his knees. As already mentioned men folklore of the southern San and that of the present danced (as they still do) until they fall forward in a !Kung have more in common than had been realised trance, sometimes accompanied by nose bleeding. and that these underlying modes of thought can be Lewis-Williams finds examples of such scenes in the shown to have influenced the artists in their work. paintings. I cannot here do full justice to his views Much of this research was set forth in his PhD thesis supported as they are by a wealth of evidence from which has now been published (Lewis-Williams, folklore and recent studies of Kalahari Bushmen, but 1981). he suggests that what is represented is the moment of Some aspects of the art, as such, have been noted entering trance. It seems to me the trance-prone in passing. Here prehistoric rock painting attained its artist might might well have seen himself as flying greatest technical perfection — in sensitivity of line, while in trance. This is a common illusion of that state delicacy in the use of paint, the depiction of animal whether or not induced by drugs and is experienced movement, and in composition — but above all in the by shamans of North and South America: it is independent discovery of foreshortening, with the probably the origin of the 'flying' of witches. For a full ability to paint animals in any aspect, from the front, treatment of this theme see Hallucinogens and from the rear, from above, or in three-quarter view. Shahmanism (Harner (ed.), 1973). It is worth recalling that this ability was not A matter of controversy just now is the reason for achieved in the mural painting of the Near East. The the almost total absence of the wildebeest earliest examples of its use in painting might, of (Connochaetes gnou) as a painting subject. Lewis- course, have disappeared. There are some rather Williams found none in either of his sample areas clumsy attempts at perspective on fifth century BC (Giant's Castle and Barkly East), Vinnicombe only Greek vases, otherwise the earliest known is (I three, and Pager only the one I had put on record in believe) in a recently discovered tomb at Vergina in 1969. The latter is the finest of all known representa- Macedonia, almost certainly that of Philip the Second, tions of the animal in the paintings. I know of two father of Alexander, who died in 336 BC. It shows the other cases in the Giant's Castle area. This amounts abduction of Persephone by Pluto with a mastery of to half-a-dozen out of some thousands of paintings of perspective and is attributed to Nichomachos. Another animals. Vinnicombe suggests that the extreme rarity frieze shows horses and footmen also with perspecwas caused by a taboo on painting it. I think the tive. This is thought to be the work of Philoxenus of reason is simpler: although they were abundant on the Eretria, his pupil, the artist believed to have painted highveld and immediately below the Drakensberg in `The Battle of Issus' copied as a mosiac in the Casa del Natal and Griqualand East I can find no record of Fauna of Pompeii. It has superb foreshortened their ever being seen in the mountains where the rock pictures of horses in action. The ability to paint in this shelters are on either side of the escarpment: they way seems to have been lost during the Dark Ages to seem to have been strictly an animal of the plains, and appear again only at the Renaissance. To find it in the few paintings of them were I think done from late Bushman art is truly astonishing as it is not to be memory. Attempts to introduce them into the Game seen in prehistoric art anywhere else in the world, even in the best Palaeolithic work in Europe. I shall Reserve at Giant's Castle have not been successful. Another subject of current discussion is certain later suggest a possible reason for its emergence. lines that have been noticed connecting members of Perspective in other forms is also found though not mixed animals and human groups. Perhaps these commonly (Willcox, 1963).

Art Sub-Region 4: Drakensberg-Maluti Massif and Surrounding Areas 203 The relationships between the Art Sub-Regions must be considered later but it is of peculiar interest to note the sharp differences between the art of the most closely adjoining parts of Sub-Regions 3 and 4. On the one side few bichromes, fewer polychromes, and no shaded polychromes; animals depicted in the lateral aspects with no foreshortening; only the simplest of scenes, little action, a degree of formalism,

and an abundance of handprints: on the other side of the narrow gap in Sub-Region 4, abundant bichromes and polychromes; many shaded animals shown in any aspect often with skilful foreshortening; complex scenes with spirited action; very little formalism; no handprints. Sub-Regions 1, 2 and 3 have in many respects more in common with each other than any of these has with Sub-Region 4.

Art Sub-Region 5: the Northern Cape

The Sub-Region extends over a large part of what are called the Thirstlands, embracing a large part of the Great Karoo and Griqualand West where the rainfall rarely exceeds 10 ins (250 mm) and sometimes for years together is well below that amount. The climate, as usual with semi-desert, is harsh with a large range of seasonal and diurnal temperature. Except for the Nuweveld/Sneeuwberg escarpment in the extreme south of the Sub-Region the only mountains are the Asbestos Mountains, south of Kuruman and the Langebergen; and these could more accurately be called hills. Except for brief seasons after rains there is practically no surface water and very little vegetation other than the drought resisting Karoo types. Exposed rock of the kinds used by the engravers is also scarce and rock shelters are very few indeed. Earlier material is present in the area but the stone industries which can be associated with the rock art are of the Later Stone Age but are seemingly atypical as they are described as 'probably Wilton', 'probably Smithfield', 'Smithfield C or Wilton' (Rudner and Rudner 1968); and at Vosburg are 'Smithfield B or Smithfield B-C' (Goodwin, 1936). The stone implements I found at Ulco I could only describe as 'upper Smithfield'. At Driekopseiland however, the Later Stone Age material was typical Smithfield B. Only more work in the region will sort out which industries are associated with which kinds of rock art. I suspect that available material will account for most of the differences. Along the Orange River valley there was probably some occupation during the whole of the Later Stone Age and there must have been incursions, perhaps brief, elsewhere; but bearing in mind the large areas of surrounding territory unoccupied and better favoured climatically, it seems likely that Bushmen only moved into the area generally under pressure by Hottentots perhaps ten or fifteen centuries ago, and by 'Bantu' from the north-east at least as early as the

16 sixteenth century. Goods of Thlaping origin which might have been traded from a distance, have been found at Postmasburg (Map 16.1) dated about the twelfth century so this thrust could have been some centuries earlier (Beaumont and Boshier, 1974). More of the Bushman race were pushed into the region by the advancing European farmers in the south from the beginning of the nineteenth century. Hottentots were established along the Orange River as far east as Prieska when Wikar and Gordon explored that far in 1878 and 1879, but they do not appear to have lived in the Sub-Region either to the north or the south of the River until the Korana and Griqua tribes retreated, also under White pressure, from the SW Cape at the beginning of the eighteenth century. The Korana kept mainly to the area immediately south of the River; the Griquas occupied what is called Griqualand West. The driest parts precluded entry by these cattle owners except in quick transit. Apart from Wikar's and Gordon's journeys White exploration began here from the beginning of the nineteenth century. In 1801 missionary William Anderson travelled from Cape Town, via Sak River to Prieska and beyond to Klaarwater, now Griquatown. He was followed in the same year by the expedition of Dr William Somerville and Pieter Johannes Truter. From their journal we learn that Bushmen were encountered at several points between the Sak River and the Orange: they were the only inhabitants, and few in number. There was another official expedition in 1805 led by H. de Graaf with Henry Lichtenstein as doctor and naturalist; and explorer William Burchell followed in 1811. They also saw only Bushmen, friendly but apprehensive. From this time journeys through the area by missionaries, traders and trek boers became frequent; and with later history we need not concern ourselves. The first report of rock art in this Sub-Region 205

206 Art Sub-Region 5: the Northern Cape

300 km 200 miles

GABARONE •

BOTSWANA

RUSTENBURG e PRETORIA Magaliesberg • KRUGERSDORP •

• JOHANNESBURG

OTTOSDAL •

1111•01111-411

• Redan asynoe \