Format: Paper presentations with discussion
Chairs: Inés Domingo Sanz, ICREA, Universitat de Barcelona, Spain, ines.domingo@ub.edu
Catherine Namono, School of Geography, Archaeology & Environmental Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, Catherine.Namono@wits.ac.za
Papers:
Performative Materialities of Pigments, Paints and Personhood in the Rock Art of the Maloti-Drakensberg and Adjacent Northeastern Stormberg, South Africa
Dawn Green, University of Cape Town, South Africa
With the influence of post-humanist ontologies, attention is being paid to the entanglements of humans and more-than-humans in spacetime. Rock paintings are material and have material effects through the use of pigments and paint ingredients. We know that image makers used specific types and colours of pigments and minerals, paint recipes and techniques to mark their identities, but none have considered paint, and its constituents, as ontologically relating persons and their spiritmaterial environments in spacetime. I do so by paying attention to a selection of ‘San’ rock paintings from the Maloti-Drakensberg and adjacent northeastern Stormberg, South Africa. Paint is a combination of rock, earth, mineral, animal, plant and water substances which are absorbed by the rock surface for millennia and thus, are of the rock surface and the surrounding mountainscapes. San ethnography shows how coloured pigments and what they are mixed with – potent substances – materially identify, associate and differentiate persons and their behaviours. I use this evidence to consider painting as an ontologically relational engagement with personhood, behaviour and being. This investigation has important implications for considering the rock face as part of the personhood of image maker/s, paint and paintings that are of their human and more-than-human communities.
Following Roads through Time: Tracing the Changing Relationship Between Roads and People in Bokoni, Northeastern South Africa
Alex M.H. Schoeman, School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies, Wits University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa
J.P. Celliers, Lydenburg Museum, South Africa
Jaco van der Walt, Digby Wells Environmental, South Africa
David Pearce, Rock Art Research Institute, Wits University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa
Roads wound through second-millennium CE Bokoni villages and towns. When these roads entered the archaeological vocabulary in the 1970s, they were referred to as cattle tracks and, since then, have largely been discussed as quotidian features. Obviously, Bokoni’s roads did channel livestock and people through settlements and ensured that the agricultural fields were not trampled, but we suggest that they also became central to the Bakoni symbolic vocabulary and that they consequently allow us insight into how people in Bokoni thought about the homesteads, towns and roads that they built and dwelt in. This paper explores the evolution of roads in Bokoni villages and towns and their symbolic significance through a comparison of the depiction of roads at three engraving clusters that are associated with different occupation phases, and decorated tombstones from a twentieth-century Bokoni site. We suggest that in this four hundred years sequence, the meaning of roads shifted from that of a quotidian feature to a sign of belonging during the Bokoni diaspora.
Persistent Places, Rock Art and Social Practices: The Case of the Hill of Oyola (Northwestern Argentina)
Eugenia Ahets Etcheberry, CONICET, Universidad Nacional de San Martín, Argentina
Lucas Gheco, CONICET – IRES, Universidad Nacional de San Martín, Argentina
Matías Landino, CONICET, Universidad Nacional de San Martín, Argentina
Marcos Gastaldi, CONICET – IDACOR, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Spain
Marcos Quesada, CONICET – IRES, Universidad Nacional de Catamarca, Spain
Fernando Marte, Universidad Nacional de San Martín, Argentina
Worldwide, diachronic approaches to rock art still represent an extended theoretical and methodological challenge. The concept of persistent places, namely, places that were -and in some cases still are- repeatedly painted, engraved and used during long-term occupations of a region, can be a helpful analytical tool to explore the histories of some archaeological sites. However, it can also hide a great diversity of social practices that co-constituted these places as persistent through time.
The hill of Oyola (northwestern Argentina) can be interpreted as a persistent place, since the motifs recorded in its caves suggest a long historical process of painting. Despite this continuity in the selection of the hill to make rock art, analysis of the spatial structuration of the painted caves, plus stratigraphic excavations, indicate that the ritual practices performed there may have changed through time. This study seeks to understand the continuities, discontinuities and relationships among the histories of use and painting that co-constituted Oyola as a persistent place. Therefore, we employ an approach that combines spatial analysis, stratigraphic excavations, and both macro and archaeometric examinations of the rock art. This local case offers broader theoretical and methodological reflections on rock art production, ritual practices and persistent places.
There’s a Bear in There: The Pictorial Story Telling of the Natural World and the Cosmological Scheme of Things
Gail Higginbottom, Archaeology, Flinders University, Australia; Bournemouth University, UK; Incipit (CSIC), Spain
The possible meaning(s) of both the parietal art of dolmens and the dolmens themselves seems fluid and unending. Nevertheless, this paper will demonstrate in what ways they, together, contain significant embodiment of human cognition regarding the natural world and the perceived realities of human existence. As part of a larger investigation into understanding an Iberian Neolithic, this work presents a novel combination of methods where an individual icon is considered both within the contexts of art traditions, material culture studies, archaeological finds as well as landscape visibility studies. Specifically, this paper presents part of that study, in particular, an interpretation of the dolmen of Arquinha da Moura and one of its two singular, large paintings. In this way, the paper demonstrates how a major piece of iconographic art us entailed within a dolmen, whilst also being part of the greater cultural scheme. A scheme where Nature and Supernature are one and the same.
Management, Research, and Tourism in Cueva de las Manos: Challenges and New Approaches in the Conservation of Patagonian Archaeological Heritage
Damián Bozzuto, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET); Instituto Nacional de Antropología y Pensamiento Latinoamericano (INAPL); Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA)
Agustina Papú, Instituto Nacional de Antropología y Pensamiento Latinoamericano (INAPL); Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET)
María Luz Funes, Instituto Nacional de Antropología y Pensamiento Latinoamericano (INAPL)
Valeria Ucedo, Parque Provincial Cueva de las Manos
Ricardo Vázquez, Parque Provincial Cueva de las Manos Director
This paper explores the state of the art of ongoing management, conservation, and research projects in the archaeological complex Cueva de las Manos (Argentine Patagonia). This UNESCO World Heritage site renowned for its rock art, consists of a group of shelters with evidence of recurrent hunter-gatherer occupations throughout the Holocene.
First, it addresses the historical journey of the site’s management, as well as the advisory and participatory role of INAPL in its protection, alongside other actors. In relation to this, an overview of touristic developments in the locality and its surroundings will also be covered.
Second, the contributions based on archaeological research will be presented. These have demonstrated that Cueva de las Manos was a part of a larger group of interconnected sites within the Pinturas river basin and other neighbouring regions. Recent and ongoing projects with new questions and technologies will be introduced.
Based on this research and the current legislation protecting the basin, a new project has developed focused on the systematic survey of historical and archaeological sites throughout the Pinturas basin. This will enrich ongoing investigations, as well as contribute valuable information for the management, preservation and public use of the Pinturas river basin’s cultural resources.
Perspectives of Human Life History: From Paintings and Graffiti of South India in the Early Iron Age
Prof. S. Rama Krishna Pisipaty, Former Professor & Dean, Sri Chandrasekharendra Saraswathi Viswa Mahavidyalaya University, India
Usha Rani Pisipaty, Dept of Chemistry (R), Saraswathi Viswa Mahavidyalaya University, India
Rock painting in South India started in the Mesolithic and developed in the Neolithic period. The paintings had reached the zenith of their position during the early Iron Age, which means the images were depicted in different aspects in multi-chrome. Scenes of warfare and hunting have a major role in the rock paintings of the early Iron Age, and are depicted in different themes and scenarios. These hieroglyphics are on the shelters, boulders and even on structures constructed for after-death rituals. Grave goods were also depicted with graffiti marks. Similarities have appeared in the paintings and incised graffiti on vases. These artistic expressions have not only shown the people’s day-to-day lifestyle and socio-cultural trends, but also environmental and nature-related elements. Human emotions were expressed in different drawings on the rock or other media during leisure time. It was the best media for human geniuses to express, preserve, and convey their ideas. Some observations on thematic expressions from the recent studies on rock paintings and graffiti marks from the Early Iron Age settlements in south India are the subject matter for the present paper.