Sam Challis

Creolisation on the Nineteenth-century Frontiers of Southern Africa: A Case Study of the AmaTola 'Bushmen' in the Maloti-Drakensberg

This article explores the formation of mounted frontier raiding groups of diverse origins in the mountains of the north-eastern Cape Colony. It addresses concepts of creolisation, identity formation and image making (rock art) with special reference to nineteenth-century frontier conditions, and examines the ways in which ‘contact period’ rock art has been perceived until now. Certain frontier raiding groups often referred to simply as ‘Bushmen’ are revealed to comprise members from many formerly distinct ‘ethnicities’2, and include the progeny resulting from subsequent inter-marriage. Cultural and ‘ethnic’ mixing, the advent of the horse and the need for identity to adapt to these changes, results in a creolisation process probably more common to South Africa than has previously been allowed.

Fishing in the rain: control of rain-making and aquatic resources at a previously undescribed rock art site in Highland Lesotho

This paper describes a previously unrecorded rock art site in the highlands of Lesotho, southern Africa. It then explores the significance of the paintings at this site, which adds to the still small number of locations in the wider Maloti-Drakensberg region at which fishing scenes are depicted. Unusually, paintings of fish at this site are closely associated with that of a rain-animal and with other images, including dying eland and clapping and dancing human figures, that have clear shamanistic references. Drawing also on the local excavated archaeological record, we argue that these images may collectively refer to the power of Bushman shamans to harness and make rain, using that power to produce socially desirable benefits, including perhaps opportunities for group aggregation around seasonally restricted spawning runs of fish.

‘Rain snakes’ from the Senqu River: new light on Qing's commentary on San rock art from Sehonghong, Lesotho

Previously unpublished rock art in Lesotho, southern Africa, is believed to explain the words of Qing — the San (Bushman) man who gave interpretations of paintings in the vicinity. Published in 1874, his testimony, when closely read and compared with other sources, has since become the single most important source for the decipherment of rock art in the sub-continent. One seemingly incomprehensible phrase, though, concerning the famous rain-making depiction at Sehonghong Shelter, Lesotho, has worried scholars for some time. Here, we make a connection that sets Qings words within the context of the other rock art sites, and the greater cosmology, that he knew. Far from being too young, uninitiated or unfamiliar with the mythology and religion, as this painted site — Rain Snake Shelter — shows, Qing was more than conversant with San cosmology and ritual practice. His testimony is therefore more reliable than was hitherto granted.

THE ‘INTERIOR WORLD’ OF THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY MALOTI-DRAKENSBERG MOUNTAINS

Over the last four decades researchers have cast the Maloti-Drakensberg Mountains as a marginal refuge for ‘Bushmen’ amidst constricting nineteenth-century frontiers. Rock art scholarship has expanded on this characterisation of mountains as refugia, focusing on heterogeneous raiding bands forging new cultural identities. Here, we propose another view of the Maloti-Drakensberg: a dynamic political theatre in which polities that engaged in illicit or ‘heterodox’ activities like cattle raiding and hunter-gatherer lifeways set the terms of colonial encounters. We employ the concept of the ‘interior world’ to refigure the region as one fostering subsistence and political behaviours that did not conform to the expectations of colonial authority. Paradoxically, such heterodoxies over time constituted widespread social logics within the Maloti-Drakensberg, and thus became commonplace and meaningful. We synthesise historical and archaeological evidence (new and existing) to illustrate the significance of the nineteenth-century Maloti-Drakensberg, offering a revised southeast-African colonial landscape and directions for future research.

Reconfiguring Hunting Magic: Southern Bushman (San) Perspectives on Taming and Their Implications for Understanding Rock Art

The ethnographic decipherment of the Bushman (San) rock art of southern Africa instigated a revolution in our understanding of hunter-gatherer rock arts worldwide, even in regions widely separated from the original context of the model. Crucial to this decipherment were the narratives of the Bushman Qing, an inhabitant of the nineteenth-century Maloti-Drakensberg. This article returns to Qings testimony to investigate why it is that a putative ‘hunter-gatherer’ of the Maloti-Drakensberg should have chosen to express the relationship between ritual specialists (‘shamans’) and non-human entities (game animals and the rain) through taming idioms. It discusses the wider context of ‘taming’ and ‘wildness’ in Southern Bushman thought, responding to calls to consider these communities and their visual arts in light of the perspectives of the ‘new animisms’. It explores how these idioms help us to understand particular visual tropes in the rock art of the Maloti-Drakensberg and highlights the integrated nature of ‘ritual’ and hunting specialists in Southern Bushman life.

Concerning Heritage: Lessons from Rock Art Management in the Maloti-Drakensberg Park World Heritage Site

At the time of writing, 16 years have passed since the inscription of the World Heritage Site (WHS) in the uKhahlamba-Drakensberg Park (uDP), South Africa. How has its cultural heritage been managed, and what lessons can be learned in order to inform its extension into the Kingdom of Lesotho? In 2013, UNESCO approved the inclusion of Lesotho’s Sehlabathebe National Park (SNP) to create a trans-boundary World Heritage Site known as the Maloti-Drakensberg Park, Lesotho/South Africa (MDP). This contribution is a critique for those planning and implementing site management strategies at rock art World Heritage Sites. It draws specifically from experiences and outcomes on both sides of the international border (uDP and SNP). In this short essay, we touch on the underlying management frameworks and how these are affected by the relationships between cultural heritage practitioners, cultural heritage agencies and site managers. We outline the concerns of sustainability, tourism and marketing and whether these have hampered the park’s integrity. We further indicate how, perhaps, some of the pitfalls hitherto encountered may be overcome. This is especially relevant to those heritage practitioners currently engaged in the planning of the new visitor centre at the SNP.

The Matatiele Archaeology and Rock Art ( MARA ) Program Excavations: The Archaeology of Mafusing 1 Rock Shelter, Eastern Cape, South Africa

The rock shelter Mafusing 1 was excavated in 2011 as part of the Matatiele Archaeology and Rock Art or MARA research programme initiated in the same year. This programme endeavours to redress the much-neglected history of this region of South Africa, which until 1994 formed part of the wider ‘Transkei’ apartheid homeland. Derricourt’s 1977 Prehistoric Man in the Ciskei and Transkei constituted the last archaeological survey in this area. However, the coverage for the Matatiele region was limited, and relied largely on van Riet Lowe’s site list of the 1930s. Thus far, the MARA programme has documented more than 200 rock art sites in systematic survey and has excavated two shelters – Mafusing 1 ( MAF 1) and Gladstone 1 (forthcoming). Here we present analyses of the excavated material from the MAF 1 site, which illustrates the archaeological component of the wider historical and heritage-related programme focus. Our main findings at MAF 1 to date include a continuous, well stratified cultural sequence dating from the middle Holocene up to 2400 cal. BP . Ages obtained from these deposits are suggestive of hunter-gatherer occupation pulses at MAF 1, with possible abandonment of the site over the course of two millennia in the middle Holocene. After a major roof collapse altered the morphology of the shelter, there was a significant change in the character of occupation at MAF 1, reflected in both the artefact assemblage composition and the construction of a rectilinear structure within the shelter sometime after 2400 cal. BP . The presence of a lithic artefact assemblage from this latter phase of occupation at MAF 1 confirms the continued use of the site by hunter-gatherers, while the presence of pottery and in particular the construction of a putative rectilinear dwelling and associated animal enclosure points to occupation of the shelter by agropastoralists. Rock art evidence shows distinct phases, the latter of which may point to religious practices involving rain-serpents and rainmaking possibly performed, in part, for an African farmer audience. This brings into focus a central aim of the MARA programme: to research the archaeology of contact between hunter-gatherer and agropastoralist groups.

The ‘bullets to water’ belief complex: a pan-southern African cognate epistemology for protective medicines and the control of projectiles

ABSTRACT Remarkable similarities across colonial encounters where Africans believed projectiles could be influenced by ritual practices (medicines, behaviours, observances) demand enquiry into their conception and trajectory. Although suggestion of pan-subcontinental phenomena may elicit suspicion of a generalisation, here evidence is examined from the late-independent and colonial periods that shows that a general belief, held cognate between groups, may indeed have existed. The focus is on precolonial1 southern African beliefs in the manipulation of projectiles and how these may have affected ritual responses to firearms during colonisation. At least a millennium of interactions between hunters, herders and farmers appear to have resulted in commonly held beliefs, albeit with differential emphases. From first contact, and into sustained colonisation, it became necessary for Africans to highlight and/or adapt indigenous beliefs as mechanisms by which to cope with firearms and settler aggressive expansion.

Spatial Distribution of Rock Art Sites in Didima Gorge, South Africa

Abstract McCall (2010) uses data collected by Pager (1971) to argue for geographically controlled differences in the uses of painted rock art sites in the Didima Gorge, South Africa. We point out fundamental errors in the ascription of sites to particular categories that undermine the conclusions he reached. We conclude that there is no evidence to suggest different uses of painted rock shelters in the Didima Gorge.