Identity engraved: artistic endeavour and ethnic entities in Central South Africa
Date
2009-02-12T10:32:12Z
Authors
Rifkin, Riaan F
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Abstract
ABSTRACT
Ethnicity has been a focus of socio-scientific research for at least three decades, but
for the greater part of that period it has been virtually ignored by archaeologists. As a
result, many researchers remain committed to an essentialist approach to ethnicity.
The reluctance to respond to such views by taking up more explicitly the dynamic
and situational approaches to identity, as is currently underway in anthropology and
sociology, arise from several sources, which undeniably also include the political.
Ultimately, though, the essential reason is practical. The literature demonstrates that
ethnicity and ethnic identity are slippery concerns in contemporary societies, let alone
in pre-historic social contexts.
Rock art presents an opportunity for assessing assumptions about identityconsciousness.
It provides a category of material culture for the establishment of
historical and chronological records of multi-cultural interaction and ensuing episodes
of adaptation and change. Engraved art is a source of information on past societies,
subsistence strategies and, most importantly, on the development of cohesive social
systems and social consciousness. Artwork is the most obvious example of symbolic
storage outside the human mind, yet it is not universally practised by huntergatherers
and it cannot therefore be used as the sole criterion for recognising
modern symbolism, modern behaviour, and ethnicity. Given this ambiguity with
regards the function of rock art in the demarcation of territorial boundaries and in the
construction of social and ethnic identities, an exploration of additional spheres of
ethnic conception and assertion may illuminate the question of how San huntergatherers
conceived and conveyed their respective identities.
This investigation into the association between art and ethnicity is founded upon the
conviction that the complexity of social identity must be explored on a dynamic
continuum that allows for interface between varied social factors. Notions concerning
the ethnic orientation of social groups are represented, either unconsciously or
purposefully, in socio-cultural spheres as diverse as territoriality, subsistence
economy, language, religion, and also aesthetic and artistic cultural patterns. This
study of the relationship between conceptions of identity and engraved art aspires to
augment the existing understanding of the origins of processes of identity-formation,
how such processes operate, and how they may be manifest in material cultural
contexts.
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Keywords
identity, art, ethnicity, South Africa