Re-investigating significantly differentiated figures in the rock art of the South-eastern mountains
Date
2018
Authors
Mullen, Alice
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Abstract
ABSTRACT
Within the corpus of Bushman-authored rock art in the south-eastern Mountains of South
Africa there exists a category of highly embellished, oversized
anthropomorphic figures termed Significantly Differentiated Figures
(SDFs). These figures are understood as being a regionally and temporally specific product of
changing socio-political, and economic, relationships between hunter-gatherers (specifically
ritual specialists) and their non-Bushman neighbours after the advent of contact. Drawing on
new data gathered during surveys of the Matatiele region in the Eastern Cape, South
Africa and the Sehlabathebe National Park in Lesotho, which have brought to light
incongruities in the SDF category, and on recent developments in dating technology, this
dissertation tested, and challenged, the hypothesis that these images are a recent, localised
phenomenon relating to embodied experiences of ritual specialists who had ascended in
social status within their communities. The category, as a rigid classification, does not
withstand rigorous testing. An alternative interpretation of some of the images is offered,
which places emphasis on Bushman ontology as animist, and concerned with the
relationships between humans and non-human entities occupying the world. The dissertation
found that such interpretations may better account for the creation of some of the images
previously called SDFs.
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Citation
Mullen, Alice (2018) Re-investigating significantly differentiated figures in the rock art of the south-eastern mountains,University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, https://hdl.handle.net/10539/25621