taking stock: identifying khoekhoen herder rock art in southern

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499 Current Anthropology Volume 45, Number 4, August–October 2004 2004 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved 0011-3204/2004/4504-0004$10.00 Taking Stock Identifying Khoekhoen Herder Rock Art in Southern Africa 1 by Benjamin W. Smith and Sven Ouzman Recent archaeological research has identified a widespread south- ern African rock art tradition that materially affects the debate over what archaeology can tell us about prehistory in southern Africa. This tradition differs from the one attributed to the an- cestors of today’s San in being dominated by rough-pecked and finger-painted geometric imagery. Using appearance, technique, age, geographic distribution, site preference, and relationship to known San-produced rock art, this article considers various can- didates for its authorship—San foragers, Bantu-speaking farmers, Khoekhoen herders, European colonists, and multiethnic group- ings—and concludes that it was predominantly Khoekhoen. The identity of the Khoekhoen, their origins, the route(s) by which they traveled, their relationship with foragers, and their material culture signature are contentious issues. The identification of a Khoekhoen rock art tradition provides another element for the study of the San-Khoekhoen relationship. benjamin w. smith is director of the Rock Art Research In- stitute, School of Geography, Archaeology, and Environmental Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand (Private Bag 3, PO WITS 2050, South Africa [[email protected]]). He was born in 1969 and educated at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (B.A., hons., 1991) and Cambridge University (Ph.D., 1995). His research interests include herder and farmer rock arts of Africa, the Batwa rock art of central Africa, and rock art methodology and management. His publications include Zambia’s Ancient Rock Art: The Paintings of Kasama (Oxford: Nuffield Press for the National Heritage Conservation Commission of Zambia, 1997), “The Tale of the Chameleon and the Platypus: Limited and Likely Choices in Making Pictures,” in The Archaeology of Rock-Art, edited by Christopher Chippindale and Paul Tac ¸on (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), and “Visions of Dynamic Power: Archaic Rock Paintings, Altered States of Con- sciousness, and ‘Clever Men’ in Western Arnhem Land (NT), Australia” (Cambridge Archaeological Journal 10:63101). sven ouzman is former head of the Rock Art Department of South Africa’s National Museum and a Fulbright scholar at the University of California, Berkeley (Anthropology, 232 Kroeber Hall, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-3710, U.S.A. [[email protected]]). He was born in 1969 and educated at the Universities of the Witwatersrand (B.A., hons., 1992) and California at Berkeley (M.A., 2003). His research interests in- clude landscape, nonvisual uses of rock art, identity politics, and indigenous intellectual property rights. His publications include The Wind Blows Dust: Traces of the /Xam and Other San of the Central Interior (Bloemfontein: Quali-Press, 1995), “Spiritual and Political Uses of a Rock Engraving Site and Its Imagery by San and Tswana-speakers” (South African Archaeological Bulletin 50: 5567), and “Seeing Is Deceiving: Rock Art and the Non-Visual” (World Archaeology 33:23756). The present paper was submitted 27 x 01 and accepted 28 i 04. [Supplementary material appears in the electronic edition of this issue on the journal’s web page (http://www.journals.uchicago/ edu/CA/home.html).] The past three decades have seen fierce debate about the presence, identity, and material culture signatures of “San” forager and “Khoekhoen” herder communities in southern Africa (fig. 1). 2 Some writers have lumped the two macro-ethnic categories as “Khoisan” (Schultze 1928:211), though many forager and herder descendants consider separate identities of prime importance. Ar- chaeological research seeks to clarify the nature of this ethnic division—if in fact it exists—by juxtaposing the observations of early European settlers with archaeolog- ical remains. In this endeavor, 0 CE is a watershed for the peopling of southern Africa, the point at which non- foragers such as Bantu-speaking farmers and perhaps Khoekhoen herders appear in the archaeological record (cf. Mitchell 2002: chap. 9). Mid- and late-seventeenth- century-CE European reports from what is now South Africa’s Western Cape Province call most non-Bantu- speakers possessing pottery and domesticated animals “Khoikhoi” (now “Khoekhoen” [A. Smith 1998]). Most people who gathered and hunted and did not possess pot- tery or domesticated animals were called “Bosjemans” and variations of “Sonqua” and “Soaqua,” from which “San” is derived (Wright 1996). Researchers today won- der whether this ethno-economic division was not much more fluid, definitional rigidity being the product of a confusing, biased, and economic-determinist nomencla- ture. Furthermore, revisionist scholars ask whether his- torically observed differences have any time depth be- yond the reach of ethnographic capture. Some suggest that they may be the product of recent cross-cultural interactions combined with the devastating effects of Eu- ropean colonization (e.g., Schrire 1984, Elphick 1985, Wilmsen 1989)—indeed, that we may be extrapolating race-based apartheid-era classifications into the past (e.g., Schrire 1996). 1. We thank site custodians for granting us access to sites. Sharon Holt, Rentia Ouzman, Gabriel Tlhapi, and Wendy Voorvelt assisted with the illustrations. We are grateful to Geoff Blundell, Chris Chip- pindale, Ed Eastwood, Jeremy Hollmann, Tom Huffman, David Lewis-Williams, Siyakha Mguni, David Morris, David Pearce, Da- vid Phillipson, Andrzej Rozwadowski, Karim Sadr, Andy Smith, Anne Solomon, Gabriel Tlhapi, Royden Yates, the CA reviewers and Ben Orlove and the editorial staff for their critical input. We received financial assistance from Anglo American, AngloGold, De Beers, the James A. Swan Fund (U.K.), the Ringing Rocks Foun- dation (U.S.A.), the National Museum (South Africa), the National Research Foundation (South Africa: funded under GUN2050341 and 2053470), the Research Office of the University of the Witwaters- rand, and the South African Archaeological Society Kent Bequest. The opinions expressed and conclusions arrived at are our own. 2. We use “foragers” to refer to the groups called “gatherer-hunter” or “hunter-gatherer” in other texts. Ethnonyms for the foragers and herders of southern Africa are a sensitive issue. We use “forager” for archaeological periods without ethnography and “San” when more than one evidential source is available and a San ethnicity is tenable. “Early herder groups” are the sheep/goat owners, whether San or Khoekhoen, who become visible in the southern African archaeological record some 2,000 years ago.

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Page 1: Taking Stock: Identifying Khoekhoen Herder Rock Art in Southern

499

C u r r e n t A n t h ro p o l o g y Volume 45, Number 4, August–October 2004� 2004 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved 0011-3204/2004/4504-0004$10.00

Taking Stock

Identifying Khoekhoen HerderRock Art in Southern Africa1

by Benjamin W. Smith andSven Ouzman

Recent archaeological research has identified a widespread south-ern African rock art tradition that materially affects the debateover what archaeology can tell us about prehistory in southernAfrica. This tradition differs from the one attributed to the an-cestors of today’s San in being dominated by rough-pecked andfinger-painted geometric imagery. Using appearance, technique,age, geographic distribution, site preference, and relationship toknown San-produced rock art, this article considers various can-didates for its authorship—San foragers, Bantu-speaking farmers,Khoekhoen herders, European colonists, and multiethnic group-ings—and concludes that it was predominantly Khoekhoen. Theidentity of the Khoekhoen, their origins, the route(s) by whichthey traveled, their relationship with foragers, and their materialculture signature are contentious issues. The identification of aKhoekhoen rock art tradition provides another element for thestudy of the San-Khoekhoen relationship.

b e n j a m i n w. s m i t h is director of the Rock Art Research In-stitute, School of Geography, Archaeology, and EnvironmentalSciences, University of the Witwatersrand (Private Bag 3, POWITS 2050, South Africa [[email protected]]). He was bornin 1969 and educated at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne(B.A., hons., 1991) and Cambridge University (Ph.D., 1995). Hisresearch interests include herder and farmer rock arts of Africa,the Batwa rock art of central Africa, and rock art methodologyand management. His publications include Zambia’s AncientRock Art: The Paintings of Kasama (Oxford: Nuffield Press forthe National Heritage Conservation Commission of Zambia,1997), “The Tale of the Chameleon and the Platypus: Limitedand Likely Choices in Making Pictures,” in The Archaeology ofRock-Art, edited by Christopher Chippindale and Paul Tacon(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), and “Visions ofDynamic Power: Archaic Rock Paintings, Altered States of Con-sciousness, and ‘Clever Men’ in Western Arnhem Land (NT),Australia” (Cambridge Archaeological Journal 10:63–101).

s v e n o u z m a n is former head of the Rock Art Department ofSouth Africa’s National Museum and a Fulbright scholar at theUniversity of California, Berkeley (Anthropology, 232 KroeberHall, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-3710, U.S.A.[[email protected]]). He was born in 1969 and educated atthe Universities of the Witwatersrand (B.A., hons., 1992) andCalifornia at Berkeley (M.A., 2003). His research interests in-clude landscape, nonvisual uses of rock art, identity politics, andindigenous intellectual property rights. His publications includeThe Wind Blows Dust: Traces of the /Xam and Other San of theCentral Interior (Bloemfontein: Quali-Press, 1995), “Spiritual andPolitical Uses of a Rock Engraving Site and Its Imagery by Sanand Tswana-speakers” (South African Archaeological Bulletin 50:55–67), and “Seeing Is Deceiving: Rock Art and the Non-Visual”(World Archaeology 33:237–56).

The present paper was submitted 27 x 01 and accepted 28 i 04.

[Supplementary material appears in the electronic edition of thisissue on the journal’s web page (http://www.journals.uchicago/edu/CA/home.html).]

The past three decades have seen fierce debate about thepresence, identity, and material culture signatures of“San” forager and “Khoekhoen” herder communities insouthern Africa (fig. 1).2 Some writers have lumped thetwo macro-ethnic categories as “Khoisan” (Schultze1928:211), though many forager and herder descendantsconsider separate identities of prime importance. Ar-chaeological research seeks to clarify the nature of thisethnic division—if in fact it exists—by juxtaposing theobservations of early European settlers with archaeolog-ical remains. In this endeavor, 0 CE is a watershed forthe peopling of southern Africa, the point at which non-foragers such as Bantu-speaking farmers and perhapsKhoekhoen herders appear in the archaeological record(cf. Mitchell 2002: chap. 9). Mid- and late-seventeenth-century-CE European reports from what is now SouthAfrica’s Western Cape Province call most non-Bantu-speakers possessing pottery and domesticated animals“Khoikhoi” (now “Khoekhoen” [A. Smith 1998]). Mostpeople who gathered and hunted and did not possess pot-tery or domesticated animals were called “Bosjemans”and variations of “Sonqua” and “Soaqua,” from which“San” is derived (Wright 1996). Researchers today won-der whether this ethno-economic division was not muchmore fluid, definitional rigidity being the product of aconfusing, biased, and economic-determinist nomencla-ture. Furthermore, revisionist scholars ask whether his-torically observed differences have any time depth be-yond the reach of ethnographic capture. Some suggestthat they may be the product of recent cross-culturalinteractions combined with the devastating effects of Eu-ropean colonization (e.g., Schrire 1984, Elphick 1985,Wilmsen 1989)—indeed, that we may be extrapolatingrace-based apartheid-era classifications into the past (e.g.,Schrire 1996).

1. We thank site custodians for granting us access to sites. SharonHolt, Rentia Ouzman, Gabriel Tlhapi, and Wendy Voorvelt assistedwith the illustrations. We are grateful to Geoff Blundell, Chris Chip-pindale, Ed Eastwood, Jeremy Hollmann, Tom Huffman, DavidLewis-Williams, Siyakha Mguni, David Morris, David Pearce, Da-vid Phillipson, Andrzej Rozwadowski, Karim Sadr, Andy Smith,Anne Solomon, Gabriel Tlhapi, Royden Yates, the CA reviewersand Ben Orlove and the editorial staff for their critical input. Wereceived financial assistance from Anglo American, AngloGold, DeBeers, the James A. Swan Fund (U.K.), the Ringing Rocks Foun-dation (U.S.A.), the National Museum (South Africa), the NationalResearch Foundation (South Africa: funded under GUN2050341and2053470), the Research Office of the University of the Witwaters-rand, and the South African Archaeological Society Kent Bequest.The opinions expressed and conclusions arrived at are our own.2. We use “foragers” to refer to the groups called “gatherer-hunter”or “hunter-gatherer” in other texts. Ethnonyms for the foragers andherders of southern Africa are a sensitive issue. We use “forager”for archaeological periods without ethnography and “San” whenmore than one evidential source is available and a San ethnicity istenable. “Early herder groups” are the sheep/goat owners, whetherSan or Khoekhoen, who become visible in the southern Africanarchaeological record some 2,000 years ago.

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500 F current anthropology Volume 45, Number 4, August–October 2004

Fig. 1. Southern Africa, showing sites and areas mentioned in the text. 1, Salt Pan shelter and the Soutpans-berg; 2, Schroda; 3, Eastern Venda; 4, Mahakane; 5, Klipfontein; 6, Driekopseiland; 7, !Garib Dam site; 8, Stom-piesfontein (courtesy of the Rock Art Department, National Museum).

Pursuing Southern African Identities

In the archaeological imaginary, opinion on southern Af-rican identities slides along a continuum between twopoles. At one pole, herders are seen as a distinct “ethnic”group that migrated southward about 2,000 years agointo a southern Africa occupied by multiple forager com-munities ancestral to today’s San (e.g., Westphal 1963;Ehret 1982, 1998; Elphick 1985:10–13; A. Smith 1997).At the other, herders are viewed as precocious foragerswho gained access to domesticated animals and potteryfrom Bantu-speaking farmers by exchange, diffusion, andacculturation (Deacon et al. 1978; Schrire 1992; Kinahan1995:211; Sadr 1998; see also Barnard 1992:156–99) be-fore the arrival some 1,400 years ago of immigrant herd-ers bringing with them a distinctive package of materialculture. Most researchers accept that individuals andeven some groups crossed the forager-herder divide, ifnot necessarily cognitively. The perceived broader cul-

tural and linguistic differences observed historically re-main to be explained, and the debate has produced noconsensus. Central to the debate is ethnography—itsconstruction, application, and testing. The catch-22 ofethnography is that it approaches magical realism—pro-viding a model (not always critically or consciously ap-plied) of pasts, places, and people, usually other than ourown, that also closes off or makes less likely investiga-tion of other possible pasts, places, and people.

As a study of material culture, archaeology can poten-tially discipline our understanding of the Khoe-San past,independently verifying or refuting ethnographic infor-mation (see Wylie 2002). Because objects cannot speakfor themselves, this strategy is only partially successful,and to understand them we must rely on ethnographicanimation. Yet, material culture studied in context, withan explicit awareness of its ethnographic underpinnings,does provide a few unambiguous waypoints and can sug-gest more and less likely lines of argument. For example,

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the physical remains of domestic animals seem not toexist in southern Africa before about 2,200 years ago(Vogel, Plug, and Webley 1997). Likewise, Bantu-speak-ing farmers have no known material presence in south-ern Africa before about 2,100 years ago (Mitchell 2002:chap.10). Prior to these introductions we are dealingmaterially with a forager’s world, though not a hermet-ically sealed one. Forager groups were linked in extensivenetworks through which knowledge of other people tothe north could have been gathered. However, whengreater specificity on the archaeological and historicalidentity of foragers and herders is desired, excavated andcollected material culture is taciturn. Even the usuallydistinct material cultures of farmers and foragers blurduring initial contact. Early Iron Age sites (ca. 0–1000CE) sometimes have high wild rather than domestic fau-nal counts, little iron, and abundant lithic inventories—a signature hard to distinguish from that of foragers.

These human entanglements demand both cautionand creativity in ascribing identity via artifacts. More-over, herder material culture has proved remarkably dif-ficult to discern. The problem may be that we are notexcavating in the right places, that the sites are ephem-eral, or that excavated material culture is not sufficientlydifferentiated and we are therefore assigning herder ar-tifacts to foragers and farmers. Bone preservation is poorat most sites, and diagnostic sheep/goat remains are con-sequently elusive. Although pottery such as Bambataand/or spouted ware is found in old contexts, its culturalorigins remain unclear (but see Huffman 1994, Bollong,Sampson, and Smith 1997). Beyond this, these “gath-erer”-“hunter”-“herder”-“farmer” econo-ethnic divi-sions may be more imagined than real, resulting in anuncritically constructed archaeological “record” (Schrire1992, Berggren and Hodder 2003). We know that recentKhoekhoen herders also gathered and hunted and thattheir sites contain forager-like subsistence evidence (Sadr1998). Similarly, many San kept stock to varying degrees,and their sites acquire the appearance of herders’ (A.Smith 1997). The reuse of sites by foragers and herders—either sequentially or contemporaneously—producesfurther blurring. Andrew Smith and colleagues (1991),adopting a more contextual approach, suggest that a pau-city of retouched lithics is diagnostic of a herder presence(but see Wilson 1986). Lita Webley’s ethno-archaeologi-cal research with Khoekhoen-descended Nama suggeststhat large unretouched “scrapers” derive from herderskin preparation (Webley 1990). There is evidence of for-agers’ making larger ostrich-eggshell beads for externaltrade and smaller ones for their own use (Royden Yates,personal communication, August 2000). There is, then,some evidence of material culture differences betweenthese lifestyles, but human remains are equivocal be-cause Khoekhoen-San morphological variability overlaps(e.g., Morris 1992:171–73). Genetic evidence indicatestwo separate macro-groups that “mixed” but cannot datethis mixing (Nurse, Weiner, and Jenkins 1985).

An instructive case study of a mixed and oscillatinglifestyle is the “Type R” occurrence in central SouthAfrica. Along 135 km of the Riet River, at least 92 low

circular stone-walled settlements occur in clusters of2–13 enclosures and date to between 1380 and 1780 CE(Maggs 1971). These settlements do not conform to the“central cattle pattern” of Iron Age Bantu-speakers (e.g.,Kuper 1980, Huffman 1986). The associated material cul-ture is thin and mixed, consisting of both wild and do-mestic animal remains and evidence of plant-food pro-cessing but not horticulture. Lithics are large, with somemicroliths, and thick, undecorated grit-tempered potteryis ubiquitous. Spatially associated are at least 83 burials“likely to represent a single, relatively homogeneouspopulation” perhaps San or Khoe but probably San withunidirectional gene flow to Sotho-Tswana farmers (Mor-ris 1992:152). The equivocal archaeological evidence andthe confused historical ethnographies (see Humphreys1998) suggest San foragers who had adopted a herdingway of life. This example highlights the difficulty of de-termining distinct or even contextual identities. Not allcultural materials are equally informative, and not allmaterial cultures are equally well theorized.

Archaeology has traditionally been deficient in thecritical examination of its disciplinary history (but seeTrigger 1989, Murray 2001). It has been complicit in im-perial, colonial, and nationalist agendas through its ob-sessive pursuit of cultural classification (Trigger 1989:174–85). Differences in material culture—the presenceor absence of objects such as metal, art, writing, andarchitecture—have been crucial to this classification.One of its numerous gradations and variants (phases, as-semblages, traditions) has been the “Neolithic”—a pe-riod of incipient farming and/or agropastoralism, includ-ing herding. Expunged from the southern Africanarchaeological sequence by archaeologists who desired alocal schema that was not an extension of a Europeanarchaeology (Goodwin and van Riet Lowe 1929), it hasrecently been recommended (Sadr 2003) as a chronolog-ical marker that does not automatically associate “herd-ing” with “Khoekhoen.” Though well-intentioned, thismove fails to address the core problem of how archae-ology identifies peoples.

The archaeological urge to quantify can be debilitating(Ouzman 2003), especially with regard to the importanceof relationships in constructing and maintaining iden-tities. There are four key relationships: people and places,people and ecology, people and others whom they know,and people and strangers. Contemporary identity dis-course stresses the adaptability and hybridity of person-hood in a transnational world as opposed to an ossified“traditional” past, but these may be persistent and even“natural” features of social being, with “tradition” beingthe mechanism that makes innovation possible (Hobs-bawm and Ranger 1992). Decentering the sovereign Car-tesian individual and acknowledging the dynamic rela-tionships of time, place, people, and artifacts is especiallyimportant in contexts of cross-cultural contact. The 0CE watershed saw the coming of Iron Age farmers, bring-ing their paraphernalia and their notions of property tocreate new relations between people, animals, places,and artifacts. Whether herder peoples were physicallypresent at this point or only 600 years later, a herding

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way of life is represented at about 2,000 years ago by ovi-caprine bones and possibly pottery. Though southern Af-rica has creative excavators, most material culture is notsufficiently demonstrative of a cultural identity or affin-ity, and a set of contextual relationships between objectsand places, people, and other objects needs to beconstructed.

Studies of cultural landscapes that utilize multicom-ponent data sets such as John Parkington and associates’work in the Western Cape and Garth Sampson and as-sociates’ work in the central interior of South Africa arecapable of more refined considerations of authorship, butthey are rare because of the investments of time, re-sources, continuity, and dedication that they require. At-tention should continue to focus on frontier conditionsand interactions that include hybridity, adaptability, andflux and representations of such interactions (e.g., Hum-phreys 1998). Most new arrivals tend to bleed into a land-scape discontinuously and often adapt to local conditionsrather than importing a package of archaeologically dis-tinctive cultural elements and practices. Use of local ma-terials and customs means that archaeological assem-blages will necessarily be mixed and “fuzzy,” butfuzziness at the boundaries does not mean that the cat-egories do not exist. Even numerically insignificant new-comers and/or their artifacts are disruptive, causing peo-ple to examine who they are in order to understand whothe other people are. This examination is conductedpartly in the material world and may reasonably be ex-pected to leave observable traces. But rather than use the“type fossil” approach, we could consider artifact “as-semblages” as distinct in the aggregate.

We put forward for discussion an artifact that is con-sciously produced and closely concerned with identity—rock art, which has become one of the most theoreticallyinformed means of reconstruction of lifeways past andpresent (e.g., Helskog and Olsen 1995, Whitley 2001).Visual imagery’s capacity for framing and transmittinginformation is unsurpassed (Scarry 1994, Elkins 2002).Furthermore, rock art’s association with place permitssubsequent rock arts to comment on what has alreadybeen inscribed. We suggest that the rock art evidencerequires a decisive shift in the revisionist debate.

The Rock Arts of Southern Africa

Southern Africa is an ideal region for rock art study, withthousands of sites located in diverse landscapes and as-sociated with a range of archaeological assemblages. Theregion’s best-known rock art tradition is the engravingsand paintings produced by forager or San communities.Though considered predominantly shamanistic and sym-bolic, San rock art also concerns gender, landscape, andpolitics (e.g., Vinnicombe 1976, Lewis-Williams 1981,Deacon 1988, Morris 1988, Yates, Parkington, and Man-hire 1990, Dowson 1992, Solomon 1992, Garlake 1995,Ouzman 1998, Blundell and Eastwood 2001). Many peo-ple have considered all southern African rock art San-produced, but the labors of researchers, often informed

by indigenous communities’ inputs, over the past 120years permit us to discern four other rock art traditions,which we list in no particular order.

First, there is Bantu-speaking farmers’ rock art, madeby groups that appeared in southern Africa about 2,000years ago (Vogel 1995) from East and Central Africa (e.g.,Ten Raa 1974; B. Smith 1995, 1997, 2002). This art hasseveral distinct traditions, among them the northern So-tho initiation and protest rock arts (Smith and vanSchalkwyk 2002, van Schalkwyk and Smith 2004), therock engravings of Late Iron Age settlements (e.g., Maggs1995), and the boys’ initiation rock art of the southernSotho and Zulu (Frans Prins, personal communication,and our field observations). Most of these traditions areinformed by oral history, and some may continue to bepracticed.

Second, there is European settler rock art, with severaldistinct traditions: the names and dates of early travelersseeking to inscribe themselves on the land, inscriptionsmade during the Anglo-Boer War (Ouzman 1999), quo-tidian images made by workers during the Great De-pression, and prison inscriptions. This rock art calls intoquestion the distinction between “rock art” and “graf-fiti,” though both categories are rich sources of socialinformation. There was considerable mobility in whowas and was not classified as “European,” and this tra-dition can destabilize monolithic race-based identities.

Third, there is the magical and military rock art of theKorana (Wadley 2001:174; Ouzman n.d.). The Korana hadat least two iterations prior to their post-1994 reemerg-ence as Khoekhoen descendants. First was an originaryca. fifteenth-century !Kora or !Ora herder group with asocial structure that allowed quick fission and fusion inresponse to emergent threats and opportunities (Ross1975). One such opportunity was the chaotic Dutch andBritish colonial frontier (1652–1890 CE), when the Ko-rana were multiethnic stock-farmers and raiders. ThisKorana amalgam seems to have produced over 450 roughfinger-paintings at 31 sites (usually hidden cavelike lo-cations) that include armed riders, magical serpents,smears, meandering lines, pigment splatters, and spread-eagled animal skins (Ouzman n.d.; see also Dowson,Blundell, and Hall 1992). These “mixed” images impli-cate several other iconographies. Spread-eagled animalskins are almost certainly borrowed from Bantu-speak-ers’ initiation art. Species-indeterminate serpents occurin the art and ethnographies of most southern Africangroups. This mixed character shows rock art’s capacityfor cross-cultural conversation. Indeed, rock art shouldbe among the first artifacts analyzed when a frontier con-dition and its necessarily situational identities aresuspected.

The recognition of these four rock art traditions is ex-citing and unsettling and is reason to reexamine south-ern Africa’s rock art inventory. Taking stock, we rec-ognize at least one further rock art tradition, hithertohinted at: the schematic and geometric motifs pointedto by Desmond Clark (1958:72). Other researchers (vanRijssen 1994; Woodhouse 1994:29; Anderson 1997; Man-hire 1998) have examined this rock art in localized areas,

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smith and ouzman Taking Stock F 503

Fig. 2. Finger-painted circle, Limpopo. Black repre-sents red, stipple represents light red. Scale bar 30mm (courtesy of the Rock Art Research Institute).

but they have not connected their observations to theextensive tradition that we will argue is predominantlythe work of Khoekhoen herders. We first describe thegeometric rock art in the Central Limpopo Basin beforeexamining other examples in southern Africa and dis-cussing their dating, distribution, site preference, tech-nique, iconography, and associated contexts.

Geometric Rock Art in the Central LimpopoBasin and Beyond

Overlooking the Early Iron Age settlement of Schroda3

(ca. 900–1025 CE) is a small (! 50 m2), deep (4 m), dark,low-ceilinged rock shelter. The shelter is unsuitable forhuman habitation, and the shallowness of the grounddeposit (! 150 mm) makes it of minimal interest to ex-cavators. For rock art researchers the site appears to holdlittle potential—its walls are uneven and mostly inac-cessible. This is not a site suitable for forager rock art,and it contains none. But, by maneuvering supine intothe shelter, one discovers on the low ceiling two finger-painted red outline circles 400 mm in diameter (fig. 2).4

Within these outlines, two red lines bisect each other,quartering each circle. Short (! 60 mm) white finger-painted lines radiate from the outer edges of the circles.Further finger-paintings are screened by boulders andsurvive as remnants of similar circles associated withhorizontal rows of red finger dots. These rock paintingsare unlike the brush-painted representational imagesthat typify forager rock art. On the other side of Schroda,in a similarly elevated rock shelter with a low cavelikeinner recess, is another large red-and-white circular out-line with internal red cross-like division and white ex-ternal rays, all finger-painted. There are also finger dotsand vertical finger smears. No fine-line imagery ispresent.

The Schroda shelters contrast with other rock art siteson the same hill and in adjacent areas, which have largerand smoother rock surfaces bearing a range of brush-painted animal, human, and spirit-world subjects (East-wood and Cnoops 1999) similar to those of forager rockpaintings throughout southern Africa. Further work re-veals that the geometrics of Schroda are not unique; atleast 135 geometric finger-painting sites occur in theCentral Limpopo Basin and its environs (Eastwood andCnoops 1999, 2001). Of these sites, 35.5% (n p 48) haveno forager rock art. In contrast, most sizable rock sheltershave forager rock art (n p 305, 87 of which—28%—alsohave geometric finger-paintings), creating a pattern ofomission and congruence that suggests either a subtrad-ition of forager rock art or a separately produced tradi-tion. Northern South African sites without forager rock

3. We provide the real names of sites only when they have adequateaccess controls.4. We use photographs and redrawings to represent rock art. Neithertechnique is neutral, though they are complementary. [More imagesand additional references appear in the electronic edition of thisissue on the journal’s web page.]

art repeat a limited and distinctive set of geometricforms: circular outlines (sometimes with internal divi-sion), crosses, lines, concentric circles and oblong formswith vertical and/or horizontal divisions, and finger-ap-plied paint dots in rows, columns, and clusters. Somefinger dots are short (! 80 mm) strokes. At 12 of the 48exclusively finger-painted sites there are handprints,usually small and made by covering the palm and fingerswith red, orange, or white pigment.5 In contrast, only 4(1.3%) of 305 sites with fine-line forager rock art havehandprints not associated with finger-painted geo-metrics.

Beyond the Central Limpopo Basin, other parts ofsouthern Africa also have finger-painted and rough-pecked geometric rock art. Since 1997 we have coveredabout 900,000 km2 investigating 345 sites with only fin-ger-painted geometrics, 2,921 sites with only fine-lineand fine-pecked forager rock art, and 489 sites with bothtraditions. Instances of the geometric tradition are sim-ilar in both iconography and site preference. Shelterswith finger-painted geometric rock art tend to be scat-tered swathlike along the watercourses of the centralinterior. Many are small and poorly protected and havelow inner recesses—relatively rare among rock shelters.These cavelike shelters exhibit circles, rayed circles, di-vided circles, finger dots and finger strokes, “stitch,”“comb,” and “trident” motifs, and squares and rectan-gles. Sometimes non-finger-applied fine white, red, ororange dots are placed on top of these finger-painted lines(fig. 3).

Geometric rock art continues on the boulders, glaci-

5. Southern Africa has no known hand stencils.

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Fig. 4. Rough-pecked geometric engravings, Driekops-eiland (courtesy of the Rock Art Department, Na-tional Museum).

Fig. 3. Red circular and angular geometric rock paintings with fine white dots, Eastern Cape, South Africa.Scale bar 30 mm.

ated pavements, and dolerite hills of the central interiorof South Africa in a seamless transition to an engravedform (e.g., Fock 1969; Morris 1988:113–14). In contrastto the numerous finely pecked, incised, and scraped rep-resentational forager rock engravings, these engravingswere usually made with a rough-pecked technique (e.g.,fig. 4). Sites with rough-pecked geometric art tend tooccur in bands along watercourses and sources: “Geo-metrics and objects are prominent only at sites with apermanent water supply, particularly on river bed rocksor near springs” (Butzer et al. 1979:1211). They seldomoccur on the hills and ridges favored by forager engravers,though they intermingle with such engravings on oc-casion. Interestingly, rough-pecked engravings exhibit awider range of geometric forms than do finger paintings(fig. 5). Both techniques have a small representationalelement (1 5%) consisting of rudimentary animals, hu-mans (e.g., fig. 6), and handprints. There is also a sig-nature set of detailed aprons and loincloths (n ∼ 500) witha strong visual similarity to those in forager rock paint-ings (Blundell and Eastwood 2001). With this importantexception, finger-painted and rough-pecked geometricrock art is distinct from forager rock art and displaysseparate site preferences.

An inevitable question raised by an overwhelminglygeometric rock art is whether we might be creating a“tradition” out of a subset of forager rock art, namely,the entoptic phenomena that some San shamans expe-rienced during altered states of consciousness (Lewis-Williams and Dowson 1988). We address this issue beforeexamining the spatial and temporal variation in rough-pecked and finger-painted geometric rock art.

Geometric Rock Art and Entoptic Imagery

Geometric form is not in itself a denotative of an en-toptic phenomenon. It is a truism that the more generala form, the greater the range of potential explanationsfor it (e.g., Berger 1995). For example, the white outline

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Fig. 5. Range of geometric images in southern African herder rock art (courtesy of the Rock Art ResearchInstitute).

circles, filled circles, concentric circles, and grid formsencountered in Chewa Bantu-speakers’ rock art in Ma-lawi relate to girls’ initiation and have nothing to do withaltered-state experiences (B. Smith 1995, 1997). Simi-larly, the concentric circles, “sunbursts,” cup-and-ringmarks, and similar forms found throughout the worldmay relate to many different and often exclusive con-cerns such as astronomy (Ruggles 1999), way-markers,calendrics (Marshack 1972), and group identity. Even thegeometric forms of Upper Palaeolithic European rock art

are not considered unalloyed entoptic phenomena (Clot-tes and Lewis-Williams 1998), and those of European Ne-olithic tombs and monuments require close empiricalstudy to differentiate diagnostic entoptics from otherforms the meaning of which is not yet known (Dronfield1995).

We do not deny that entoptic imagery is present insouthern African forager rock art (see Lewis-Williams1988; Lewis-Williams and Dowson 1988:206; Dowson1989). It is well-established and has a restricted and dis-

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Fig. 6. Red finger-painted rudimentary human figures and red geometrics, Northern Cape. Scale bar 30 mm(courtesy of the Rock Art Department, National Museum).

tinct iconographic range dominated by angular zigzags,nested catenary curves, microdots, flecks, and grids (fig.7). These entoptics seldom, if ever, occur alone. Thereare, for example, nested “U” forms from which bees em-anate, a catenary curve with zigzags below two part-human, part-animal figures or “therianthropes,” anothertherianthrope with geometrics spilling off its cloven leg,a human figure with zigzag neck and legs, hallucinatoryrain-animals surrounded by zigzags, and geometricmarkings on animals and therianthropes. Microdots andflecks are used to indicate concentrations of supernaturalpotency (see, e.g., Dowson 1989:91). In terms of thethree-stage neuropsychological model established byLewis-Williams and Dowson (1988), these iconic ex-amples are stage 2 “construal” hallucinations. They sel-dom occur as free-floating image isolates because theirmeaning relates to specific contexts known to have beensupernaturally potent.

The examples of noniconic, unalloyed geometricforms that concern us here fall outside of the criteria forentoptics established by neuropsychological research.They include mazelike images, sunbursts, square andcircular shapes with internal divisions, diamonds, andmeanders, with a small overlap with entoptics in theform of zigzags, basic grid forms, and microdots (see figs.5 and 7). They tend to occur alone or clustered with otherrough geometrics and are not integrated with represen-

tational imagery. Significantly, they are usually finger-painted or rough-pecked. We argue that unalloyed en-toptics are rare in if not absent from San rock art andthat we must go beyond neuropsychology to account forthe geometric rock art tradition. We are not the first tonotice this disjunction: “Does this difference suggest tworadically different arts? Do the geometric forms consti-tute an artistic system entirely distinct from the depic-tions of people and animals with which, in the engrav-ings, they are often associated?” (Lewis-Williams 1988:1). Other researchers have recognized that unalloyedgeometric forms do not conform to an entoptic formrepertoire (e.g., Morris 1988:113–14) and have labeledthem “problematic” (Butzer et al. 1979:1204). AlecCampbell and colleagues (1994:153) have encountered asimilar problem with finger-painted geometrics at Tso-dilo Hills that they call “paintings like engravings,” sug-gesting that “Tsodilo art is an integral component of theyounger period of engravings, and . . . a study of the artcould possibly throw more light on the interpretation ofthe [Northern] Cape engravings” (p. 158). The uneasethese researchers have experienced with “rough” and“fine” geometrics is justified. The two differ in tech-nique, form, and association with representational im-agery. We suggest that this problematic geometric rockart is either another expression of forager rock art or aseparate tradition.

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Fig. 7. Range of entoptic phenomena in southern African forager rock art (courtesy of the Rock Art ResearchInstitute).

A Nonrepresentational Forager Rock ArtTradition?

The enormous variety of forager rock art makes us askwhether, given its frequent superimpositioning onknown forager rock art, geometric rock art may not bea nonrepresentational, nonentoptic subtradition devel-oped in response to a multicultural “contact” landscape.This suggestion is theoretically possible but lacks em-pirical support. Southern African forager rock art is notmonolithic and unchanging but a socially generated ar-

tifact responsive to place, time, event, circumstance, andpersonality. For example, analysis of a database of over34,000 fine-line rock paintings at 685 sites in east-centralsouthern Africa combined with iconography, superpos-itioning, linkage with excavation, climatology, and siteand pigment preference produces a three-phase trajectoryof this region’s forager rock art pre- and postcontact(Loubser and Laurens 1994). The largest phase (78%—27,500 images at 448 sites) consists of fine-line imagespainted in exotic ferric-oxide-derived paints. Its iconog-raphy is wide, with over 60 animal species, human, and

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spirit-world elements. This is the “classic” rock art im-plicated in San shamanism. Much of this phase may beolder than 2,500 years, with elements persisting into con-tact times (Mazel and Watchman 1997). Consistently su-perimposed on this imagery is an iconographically andnumerically more limited rock art (18%—6,704 imagesat 165 sites) executed in angular, “blocked” brushworkusing local hydrous ferrous-oxide-derived paints. Mostshamanistic images give way to a circumscribed set ofimages: domestic animals, stock raiding, weapons, andconflicts. This phase is predominantly concerned withidentity, landscape, and resistance. It is not invariableand occurs only in areas of intense intercultural conflict.The third phase (4%—478 images at 72 sites) consists ofbizarre figures painted in white pigment in an eschato-logical art (Ouzman and Loubser 2000).

Thomas Dowson’s work (1998a) shows the techniqueand pigment of the “classic” phase continuing as theearlier egalitarian context gives way to the contact pe-riod’s opportunities for acquiring power and prestige.Even “classic” imagery can be implicated in contact, ei-ther as a masking ideology or as a product of people notunduly affected by contact. Fine-line rock engravingsfrom parts of southern Africa’s central interior similarlymark the appearance of domestic animals, spear-wield-ing peoples, conflict, and a new set of fantastic beings(Dowson 1992).

The variety of San rock art responses to culture contactis to be expected from the confrontation of diverse for-ager communities with similarly diverse newcomersover hundreds of years. Carving, drawing, beadwork, andother media also expressed San views on unfolding co-lonial processes (e.g., Skotnes 1996). None of these mediadisplay purely geometric imagery. Would people have en-tirely abandoned their sanctioned techniques of visualrepresentation and produced a rock art in a hitherto un-known technique in the face of end-time threats? Thisseems implausible given that San fine-line representa-tional rock arts that fully addressed culture contact exist.The little direct commentary we have from San (albeitby then a devastated people) on fine-line and rough geo-metric rock art supports non-San authorship for the lat-ter. In the 1870s a /Xam adviser (informant) commentedknowledgeably on copies of representational forager rockart but when asked about associated finger dots ex-pressed no knowledge (“spots unknown” [Stow andBleek 1930:pl. 48]). “These symbols, found occasionallyamong the paintings and more often among rock en-gravings, have never been explained. The Bushmen saidthey did not know them” (pl. 25).

Revisiting northern South Africa emphasizes how im-plausible it is that foragers produced the geometric tra-dition rock art. One cannot explain the appearance ofgeometric rock art in terms of diffusion because of itsstratigraphic relationship to forager rock art. The overlaysequence shows geometric rock art in northern SouthAfrica as a relatively brief but intense episode of perhapsseveral centuries’ duration, with forager rock art bothunder and over it. Explaining this pattern of superposi-tioning in terms of diffusion would require that foragers

came into contact with other people either directly orvia intermediaries, acculturating to the extent of adopt-ing an entirely new rock art tradition, and then aban-doned that tradition entirely a few centuries later in favorof their former one. In Western Europe diffusionist ex-planations are plausible because changes are gradual andcumulative. It is the subsequent and complete reversionto representational imagery in the southern African casethat makes diffusion unlikely. A failed or regionally spe-cific cultural experiment might explain a few singularcases but not some 834 sites distributed in bands overnearly 1 million km2. These features also make it un-likely that this rock art was the product of a multiethnicamalgam, which would more likely have produced a “hy-brid” iconography such as that of Korana rock art.

We therefore discount San authorship and recognizethe purely geometric art as a separate rock art traditionproduced by either farmers or herders. To evaluate thesetwo possibilities, we consider the rock art’s dating anddistribution.

The Geometric Tradition

age

Southern African rock art dating is notoriously sparse,with fewer than two dozen direct or associated examples(Thackeray 1983, Jerardino and Swanepoel 1999). Finger-painted and rough-pecked geometrics enjoy the bulk ofthe dating support. Sites at which geometric rock art co-occurs with forager imagery allow examination of strat-igraphic relationships. We start in northern South Africaand move south-westwards.

In northern South Africa the largest assemblage of di-verse rock arts in stratigraphic association occurs at SaltPan shelter, which contains over 1,000 images of at leastthree rock painting traditions: San forager fine-line paint-ings, geometric finger paintings, and a Bantu-speaking-farmers’ rock art (Hall and Smith 2000). A substantialSan forager-painted sequence (55% of images) is overlainby a geometric sequence (43% of images), which is over-lain by a handful of San forager and seven farmer images.This stratigraphic pattern is repeated across northernSouth Africa (Eastwood and Cnoops 1999, 2001). No Sanforager images are sandwiched within the geometric se-quence at Salt Pan or elsewhere in northern South Africa.Geometric rock art is thus a relatively recent, intensiveand uninterrupted episode in the local rock art sequence.Linking this painted stratigraphy to excavation at SaltPan and other sites, Hall and Smith argue that geometricart dates to the early first millennium CE (2000:40–44).Now that we have ruled out foragers as producers of thisart, we focus on early farmers and herders.

As one moves to central South Africa, most rough-pecked geometrics are less weathered than most fine-line forager engravings. (Patination is, however, a relativeindicator best employed with broad sampling universes.)Gerhard Fock and colleagues’ multidisciplinary study atthe geometric-dominated site Driekopseiland at the Riet

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Fig. 8. Red representational finger paintings, Western Cape. Image cluster approximately 1.5 m long (courtesyof the Rock Art Research Institute).

River found three engraved episodes (Fock et al. 1980).The earliest is made up of 51 fine-pecked animal en-gravings and dates between 750 BCE and 700 CE (p. 311).One deeply patinated antelope is overlain by a less pa-tinated sunburst (p. 311). This sunburst and almost 3,000other rough-pecked geometrics (e.g., fig. 4) date to be-tween 700 and 1500–1600 CE. The terminal engravingepisode has relatively unpatinated geometrics dated tothe past 300 years. Whitley and Annegarn’s (1994) cation-ratio dating at Klipfontein, 70 km away, challenges thecomparatively recent Driekopseiland dates by giving arange of “modern” to 8,400 years for the site’s geomet-rics. This discrepancy is, however, a product of conflatingrough-pecked pure geometrics and fine-line entopics ina single sample category; at Klipfontein all but the “mod-ern” grid form are entopics. The ancient dates are con-sistent with our knowledge of the antiquity and conti-nuity of entoptic rock art. By contrast, the Fock datesare from a nonentoptic rock art that appears in the cen-tral interior a few centuries after it appeared in northernSouth Africa.

Available dates for finger-painted geometrics supportthe Driekopseiland findings. Garth Sampson’s meticu-lous work some 250 km to the south links finger-paintedgeometrics to pottery-bearing phases 3–6, which date tothe past 1,000 years (Sampson and Sampson 1967:28). At!Garib Dam shelter rectangle grids are finger-painted ona flake scar exposed when the shelter wall collapsed intoa 1680–1720 CE archaeological layer (Sampson 1972:209), establishing a terminus post quem of no more than

325 years. Unlike those of northern South Africa, thegeometrics of the central interior are sandwiched be-tween layers of forager imagery, suggesting a longer,more complex relationship.

In southernmost South Africa we find the most recentfinger-painting dates. Handprints, oddly absent in centralinterior, reappear, and for the first time representationalmotifs—human figures, cattle, sheep, and European ma-terial culture (fig. 8) make a sustained appearance. Oneof South Africa’s rare direct rock art dates, 1550 � 140CE (OxA-515), comes from a black human figure finger-painted on top of a painted eland (van der Merwe, Sealey,and Yates 1987). Historical subject matter at Stompies-fontein suggests a mid-eighteenth-century CE date (An-derson 1997:18).

These broad brushstrokes establish a first-millen-nium-CE appearance for nonentoptic geometric rock artin northern South Africa, with progressively youngerdates through the central interior to the Western Cape.But even precise dating does not help us assign the rockart to early farmers or to early herders, because the tra-ditional model puts them in South Africa at about thesame time. For this, distribution rather than dating iskey.

geographic distribution

The distribution of geometric rock art is banded alongwatercourses. To identify its makers we need to deter-

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Fig. 9. Distribution of Early Iron Age and nonentoptic geometric rock art areas (courtesy of the Rock Art Re-search Institute).

mine which groups inhabited the regions in which it isfound at the hypothesized time of its making.

We have a good understanding of the distribution ofBantu-speaking farmers in southern Africa in the EarlyIron Age (ca. 0–1000 CE). These farmers first settled inwhat is now Botswana and along the edges of the CentralLimpopo Basin (Denbow 1990). Early Iron Age settle-ments are also found from the eastern coastal plain tothe escarpment of South Africa (Maggs and Whitelaw1991, Binneman 1996). Expansion in this period was lim-ited by rainfall, and settlements are not found to the westof the 600-mm isohyet, where millet and sorghum couldnot survive. Much of South Africa’s central interior istherefore, except for some stock outposts, devoid of anysubstantial Iron Age presence.

In contrast, excavated archaeological evidence of earlyherder groups—whether foragers with sheep or Khoe-khoen with sheep—is contentious (e.g., Schrire 1992, A.Smith 1997), and we can talk only of overall distribution.Early herder evidence is, as we have seen, found not insite clusters but in extensive linear bands along water-courses. This pattern suggests an early herder presence

in the central interior, continuing beyond the 600-mmisohyet into winter-rainfall regions (Sadr 1998).

Lesotho and South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal andNorthern Cape Provinces are critical to identifying thesource of nonentoptic geometric rock art. Lesotho andKwaZulu-Natal—areas that have good excavation cov-erage (e.g., Mazel 1989) and excellent rock art coverage(e.g., Pager 1971, Vinnicombe 1976)—show an almost to-tal absence of herder sites and of geometric rock art (fig.9). In contrast, the rivers of the central interior that herd-ers are thought to have followed have a dense concen-tration of predominantly engraved geometric imageryand very few settlements from the Iron Age (Humphreys1976). Besides this clear distinction in the distributionalevidence there is also a clear distinction between knownBantu-speakers’ rock art and nonentoptic geometric rockart. Although both use finger-applied and rough-peckedtechniques, there is almost no overlap in form reper-toires. Some sites, such as Mahakane (Maggs 1995:138),have both geometrics and Bantu-speakers’ engravings,and these show clear technical, conceptual, and visualdifferences. Geometrics are not repeated significantly in

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Bantu-speakers’ rock art, which is dominated by repre-sentational imagery that includes human figures, ani-mals, spread-eagled designs, trains, and wagons paintedin clay or slurry-like paints. The dominant color pref-erence also differs: red is the primary color of geometricrock art and white the primary color of Bantu-speakers’(Prins and Hall 1994, B. Smith 1997, Smith and vanSchalkwyk 2002). We can reasonably exclude Bantu-speakers as the producers of geometric rock art. Euro-peans are similarly unlikely, as they cannot have pro-duced rock art older than 350 years, and the same is trueof the multiethnic Korana of the colonial frontier.

Khoekhoen is the only remaining known identity thatfits the distributional evidence. The coherence of theimagery, age, technique, and distribution of the art sug-gest its production by a community coming from thenorth (i.e., through migration rather than acculturationor diffusion) during the first millennium CE, and thisaccords with traditional archaeological and linguistic ev-idence for Khoekhoen migrations. We predict that newgeometric rock art finds will cluster in areas of knownKhoekhoen presence such as southern Namibia and per-haps parts of Zimbabwe (e.g., Cooke 1965) but not inLesotho or KwaZulu-Natal.

Rock Art and Khoekhoen Origins

The rock art evidence seems to confirm the evidence forKhoekhoen migrations, but it must be integrated withother sources of evidence such as archaeological exca-vation, linguistics, ethnography, and genetics to producean adequate account of Khoekhoen origins and move-ments. There is consensus among archaeologists whoaccept the existence of Khoekhoen migrations that asouthward movement took place from somewhere in ornear northern Botswana or perhaps a little farther northand east. The timing of this move is contested. RichardElphick (1985; see also Walker 1983, A. Smith 1990) sug-gested that herders who had previously been foragers ac-quired livestock from Bantu-speakers in the northernBotswana–western Zambia region and then, as Khoe-khoen, moved south and west, reaching South Africa’sWestern Cape Province 2,100–1,900 years ago (on thebasis of direct dating of excavated sheep/goat bones [e.g.,Sealey and Yates 1994, Vogel, Plug, and Webley 1997]).A second model proposes that sheep and pottery arrivedin southern Africa ca. 2,000 years ago by southward dif-fusion among various forager groups and that it was onlyat ca. 1000–1400 CE that the herder groups ancestral tomodern Khoekhoen entered the region, bringing withthem a distinctive lugged form of pottery (e.g., Sadr1998). The evidence from excavations has supportedthese two competing models equally.

Using linguistic and archaeological evidence, West-phal (1963) and Ehret (1982) concur that Khoe languagesformed about 2,000 years ago by splitting from the Tshu-Khwe language family. A clickless proto-Khoe languagecame into contact with San click languages aroundnorthern Botswana and must therefore have originated

somewhere north of Botswana, near western Zambia orAngola. The distinction between northern Botswana andwestern Zambia or Angola is crucial because there is ahiatus in rock art traditions along the Zambezi River.South of the Zambezi, in Botswana, Namibia, Zim-babwe, and South Africa, is the San forager zone, withfine-line rock art and click languages. North of the Zam-bezi is Clark’s Central African “schematic” rock art zone(Clark 1958), belonging to foragers ancestral to modernPygmy groups (B. Smith 1995, 1997) that seem to havespoken a clickless language (Ehret 1982). These peopleand their languages constituted the proto-Khoe. Theirrock art, found throughout central Africa, consists of fin-ger-painted and roughly engraved geometrics (Redinha1948, Clark 1958, Phillipson 1972, B. Smith 1997, Bar-ham 1998). The apparently isolated and hitherto enig-matic rock art of Tsodilo Hills now “stands like a step-ping stone between the geometric art of Central Africaand the younger engravings of the northern Cape”(Campbell, Denbow, and Wilmsen 1994:158).

Central African geometric rock art uses the same basicrepertoire of forms found in southern African Khoekhoenart. Khoekhoen migrations may therefore be understoodin terms of clickless proto-Khoe-speaking foragers in theregion of western Zambia/Angola acquiring sheep andperhaps pottery from Bantu-speakers, realigning their so-ciety to herding as well as hunting and gathering, andmoving southward into a southern Africa inhabited byclick-language-speaking San foragers. To understand thetiming of and motivation for the migration we must turnto the Central African excavation sequences rather thanjust those often cited from northern Botswana. NicholasKatanekwa shows that Bantu-speaking farmers had rel-atively extensively occupied western Zambia early in thefirst millennium CE (Katanekwa 1978, 1979), and this isalso the case for most of southern Zambia (Vogel 1984,1987). As Bantu-speaking farmer settlements expanded,those of foragers in southern Zambia diminished, and byca. 250 CE most of the latter had been abandoned (Faganand van Noten 1971). Thus the Zambian data supportthe earlier of the competing archaeological models forthe herder migrations.

The Central Limpopo Basin data likewise point to theearlier date. Those in favor of more recent migrationshave Khoekhoen arriving after 800 CE (e.g., Sadr 1998),when there was already a substantial Early Iron Age pres-ence. This would have been a difficult time for immi-grants to the basin. Hall and Smith (2000:42–44) showthat by this time foragers were excluded from parts ofthe landscape and from previously open and bilateral for-ager–farmer relationships. Though clientship, trade, andreligious relationships between Bantu-speaking farmersand foragers are acknowledged in oral histories and ar-chaeologies, there is little support for similar relationsbetween farmers and Khoekhoen. It is more likely thatthe northern South African geometric finger paintingswere made in the first half of the first millennium CE,when farmer settlement in the basin was peripheral andpasturage for the grazing of Khoekhoen stock was abun-dant (e.g., Huffman 1986). With the Zambian data, the

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record from the Central Limpopo Basin shifts the balanceof evidence toward an early Khoekhoen migration, per-haps stimulated by the southward movement of Bantu-speakers.

In addition to helping tie down its dating, geometricrock art may also indicate the routes of Khoekhoen mi-gration. From northern Botswana and northern SouthAfrica through the central interior to the Western Cape,the distribution of geometric rock art closely matchesthe path suggested by some linguists for the movementof Khoe languages (Westphal 1963; Ehret 1982, 1998; butsee Argyle 1994–95). Ehret suggests that the “LimpopoKhoi” moved into eastern Venda about 2,000 years ago(1982:163). No excavations have been conducted here,but a recent field survey has shown the area to be richin finger-painted geometrics (Eastwood and Cnoops2001). Ehret also postulates a second westward Khoe-khoen movement from Botswana into northern Namibiaand then south. Excavation confirms the move intonorthern Namibia but not the subsequent southwardmovement (Kinahan 1995). The available rock art datasupport excavation data showing a northern Khoekhoenpresence (e.g., Vogelsang 2002). The evidence from cen-tral Namibia is more equivocal (Scherz 1970); thererough-pecked geometrics are mostly unpatinated andsuggest recent manufacture.

The combination of linguistic, excavation, and rockart evidence shows that a distinctive way of life, materialculture, and set of relationships, including Khoe lan-guages, sheep, goats, geometric rock art, and perhaps pot-tery, arrived in southern Africa 2,000 years ago. Peopleknown today as Khoekhoen or part-Khoekhoen such asthe Griqua, !Kora/Korana, and Nama retained aspects ofthis distinctive way of life into the twentieth century.Some still herd and use geometric imagery in ceremonies(Rudner 1982:112–14; Waldman 1989:33 and personalcommunication, July 2001), though the making of rockart has ceased. It is possible, using a multistranded dataset, to demonstrate elements of cultural continuity fromethnographically observed Khoekhoen to early herdersin a set of traits including language, specific site pref-erences, rock art, and a herder lifeway. This is not to saythat Khoekhoen culture was static or “pristine” or thatthere was only one migration. Rather, we see a processof change, and through linguistic studies, excavation,and rock art research we can chart some of this change.

Khoekhoen Herder Rock Art over Time,Space, and Cultures

Change is evident in Khoekhoen rock art’s regional andtemporal variation. The nature of this change, wherebyan older, more homogeneous artistic canon took on localdevelopments, further supports the idea of Khoekhoenrock art as an imported expressive medium capable ofadapting to particular physical and cultural demands.This dynamism is seen in a series of cross-cultural “con-

versations” that challenge and extend our understandingof ethnicity and culture contact.

Compared with the circular forms that dominateKhoekhoen rock art in northern South Africa, the Khoe-khoen rock art of the central interior is dominated byangular motifs. Representational forms—people, ani-mals, aprons, and loincloths—appear later and increasein number and range in the Western Cape Province. Atleast some Khoekhoen rock art in northern and interiorSouth Africa is more than 1,000 years old (Sampson 1972,Hall and Smith 2000), beyond the limits of ethnographyand modern Khoekhoen memory. Old Khoekhoen rockart shows limited formal variability compared with morerecent Khoekhoen rock art. On the peripheries of pri-mary Khoekhoen settlement there is greater variability.In the Eastern Cape Province, geometric rock paintingsbecome scarce and take on a fresher, more elaborate ap-pearance (Derricourt 1977:40–42), using local hydrousferrous-oxide-derived paints that date to 150–600 yearsago. Their distribution and relative age match our pro-visional knowledge of Khoekhoen herder settlementhere in the sixteenth century CE (Derricourt 1977:206–11) and perhaps earlier (Leslie 1989). In the Ri-chtersveld and southern Namibia, extensive Khoekhoenengraving assemblages (e.g., Dowson 1992:34–47) with aparticularly fresh appearance may be linked to recentKhoekhoen (Nama) migrations (e.g., Penn 1986).

In certain places San and Khoekhoen rock arts occurat the same site (fig. 10). We have documented 489 suchsites. Most of the images can be readily identified as Sanor Khoekhoen, but there are instances of overlap, con-nectivity, and conversation. More than a dozen sites havefine-line depictions of fat-tailed sheep, an introduced an-imal closely associated with the Khoekhoen. Some fat-tailed sheep images are accompanied by human figuresand have been placed next to geometric rock art eventhough unpainted and technically more suitable ex-panses of rock wall were available. Accompanying herderfigures often wear distinctive back aprons that differfrom the loincloths and aprons observed on San (Blundelland Eastwood 2001). Aprons and loincloths are rare mo-tifs common to both rock arts and will be key to furtherinterpretive work.

As we move into the central interior, images from thetwo rock art traditions are regularly superimposed oneach other, suggesting ongoing use of the same land-scape. The responsiveness of San forager rock art allowsit to translate elements of geometric rock art into itslogic. For example, finger dots, a core element of Khoek-hoen rock art, also occur in San forager rock art in partsof South Africa’s southern Free State, the adjacent East-ern Cape, and the Cederberg Mountains of the WesternCape. Visually and by stratigraphic association, theseSan-produced finger dots are recent. The concatenatedfinger dots of a painting from the Free State (fig. 11) differfrom Khoekhoen finger dots in being joined by a paintedline. Some finger dots are anthropomorphized, sproutingbrush-painted legs, an arm, buttocks, a neck, and a penis.Though Lewis-Williams and Blundell (1997) suggest thatthese particular finger dots were a San attempt at visual

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Fig. 10. Red and white Khoekhoen geometric finger paintings on top of San brush paintings, Free State. Scalebar 30 mm.

and tactile access to the spirit world behind the rockface, they cannot be fully explained without also rec-ognizing a Khoekhoen presence; the site also has finger-painted geometrics superimposed on San human figures(fig. 10). We can, however, treat these dots as part of aconceptual whole in which traditional Khoekhoen fingerdots were interpreted in terms of a San world-under-standing. The finger dots became like the entoptic mi-crodots sometimes experienced in altered states of con-sciousness (e.g., Lewis-Williams and Dowson 1988),states in which San regularly changed their definitionsof self.

At the same time, the entoptic forms in San foragerrock art may have reminded Khoekhoen of their owngeometric imagery. In a painting from the Eastern Cape(fig. 12), a tusked eland’s body divided by entoptic gridshapes is superimposed on a tusked serpent and sur-rounded by ten human figures in a variety of posturesassociated with the shamanic component of the Medi-cine Dance (Lewis-Williams 1988). A zigzag form inlighter red paint and rows of light red and orange fingerdots are painted on top of the San fine lines, creating thefalse impression that the human figures emerge from thezigzag form (their faint legs are visible below it). Theselatter geometrics differ from the grid entoptics in color,pigment, technique, and stratigraphy, and their place-ment is no accident. This is a single image cluster from40 m of painted shelter wall dominated by fine-linebrushwork and small pulses of geometric rock art. Thetwo traditions co-occur only in this cluster, which hasthe only unequivocal entoptic imagery at this riversidesite. The complex conversation in which they are en-gaged suggests a mutual recognition of form and probably

of content—the type of knowledge characteristic of sus-tained cultural contact. These images are not negativelyappropriative, nor do they propose impermeable identi-ties. Rather, they form part of the essential business ofpeople’s positioning and repositioning themselves inevolving social contexts (Ingold 2000). Further, thoughoften skilled, these translations are the work of peoplewith incomplete social information and may have un-intended consequences. The accommodations that eachrock art tradition makes to the other are key in under-standing how people constructed and adjusted their iden-tities. These connections shape our understandings ofSan-ness and Khoekhoen-ness as identities with distinctcore values that nonetheless engaged with each other tocreate the conditions of possibility for cultural coexis-tence, innovation, challenge, continuity, and even newcultural formations.

Evidence of the Khoekhoen capacity to respond to cul-tural contact comes also from a diachronic landscapeperspective. The more recent finger paintings at placeslike Stompiesfontein show elements from a Europeanworld alongside geometrics. These “hybrid” images com-bine elements of San and Khoekhoen heritage in re-sponse to and even alliance against a new wave of Eu-ropean contact. Handprints reappear in the record andhave been linked to known Khoekhoen herder groups(van Rijssen 1994, Henneberg and Mathers 1994, Man-hire 1998). We concur with van Rijssen that “it wouldseem unlikely that the making of handprints would havebeen a sudden result of the arrival of the herding peopleunless the herders themselves were the originators of theimprints” (1994:174). Handprints are virtually absentfrom Lesotho and KwaZulu-Natal, and the six known

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Fig. 11. Red Khoekhoen-inspired San finger dots being transformed into human figures, Free State. Scale bar 30mm (courtesy of the Rock Art Research Institute).

from the Drakensberg probably belong to a Bantu-speak-ers’ rock art tradition (Pager 1971:337; Anne Solomon,personal communication, August 2001). Given the ex-tent of crossover and alliance between San and Khoe-khoen rock arts in the Western Cape, it is not alwayspossible to associate an image such as the handprint ex-clusively with one group.

It is no coincidence that these mixed images are spe-cific to western South Africa. Researchers are unanimousthat foragers and herders lived together here for at least1,000 years, and identities remain a complex issue (e.g.,Humphreys 1998, Morris 2002). Despite this cohabita-tion, there does seem to have been an emic distinctionbetween San and Khoekhoen. In 1877, Charles Orpenrecorded the testimony of Kwa-ha, a man from centralSouth Africa: “I am called Toby: my Bushman name isKwa-ha. My mother was a Bushwoman, and my fatherwas a Gonah Hottentot [derogatory term for Khoekhoen]named K’uh’akang, living with the Bushmen” (1877:83).This emic distinction suggests why San and Khoekhoenrock arts never fused into a third tradition and indicatesthat neither tradition was generated by the other.

Conclusion: Implications for Archaeology andContemporary Khoekhoen and San Identity

Recognizing southern African nonentoptic geometrics aspredominantly Khoekhoen-produced confirms an earlydate for a distinctive and widespread Khoekhoen pres-ence across southern Africa rather than a foragers-with-sheep scenario. Rock art differs from other artifacts inbeing more amenable to the extraction of meaning andintention, at least within our current theoretical under-standing of materiality (e.g., Conkey and Hastorf 1990).Much of this meaning pertains to the identity of themaker as individual and, however recalcitrant or idio-syncratic, as group member (e.g., Mitchell 1994, Brightand Bakewell 1995). Rock art is durable and highly vis-ible, ideally suited to displaying and reinforcing notionsas well as challenging and nuancing identities. It is ca-pable of transmitting messages with regard to the iden-tity of its makers, and it encourages comment and chal-

lenge. The recognition of Khoekhoen rock art opens upa new field of study. So far, our research has focused ondemonstrating that van Rijssen (1994), Anderson (1997)and Manhire (1998) were correct in suggesting a Khoe-khoen source for certain Western Cape finger paintings.We have expanded this work to provide a fuller descrip-tion and history of the Khoekhoen rock art tradition. Wehave not addressed its meaning; this will be the subjectof future work.

Frantz Fanon mused that colonial racism was a willfulfailure to recognize people as people, instead treating themas representative of “ethnic” and “racial” categories(1967). We are acutely aware of the danger of essentialismwith regard to the category of “Khoekhoen” (cf. Anderson1991). At the same time, we would not want to see anendless splintering into politically feeble groupings.Khoekhoen rock art shows that modern Khoekhoen havea heritage that, the violence of apartheid notwithstanding,has its own place in South African history at once distinctfrom and overlapping with that of the San. Identity ispotentially always in flux, but there are moments whenit crystallizes into definitive statements. Rock art repre-sents one such statement. Early European colonists’ con-fusion of Khoekhoen and San may be partly excused bythe extent to which the two had fused, at least superfi-cially, in the Western Cape after centuries of interaction.In addition, problems of archaeological detection havemasked the differences between these two groups andstressed a similarity that is an artifact of European obser-vations over the past 350 years. The most recent phase ofthis interaction has had an impact on the theories andexpectations of archaeological work that seeks to go be-yond this period of “historical” record—exactly the cau-tionary lesson taught by the productive Kalahari revision-ist debate. Distinctions and connexions have long beenunderstood by Khoekhoen and San and often surface inmodern Khoekhoen-San politics. Archaeologists have toooften ignored distinctions for reasons of politically correctrevisionism and the privileging of an imagined past overthe present. Fortunately, this situation is changing; re-searchers and activists are forming partnerships withKhoekhoen and San communities in attempts to conductcritically robust yet politically engaged work.

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Fig. 12. San and Khoekhoen rock art, Eastern Cape. Scale bar 30 mm (courtesy of the Rock Art ResearchInstitute).

We recognize that the terms “Khoekhoen” and “Bush-man”/“San” can be derogatory, but over the past decadethey have been reclaimed by people identifying them-selves by these terms. These identities can accommodateeach other situationally but retain strong and culturallyspecific core values. The terms allow us to interrogatesouthern Africa as a “rainbow nation” and apply a differ-ent and materially grounded time frame to multicultur-alism and cultural relativism. Because southern Africanshave been interacting for more than 2,000 years, the dis-tinction between Khoekhoen and San is less apparent to-day than it was in the past. This has allowed some tochallenge the introduction of domestic stock and potteryas the specific contribution of the Khoekhoen to SouthAfrican history. We reject this challenge. To this packageof innovations we add Khoekhoen rock art, a nonentopticgeometric rock art tradition with its own origins andmeanings. This tradition is an indicator of a Khoekhoenherder presence that archaeological, ethnographic, lin-guistic, and genetic research can substantiate. Rock art isboth historically specific and capable of wider conversa-tions across time and space. These conversations point topossibilities of personhood beyond race-based definitionsand to more situational and performed identities that aregrounded in a past that is ever-present.

Comments

christopher chipp indaleCambridge University Museum of Archaeology andAnthropology, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3DZ,England, and School of Archaeology and Anthro-pology, Australian National University, CanberraACT 0200, Australia ([email protected]). 13 iv 04

This instructive paper usefully illustrates how the dis-tinctive evidence offered by rock art complements otherinsights; in this it echoes the fine larger-scale synthesesof Keyser and Klassen (2001) and Francis and Loendorf(2002) for the western Plains of North America. In both

southern Africa and North America there is somethingof a gap between the ethnohistoric evidence, with itspatchy coverage and limited historical depth, and thematerial evidence of archaeology, which has time-depthbut seems more reticent when it comes to human iden-tities and attitudes—the more so if the dominant frameof archaeological research is an economic-ecological de-terminism which does not try to place human percep-tions of the world near its centre. Here rock art finds aspecial opportunity as well as the special difficulties indating evident in this paper. Much the same conditionsclearly apply in much of Australia, where the ethno-historic record is exceptionally shallow and the stoneswhich alone of material artefacts survive over time inacidic sands are exceptionally hard to interpret. In north-ern Australia, for example, some of us are persuaded thatthe story of the Rainbow Serpent and other creator-be-ings in what has now come conventionally to be calledthe “Dreaming” can reliably be traced to a certain pointin a long and intricate sequence of imagery on the land(Tacon, Wilson, and Chippindale 1996, David 2003) andthat that point can be reasonably well placed by suchdating as we have for rock art and the chronological in-dicators in archaeological and ecological sequences(Chippindale and Tacon 1998).

If the potential extends to the many regions—such asthe steppe lands of Central Asia—where a rich rock-artrecord may make a similar approach possible, then itmay have wide application. Central to the approach isthe “art” of rock art: these are pictures, not words andnot artefacts whose form and shape may be largely de-termined by practical and functional considerations.They are images which express aspects of ancient worldsas their inhabitants knew them to be. And because theyare on rock, they are fixed in place: studies of their settingin the landscape and their distribution have a certaintylacking in studies of portable artefacts. We see this onthe smallest scale here in the way the red circles aretucked away from easy sight on the ceiling of the Schrodashelter and on the largest scale in the persuasive mappingof the occurrence of geometric rock art across southernAfrica. These are “pictures in place” (Chippindale and

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Nash 2004), having elements in common with otherkinds of pictures, elements arising from their fixity inplace, and unique aspects due to their combining thetwo.

New research opportunities are occasion for avoidingrepeating old habits and old mistakes, but I think thatSmith and Ouzman are too critical of archaeologists’ pastdeficiencies. They criticize quantification and thenquantify themselves; they criticize archaeological clas-sification and then classify themselves. I take this asproof that issues of quantification and classification areinescapable for a systematic archaeology. San rock arthas distinct regional variants. Two others, those of theBantu-speaking farmers and of the European settlers, arehere reported as being made up of several differenttraditions (and the most visible rock art today, the spray-painted graffiti which have diffused from Los Angeles tocolor all the world, is surely one more tradition there,to be set on its own or lumped with another). A third—Korana—has at least two iterations. Therefore these re-searchers struggle as we all do to find the right categories,facing the usual hard choices about what to lump to-gether and what to split apart. When people and thingstouch and interact in so many variant ways, can thereby any categorization which fully and fairly describes?If there is no category such as “the” Khoekhoen, howcan it be possible or useful to identify a category of Khoe-khoen rock art? I like the approach here and have con-fidence in the authors’ choices of their categories, but Ido not see that they have avoided (or could or shouldhave avoided) these enduring issues of method.

Partly these issues can be addressed by clear language.I think it right to call the tradition reported there “geo-metric” rather than “abstract.” At least for rock art re-moved from ethnographic insight, there is no useful cat-egory of “abstract.” We may have pictures that we thinkwe recognize as having the distinctive shape of physicalobjects—animals, snakes, bird, human beings—and a re-sidual category of pictures that we don’t recognize theshape of without knowing whether they are indeed “ab-stract.” And the naturalistic forms we do recognize maynot have the meanings of their subjects: a woman wear-ing blue and with a baby is not just that in Christianimagery, nor is an elephant an elephant in the iconog-raphy of contemporary U.S. politics.

Language is another enduring issue here. A useful testof and restraint on the obscuring abstractions of anthro-pological theorists is to ask if their words are clear tothose on the ground, those who know the actual mate-rial, whether the people on whose land this rock art nowstands or those actually concerned in their own liveswith what Khoekhoen identity is today. What do thesenon-academic colleagues understand by “de-centeringthe sovereign Cartesian individual” or by “more situa-tional and performed identities”? May we be told inphrases this museum curator and field archaeologist,himself also trapped in a world of anthropological the-orists, can understand and therefore learn from?

thomas a. dowsonSchool of Art History and Archaeology, University ofManchester, Manchester M13 9PL, England ([email protected]). 28 iv 04

Smith and Ouzman have produced a compelling case forKhoekhoen authorship of what they term a “geometrictradition” of rock art in southern Africa. As they makeclear, they are not the first to make this claim, but theyhave marshalled a number of lines of evidence fromacross the subcontinent to produce a more substantialargument than any that has been offered to date. Cer-tainly their thesis provides strikingly plausible accountsfor some of the widely noted enigmatic features of south-ern African rock art.

Although I am persuaded by the general outcome ofSmith and Ouzman’s argument, there are aspects thatrequire further consideration. For instance, using their“definition” of the geometric tradition I believe thatthere are examples of the geometric tradition in north-central Namibia. Also, having long been interested inusing rock art to construct local and regional historiesof southern African people (Dowson 1994, 1995, 1998b,2000; see also Kinahan 1991, Yates, Manhire, and Par-kington 1994), I feel that there is much scope for dis-cussing this aspect of the paper. But on these pointsSmith and Ouzman themselves would not claim to haveprovided a definitive story, and space limitations pre-clude my dealing with them here. There is one signifi-cant point that I should like to use this opportunity toraise: the relationship of the geometric tradition to al-tered states of consciousness.

Smith and Ouzman’s argument for the geometic tra-dition’s not being associated with altered states of con-sciousness is not as robust as other parts of their paper.While I agree with many of the points they make (forexample, that not every geometric need represent an en-toptic phenomenon), their position is largely founded onthe now slightly outdated neuropsychological model thatLewis-Williams and I developed in the late 1980s andrestricts Dronfield’s (1996) significant contribution tothe art of the European Neolithic. I do not want to arguethat the geometric tradition executed by Khoe-khoen peoples must be thought of as having been asso-ciated with altered states of consciousness unless it canbe demonstrated otherwise, but I am not comfortablewith the proposition that none of it is associated withany form of ritualized altered state of consciousnesseither.

From various ethnohistorical accounts we know thatinteraction between the San and the Khoekhoen was ex-tensive and not superficial. One such account describeswhat must surely be San shamans performing curing rit-uals for Khoekhoen people living at the Kat River set-tlement in what is now the Eastern Cape Province ofSouth Africa (Kay 1833:474–83). Interestingly, not farfrom the Kat River settlement is the painting reproducedin the paper as figure 12. Smith and Ouzman rightlysuggest that the superpositioning of Khoekhoen fingerdots on San fine-line paintings is no accident. But, given

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the degree of spiritual interaction between San andKhoekhoen peoples and accepting these researchers’ in-terpretation of the significance of that superpositioning,I find it difficult to accept that the Khoekhoen’s “repos-itioning themselves in evolving social contexts” at thatplace did not involve some intimate engagement withaltered states of consciousness. A greater understandingof the diversity of Khoekhoen ritual practice is requiredbefore we can dismiss any connection between the geo-metric tradition and altered states of consciousness.

We should not, however, overlook the potential of therock art itself to shed some light on the relationshipbetween the geometric imagery and visual hallucina-tions. I accept that some of the geometric imagery isclearly not in any way associated with altered states ofconsciousness, but there are some regions where the casefor the geometric imagery’s deriving from altered statesof consciousness is not so easily dismissed. Dronfield(1996) has shown that the entoptic phenomena Lewis-Williams and I outlined in our research on the UpperPalaeolithic art of Europe (Lewis-Williams and Dowson1988) conflate geometric imagery diagnostic of visualhallucinations with imagery that is not. In a series ofpapers he has applied this distinction to the geometricart in the Neolithic tombs of Ireland to determinewhether the imagery is derived from altered states ofconsciousness. The images that he has identified as di-agnostic of visual hallucinations are in fact present insome regional variants of Smith and Ouzman’s geomet-ric tradition. Judging from both published images andmy own brief fieldwork, the imagery found in theRichtersveld contains large numbers of geometric pat-terns that are diagnostic of visual hallucinations. In factmy “sample,” collected long before I was aware of thedistinction Dronfield later made, is “quantitatively”stronger than the clinical samples he used.

My point is that there are indications that at leastsome of the Khoekhoen rock art could be directly derivedfrom altered states of consciousness and that Smith andOuzman have perhaps been too hasty in dismissing thispossibility. But I do not want this comment to detractfrom the welcome contribution these two researchershave made in this paper.

peter mitchellSt. Hugh’s College, Oxford University, Oxford OX26LE, U.K. ([email protected]).21 iv 04

This is an ambitious paper with far-reaching implica-tions for southern African archaeology. Its authors areabsolutely correct to emphasize the importance of seek-ing to transcend the constraints of the ethnographic andhistorical records, and they concisely identify the as-sumptions involved in recent discussions of the relationsbetween “hunter-gatherers” and “food-producers” in thesubcontinent. Also effective is their emphasis on rockart as a deliberately created, situationally specific formof material culture expressive of individual and group

identity. More specifically, I find their identification ofgeometric rock art with the Khoekhoen largely convinc-ing but should have liked to see this argued more force-fully from links with imagery known in Khoekhoe eth-nography (cf. Webley 1997) rather than mostly by theexclusion of other creators and inferences from chro-nology and distribution. A concern here, which Smithand Ouzman only partially address, is to what extent thebeliefs, practices, and arts of different groups of peopleaffected each other: Morris (2002) has recently argued forone well-known geometric rock art site, Driekopseiland,that we should think in terms of a widely shared set ofKhoisan beliefs and imagery, a conclusion echoed by Bar-nard (1992), Prins and Rousseau (1992), and Hoff (1997).More consideration of their arguments and of the pos-sible time depth and significance of these ideologicalcommonalities is needed.

My main concern lies, however, with the inferencesSmith and Ouzman draw regarding the southward mi-gration of the Khoekhoen. Several points can be made,beginning with figure 9. Apart from the map’s scale,which ignores potentially significant variations in sitedensity and frequency, the main issue here lies withmany of the localities where this kind of art is said toexist. No one, to my knowledge, has located anythingremotely identifiable as a Stone Age herder site in Mpu-malanga, the upper Vaal Valley, the middle section of theGariep, or much of the mountainous interior of the East-ern and Western Cape Provinces. Where large Khoekhoeherder populations are attested historically, however, inthe coastal forelands of the Eastern and Western Cape,figure 9 suggests that the rock art evidence is silent. Ofcourse, this may be an artefact of research, and Bambatapottery from Gauteng (Wadley 1987) and the Waterberg(van der Ryst 1998) could, if it really is of herder man-ufacture (cf. Huffman 1994), support the authors’ argu-ment, but the discrepancy is worrying. Equally so is theirdiscussion of the radiocarbon evidence for early sheep inSouth Africa. That the earliest AMS-dated specimenscome from Namaqualand (Vogel, Plug, and Webley 1997)and the Western Cape (Henshilwood 1996) surely sup-ports a movement of sheep and pottery (which broadlyco-occur in the Cape) south through Namibia. Basal mid-first-millennium-AD dates for herder pottery in the Sea-cow Valley concur (Sampson and Vogel 1995). Neitherfits well with a (necessarily early) Khoekhoe migrationnortheast to southwest across the South African interior.

One way forward might be to allow for greater flexi-bility in the age and hence the associations of the geo-metric art. Smith and Ouzman’s discussion underlineshow little we really know about its chronology, a prob-lem common to much of southern African rock art butone that it is vital to address if we are to unscramble itshistory and relate it more effectively to other compo-nents of the archaeological record. With better chrono-logical controls, might we find that the geometric artspread/originated in multidirectional rather than unidi-rectional ways? Might we also discover that it sometimesoccurs in areas where Khoe-speaking people spread butwithout taking with them a herder lifestyle? And, finally,

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might we not also find confirmation, as Sadr (1998) hasargued, that the initial dispersal of sheep and ceramicsthrough western South Africa was wholly different fromand anterior to the emplacement there of the Khoekhoenthemselves? I see nothing in Smith and Ouzman’s paperthat would exclude this conclusion, which remains, tomy mind, eminently defensible from the excavatedevidence.

Two final points: First, Ehret’s argument for the priorpresence of Khoekhoen in the Limpopo Valley some2,000 years ago depends upon supposed loanwords insoutheastern Bantu languages, but his reconstruction ofthe relevant roots in hypothesized ancestral languages isneither fully published (Borland 1986) nor universallyaccepted (Argyle 1994–95). Second, while I applaudSmith and Ouzman’s search for connections south andnorth of the Zambezi, care should be taken in assumingthat Iron Age populations extensively occupied westernZambia early in the first millennium AD and that thisin turn stimulated “an early Khoekhoen migration”; thetwo dates from Namakala and the anomalously early onefrom Situmpa (Katanekwa 1978, 1979) are insufficient tosupport this. My no doubt predictable comments apart,Smith and Ouzman are to be commended on a stimu-lating and timely paper that should encourage much pro-ductive new research.

david morrisDepartment of Archaeology, McGregor Museum,Kimberley, South Africa ([email protected]).26 iv 04

Smith and Ouzman allude, at various points in their pa-per, to processes of identity construction and perfor-mance that are situated and dynamic and in which rockart may be implicated. This is an approach with whichI have much sympathy, having elaborated along similarlines in a study of the rock-engraving site of Drie-kopseiland (Morris 2002). I sought there to advance ananti-essentialist critique of what Inskeep (1971) had ear-lier characterized as the “either/or” approach to the issueof rock art authorship. Previously, the engravings at thatsite had been interpreted in the somewhat empiricistmode, various ethnic entities being invoked to matchand explain the different engraving styles or aggregates,whereas potentially, I argued, the history in question wasmuch more complex. The affirmation by Smith and Ouz-man of a more nuanced perspective is important. But,this said, I find myself at odds with what turns out tobe the burden of their argument. Their paper ends up, Isuggest, reifying the ethnic distinctiveness of the Khoe-khoen relative to San and others, bundling together par-ticular ranges of rock paintings and engravings in a pack-age (with language and other cultural and economictraits) that can be traced, they contend, in a continuumacross two millennia. While allowing that identity is“potentially always in flux,” they view Khoekhoen rockart (more than other parts of the “package,” they urge,because it is “consciously produced and closely con-

cerned with identity”) as representing moments whenKhoekhoen identity crystallized into “definitive state-ments.” Because of this and because rock art is “one ofthe most theoretically informed means of reconstructionof lifeways past and present,” they argue, the rock artevidence—what is heralded here as a readily distinguish-able Khoekhoen herder rock art tradition—becomes “de-cisive” for resolving the central issue of the revisionistdebate (itself reified?).

I have theoretical and empirical misgivings about thisconclusion. At a theoretical level I have been concernedto challenge essentialist conceptions of “culture,” ethnicgroup, class, etc., as bounded systems in which “ulteriorstructure” is reproduced, as E. P. Thompson (1978:46)has put it, by “men [who are] not the makers but thevectors.” By approaching the analysis of rock art in theseterms, one may be blinded to levels of social and culturaldynamism and fluidity—of contestation and individualagency—which have resulted in what is a quite variedcorpus of rock art in Southern Africa. Smith and Ouzmanappear to recognize this in one breath but construct anearly primordialist Khoekhoen identity and rock art tra-dition in the next. The existence of groups cannot beassumed a priori, not even if “many forager and herderdescendants consider separate identities of prime im-portance.” In the present, the articulation and assertionof such identities “from below” (Robins 2001, Waldman2001, Engelbrecht 2002, Sylvain 2002) in struggles over“authenticity” and access to resources (including tradi-tional leader status) is ironically consequent, in no smallmeasure, upon the fixing of these identities and stereo-types in the colonial era (Humphreys 1998). The “primeimportance” given to these labels and attached baggageby descendant communities is what Robins calls “stra-tegic essentialism.” Projection of such identities and cul-tural configurations into the past can be done only beway of analogy and hypothesis—as questions for archae-ological and historical enquiry—mindful that the waythings are today results from events and circumstancesin the past and not the other way around.

At an empirical level, sites in the central interior turnout to be pivotal, given the assertion that “distributionrather than dating is key” in determining authorship.This “works” once it is assumed that all non-entopticgeometric rock art post-dates the appearance of farming,with the remaining question being its association withagriculturists (in the east) or pastoralists (in the west andcentral interior). Dating, particularly of engravings, re-mains notoriously difficult, but where some estimatesdo exist, namely, at Driekopseiland, most of the geo-metric engravings at the older western end of the siteare as weathered as (and hence as old as) the earlier,probably pre-2000 BP, animal engravings (Fock and Fock1989:142). These may therefore pre-date the hypothe-sized advent of Khoekhoen pastoralists. Nor, after this,is there evidence for any marked population replace-ment. Moreover, artifact inventories characteristic ofherder sites along the lower Orange River are quite dif-ferent from those at Driekopseiland. Yet it seems truethat geometric rock art sites do increase in frequency in

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the last 2,000 years. An alternative to the ethnic expla-nation at Driekopseiland (Morris 2002) which draws onremarkably consonant ethnography from across theKhoe-San spectrum is that it was a site of ritual inten-sification (specifically the female rites of passage) inwhich climate history, changing metaphorical under-standings of place, and responses to an increasingly com-plex social landscape all played a role.

robert j . wallisRichmond the American International University inLondon, 1 St. Alban’s Grove, London W8 5BN, U.K.([email protected]). 26 iv 04

Smith and Ouzman propose that, according to differ-ences in visual appearance and technique (among otherfactors), Southern African rock engravings and paintingstypically identified as San/Bushman(“forager”)-authoredare made up of two distinct rock art traditions: the fine-brush paintings and engraved “entoptic” images are as-cribed to “foragers” and the finger-painted and rough-pecked images to “herders” (Khoekhoen). They interpretthis artistic variation in terms of ethnic (San/Khoekhoen)and economic (forager/herder) differences (also proble-matizing such terminology) and avoid both rigid culturaland economic boundaries between peoples and strict as-sociations between community identities and materialculture “signatures.” Their paper offers an effective prob-lematizing of “race” in favour of performed identitiesand introduces rock art—“a Cinderella of archaeologicalresearch”—to the Kalahari revisionist debate as a per-tinent and promising archaeological resource.

I have two comments on issues raised by this paper.First, a more explicit methodology for classifying entop-tic and non-entoptic imagery is required, since the dis-tinction between “rough-pecked (and non-entoptic)” and“engraved entoptic” art is central to their identificationof, respectively, “herder” and “forager” art. Second, I amintrigued by the extent to which intercultural visual“conversations” permeate the boundedness of their twoperceived artistic traditions/ethnic groups and thus dis-rupt the significance of their contribution to the debate.

Regarding the first point, clearly not all geometric rockart is “entoptic,” yet, although Dronfield’s (e.g., 1995)rigorous methodology is cited by Smith and Ouzman,their methodology for distinguishing between entopticand non-entoptic imagery is unclear. Focus on the iden-tification of entoptic forms, in turn, overlooks the seven“principles of transformation” integral to Lewis-Wil-liams and Dowson’s neuropsychological model (1988),which take account of the fluid nature of visual expe-riences in altered consciousness (also Wallis 2002, 2004).A consequence of this overemphasis on entoptic imageryis the extraction of motifs and entabulation of these asdiscrete images (fig 5), a simplifying and decontextual-izing of imagery which risks homogenizing the differ-ences (Wallis 2003). The suggestion that herder-authoredrough-pecked engravings are distinguished from foragerengravings by their non-entoptic nature therefore needs

to be demonstrated with closer attention to specific pan-els and regional variability.

Interestingly, a number of herder geometrics (e.g., infigures 2–4) may be ascribed entoptic status if approachedin terms of the six entoptic forms and their subjectionto one or more of Lewis–Williams and Dowson’s prin-ciples of transformation. Furthermore, rock art fromDriekopseiland and the Richtersveld is cited as display-ing a marked juxtaposition of herder and forager art andthe predominance of the former, but in both instancesclassic entoptic images and their subjection to principlesof transformation are quite obvious (e.g., Dowson 1992:fig. 46), including in their figure 4, thus contesting theirrough-pecked p non-entoptic equation. Sites in centralNamibia, where I have been involved in field projects(Wallis 1996), also have rough-pecked engravings, butthese are overwhelmingly of animals and their foot-prints, thus challenging their “rough-pecked geometric”classification for herder art. Smith and Ouzman’s asso-ciation of technique (rough-pecked engravings) with eth-nic/economic group (Khoekhoen/herder) is clearly prob-lematic.

Concerning my second point, the juxtaposition of (per-ceived) herder and forager imagery raises questions of theengagements between these communities. Intimately as-sociated with fine-brush paintings, rough-pecked en-gravings of lion spoor with five (or more) toes instead ofthe natural four at Twyfelfontein (e.g., Dowson 1992:112–14) and other sites in central Namibia might indi-cate instances of shamanic transformation (Wallis 1996)in what Smith and Ouzman identify as herder art. Per-haps, if we accept their argument, this juxtaposition ofpaintings and engravings is evidence of a localized cen-tral Namibian engagement between foragers and herders,negotiated (and recorded) through visual culture. Build-ing on Dowson’s (1995) discussion of Bushman-Bantuinteractions, the forager redeployment of herder fingerpaintings (fig. 11) might indicate that herder art heldpower (sociopolitical and shamanistic) for foragers. Atthe same time, the addition of herder geometrics to for-ager imagery (fig. 12) suggests that otherworld visionswere not restricted to forager shamans: arguably, theseherder geometrics are classic entoptic images, again dis-rupting the proposed herder-art p non-entoptic equa-tion. Herders may have been familiar with shamanisticexperiences themselves—as is indicated ethnographi-cally (shamanism is not restricted to foragers)—and, asstake-holders in a shamanistic landscape (perhaps in con-flict or collaboration with foragers), contributed theirown imagery to panels of forager rock art.

Smith and Ouzman’s hypothesis that finger-paintedand rough-pecked geometric herder rock art is visuallydistinct from fine-brush paintings and engraved entopticforager art raises more questions—especially of regionalvariation and artistic connectivity in light of dynamicherder-forager engagements—than it answers. The au-thors attend to the distinctiveness of herder/forager androck art categories, but the “fuzziness” of the boundariesis of equal importance—precisely because this has bear-ing on the Kalahari debate. If these boundaries are per-

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meable, as I argue, then forager-herder engagements, mo-bilized in rock art, might offer a more promising resourcefor developing the debate. Smith and Ouzman’s “futurework” on meaning, then, should be most fascinating.

edwin wilmsenDepartment of Anthropology, University of Texas atAustin, EPS 1.130, Austin, TX 78712, U.S.A.([email protected]). 8 v 04

This paper should become an important step, at least asfar as southern Africa is concerned, in returning the Ka-lahari debate to its proper focus: reducing the “magicalrealism” quality of ethnography by “acknowledging thedynamic relationship between time, place, people, andartifacts.” The authors reassert the inextricable inter-digitation of the existential facets of an ethnographicallyextracted people’s lives with the social formation inwhich they exist and the historical trajectory that shapedsucceeding expressions of their experience. Applying thisinsight to data derived from extensive archaeological androck art survey both in the field and in the literature,they make an appealing case for the early presence ofKhoeKhoen herders on the subcontinent. This is not arevelation to some of us who have arrived at the sameconclusion via other pathways, but Smith and Ouzmanbring a fresh perspective that strengthens the argumentand broadens it in interesting ways. Whether this pre-cludes a prior or coexisting “ ‘foragers with sheep’ sce-nario” is, however, doubtful, and their claim that it doesso is not credible. Their failure in this regard is a commonone among ethnographers and archaeologists, few ofwhom seriously consider what they mean by the terms“ethnic” and “ethnicity.” I shall return to this.

First I want to add to Smith and Ouzman’s remarkson the Tsodilo Hills paintings. As they note, there aregeometrics, apparently finger-painted, among them, butthere are also rudimentary human figures, also appar-ently finger-painted in red, that seem to be similar tothose from the Northern Cape shown in their figure 5.Smith and Ouzman are quite correct in saying that thesepaintings have been “hitherto enigmatic” and that theTsodilo Hills are “now a key link” in unraveling thehistory of pastoralism on the subcontinent. Some of theenigma may now be at least partly resolved. The indi-vidual hills are today known by the English renditionsof names given to them by their current residents, Zhuand Hambukushu, but these names are those of formerKhoe-speaking residents. In 1898, the German geogra-pher Siegfried Passarge (Wilmsen 1997), who visitedthem, identified the main inhabitants of the hills asKhoe-speakers and recorded their names for many land-marks there; a century later, Taylor (2000) recorded manyof the same names. Passarge records that Zhu were atthe time comparatively recent arrivals displacing Khoe,who then moved to the vicinity of the Okavango Deltaand Lake Ngami (see Denbow and Wilmsen n.d.). TodayZhu in Ngamiland and adjacent parts of Namibia forma short, narrow wedge into an otherwise solid band of

Khoe-speakers extending from the Atlantic coast east-ward beyond Victoria Falls between 16� and 23� southlatitude. Within this wedge, many place-names, not onlyat Tsodilo, remain Khoe (Wilmsen 1989:334), a fact rec-ognized a century ago by Passarge, who concluded thatthis must imply comparatively recent movement of Zhuinto the area. I (2002) suggest that this movement beganin conjunction with the initial penetration of Portu-guese-inspired Congo-Luanda trade and extension of in-tensive slave procurement into the interior, a processthat brought Zhu to their present locations in Botswana-Namibia during the seventeenth and eighteenth centu-ries. Thus, there are grounds for envisioning a Khoe—or, better, proto-Khoe—presence of substantial timedepth in the area. Because the Khoe languages are closelyrelated to Khoekhoen, Smith and Ouzman’s suggestionthat speakers of these languages are likely authors ofmany paintings on the Hills is reasonable.

This is as far as we should go; certainly we should notspeak about ethnicity 2,000 years ago, as projecting acurrent Khoekhoen identity into the past does, withoutbeing very clear about what we mean. Ethnicity arisesin the exercise of power. Silverman (1976:628) noted thisa quarter-century ago: “a group is ethnic only if thereare ‘outsiders’ and if it exists within a wider politicalfield.” Ethnic consciousness is a product of contradic-tions embodied in relations of structured inequality(Comaroff 1987). Thus, ethnic politics is the politics ofmarginality. Indeed, ethnicity appears to come into beingmost frequently in instances in which individuals arepersuaded of a need to confirm a collective sense of iden-tity in the face of threatening economic, political, orother social forces. Ethnicity, then, is a relational con-cept, the dialectical nature of which is evident. Howeverembellished by expressive signs or shielded in a cloud ofsymbolic values, the essence of ethnic existence lies indifferential access by self-identified groups to means ofproduction and rights to shares in production returns(Wilmsen 1996). It is unlikely that these conditions werepresent in precolonial southern Africa. Indeed, Marks(1982:10) concludes that “amongst Africans ethnicitywould appear to have been of relatively little signifi-cance” even as late as the early nineteenth century. Itwould be preferable for archaeologists to adopt the prac-tice of linguists and use non-specific forms—in this case,“proto-Khoekhoen”—when speaking of peoples in theunrecorded past.

Reply

benjamin smith and sven ouzmanGauteng, South Africa. 4 vi 04

We thank the commentators for their considered andconstructive comments. We are greatly encouraged bythe broad agreement upon our central thesis, that theappearance of geometric rock art in southern Africa

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marks an early Khoekhoen (or proto-Khoekhoen) pres-ence. A number of important issues are raised in thesediscussions: issues of past identities and their recogni-tion, archaeological method, and rock art meaning.

Identity in southern Africa is a complex issue, even inthe present. The region has been an arena of interactionfor at least the past 2,000 years. It is a melting pot inwhich diverse languages and cosmologies, differing usesof material culture, and varied lifeways have convergedand diverged. We therefore share the concern expressedby Morris that the identification of a “Khoekhoen pack-age” could blind one to social and cultural dynamismand fluidity and have sought to expose a particular sec-tion of that dynamism and fluidity. For example, we haveconsidered what factors underlie the appearance and evo-lution of a particular material cultural assemblage (char-acterized by geometric rock art) over the past 2,000 years,how makers of different rock art assemblages engagedwith one another, and how fusions of different rock artscan be linked to historically and socially situated amal-gam identities such as that of the Korana.

Morris proposes an “alternative ethnic explanation”for Driekopseiland that emphasizes “ritual intensifica-tion,” change, and complexity. This does not seem to usan alternative; we would also emphasize these factors ininterpreting the geometric rock art at any site. There isa blurring here of meaning with origin. We are concernedhere with origins. We have argued that the origins ofgeometric art lie in the ancient forager (Pygmy) geomet-ric rock art of central Africa and that during the firstmillennium CE makers of this art migrated southward,thereby introducing a geometric rock art tradition tosouthern Africa. We tie this movement to a particularethnographically and linguistically attested migration:that of peoples ancestral to the modern Khoekhoen (who,as Wilmsen argues, would be better termed “proto-Khoekhoen”). While talk of migrations may not be infashion, the origin of this particular material culture traitis better explained by migration that by any of the pro-cesses Morris invokes. For example, how can any set ofcomplex local processes explain the widespread distri-bution and formal uniformity of the earliest forms of thisart? In its later manifestation, where regional and localvariations become the norm, we agree with Morris thatone should consider the effects of interaction in “an in-creasingly complex social landscape.” We have done this;we have emphasized how the makers of the art evolvednew meanings and uses for their art in the context ofcontact. Morris and Mitchell call for more examples, andthis should be a focus of further work. Morris’s ownexample of Driekopseiland is a case in point. But, whilesuch examples of dynamism and fluidity help us to un-derstand the meanings of the locally evolving geometricart form, they do not help us to understand its distri-bution in bands along the watercourses and sources ofsouthern Africa. Our work does this. The two studiestherefore make valuable and complementary contri-butions.

Mitchell’s point that there is a set of Khoe-San beliefsand practices that is widely shared is well taken; beliefs

about huge magical serpents and rain-animals are buttwo examples. Nonetheless, as Mitchell notes, there areaspects of Khoekhoen ethnography that are distinctive.He urges us to use this ethnography “more forcefully,”and we intend to do so, but, as Morris’s (2002) workdemonstrates, this ethnography has explanatory poten-tial in the realms of use, meaning, and social contextrather than origins. We have therefore chosen to use aseries of mutually supporting sources of evidence in thispaper, among which ethnography is just one.

Chippindale asks how, if there is no clear category of“the Khoekhoen,” there can be a category of “Khoek-hoen” rock art. We argue that one can clearly identify acategory of geometric rock art that appears in southernAfrica in the first millennium CE and is strikingly dif-ferent from the rock art of southern Africa before thattime. We explain this new category as an introductionfrom outside, and we show how it developed, taking onboth local and temporal variations. The bulk of our paperis then given over to demonstrating links between thiscategory and a particular and evolving local identity, thatof the ancestors of the modern Khoekhoen. It is thestrength of this multistranded argument and not the pro-cess of classification in itself that gives the category ofgeometric rock art validity. Geometric art as a categoryhas value because it contributes to our understanding ofthe southern African past.

Wallis correctly notes that rough-pecked engravings arenot exclusively geometric and that in Namibia (and, infact, other parts of southern Africa) there is a fair per-centage of forager or “San” rough-pecked engravings. Wedo not wish to suggest that rough pecking alone is a nec-essary and sufficient indicator of Khoekhoen authorship.Rather, we stress the need to combine a suite of traitsincluding technique (rough pecking and finger painting),iconography (dominantly geometrics and rudimentary“representational” forms), location (proximity to watersources and courses), site preference (rock shelters withinner cavelike spaces), and pigment type (large-grainedochres and clays). Together, these evidential traits suggesta dominant Khoekhoen ancestral heritage. We say “dom-inant” because we accept that material culture is not aninvariable indicator of fixed identities.

Mitchell observes that our figure 9 is rather too coarse-grained in scale and has suspiciously smooth edges. Thismap was derived by plotting the 834 geometric-traditionsites identified to date. The site coverage is fairly even,and while this distribution will no doubt be expandedby further research, it cannot contract unless the clas-sification of the geometric tradition is refined. We ac-knowledge that the Namibian data that we present hereare patchy. Dowson’s and Wallis’s work will be vital inclarifying this matter. Both of their comments suggestthe need for a considerable extension of our figure 9 Na-mibian distribution. Closely linked to this discussion areMitchell’s comments on the plausibility of a Namibiancoastal route for some proto-Khoekhoen migrants. Herightly wonders why there is not more geometric rockart in this area. We suggest that more geometric art willindeed be found there. Mpumalanga, where there is geo-

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metric rock art but no archaeological evidence of earlyherders, is an underresearched region, and, to the extentthat herders can be discerned from excavated remains,we predict that evidence of them will be found.

Mitchell’s concerns about the dating evidence are alsolegitimate. The data are not as extensive as one wouldhope. However, the vignettes we have provided fromacross the region, from Zambia through Limpopo andthe central interior to the Western Cape, all point to thesame conclusion: the arrival of herder groups in the firstmillennium CE. Aside from the direct dating evidence,we find it hard to explain the long and complex historyof geometric art in a period of less than a millennium,and, as Morris notes, many of the geometric engravingshave the worn appearance of considerable age. We do notclaim to have resolved the timing of the Khoekhoen mi-grations—no doubt movements were many and spreadover time—but we think that the weight of the evidencefavors an earlier migration date. Equally, as noted byWilmsen, we do not know the extent to which Sangroups took up herding at this time, but we feel sure thatsome did. The time of the arrival of the geometric artseems too close to the time of the arrival of evidence ofsheep and pottery to be coincidental; we believe that allthree were proto-Khoekhoen introductions to the ma-terial culture of southern Africa.

Although meaning was largely outside our scope,Dowson and Wallis appropriately criticize our dismissalof the possibility that Khoekhoen art might contain anentoptic component. We accept that such a conclusionis at least premature, but we consider it equally danger-ous to assume that just because an art is predominantlygeometric it will include entoptics. We are convincedthat the greater part of geometric art is nonentoptic.Dowson points to ample ethnographic evidence (see alsoGordon 1996) for at least a small entoptic component,especially in contexts of extensive Khoekhoen-San in-teraction. Such meanings and others remain to be ex-plored, and this is where the broader challenge now lies.With the origins and authorship of the geometric rockart tradition established, we and others can move on toa careful study of meaning. Morris is correct that thismust involve an approach other than ethnic essentialismbecause the fluid nature of proto-Khoekhoen societymakes it likely that meanings will be unusually contex-tual, contested, and changing. Determining which of theethnographic, historic, and contemporary observationsand constructions of Khoekhoen-ness and San-ness toinvoke will require the articulation of theory with abroad range of material culture traits. Wilmsen remindsus that others have arrived at the conclusion of an earlyKhoekhoen presence by “other pathways.” A central pil-lar of our paper is that rock art evidence needs to becombined with these other pathways (archaeological,ethnographic, toponymic, and so on) in order to under-stand something of the complex and fluid (but not end-lessly so) human identities that have been present insouthern Africa during the past 2,000 years.

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