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Ethnographic Evidence Relating to 'Trance' and 'Shamans' among Northern and Southern Bushmen
Abstract
Some current debates about southern African Bushman (San) rock art have led to an interest in the activities of Bushman ritual practitioners. This paper presents nineteenth and twentieth century Bushman ethnography to show that these people entered an altered state of consciousness that most researchers call 'trance' to heal the sick, go on out-of-body journeys, make rain and transform themselves into animals. The combination of trance experience with these 'supernatural' activities suggests that, whatever social differences exist between these Bushman ritual practitioners and those in certain Asian and North American societies, it is appropriate to term them 'shamans'. The ethnographic material outlined in this paper forms part of the basis for the further argument, not developed here, that southern African rock art was at least in some measure associated with the work of Bushman shamans.
... With this connection established, the informed approach concluded that the art was a product of religious activity, rather than the associated mythology. First in general terms (see Lewis-Williams 1981), relating the art to a broad range of practices that included any religious component, and then in more specific ones, connected to the action of shamanistic ritual specialists (Lewis-Williams 1992). In this model, the imagery is described as referential to encounters during altered-states of consciousness, achieved through dance (e.g. ...
... see Lewis-Williams 1992). They also offer a point of comparison to Qing's testimony; while he may have been too young to have been initiated 9 into restricted elements of shamanistic practice, his familiarity with a shamanistic worldview quickly becomes apparent in light of descriptions of trance and the spirit-world in the Kalahari (Lewis-Williams 1992:58-59). ...
... This inference is misleading; the shamanistic approach has made explicit effort to emphasise the most stable analogues (cf. Lewis-Williams 1991), and to restrict their use according to their coherence with the |Xam material (Lewis-Williams 1992), as well as Qing's testimony (see above, also Lewis-Williams & Pearce 2012:702-704). As already mentioned; the great strength of the shamanistic approach is not that it manages to bring disparate sources to bear on a particular problem, but rather that it has an incredibly close relationship without the art. ...
Southern Africa’s Orange River has been a frontier-zone for centuries, acting as a socially formative and often volatile expression of its surrounds. Communities of the region have competed, compounded, and admixed for as long as competing influences have obliged it, contributing over hundreds of years to a background milieu of generally-coherent beliefs and practices; ‘frontier ideologies’ that dealt in the expression and mediation of identity, and the configuration of responses to tumultuous social and ecological conditions. The common core of these ideologies allowed frontier societies to respond to one another in familiar terms, even if other channels of meaning were inaccessible. One of the contributors to these ideologies were the |Xam, most well-known for their contributions to the shamanistic approach to interpretation of rock art in the Maloti-Drakensberg mountains of South Africa. While analogy has allowed them to speak on behalf of the artists of this disparate tradition, they are products of the area surrounding the Orange River during the nineteenth century. Accordingly, they demonstrate the fundamental features of a frontier society; they evaluate contact with other communities relative to themselves, and formulate appropriate expressions of identity to enact in response. The application of their ethnography is somewhat burdened by their application to the rock art of the Maloti-Drakensberg, however, which casts their motivations in specific, ritualised terms. This thesis considers a very different body of rock art to the one conventionally interpreted by the shamanistic approach, but located in a historical and regional context intimately linked to the |Xam informants; specifically, the rock art of the Strandberg hills, in the Northern Cape province, South Africa. This body of art is one dominated by horses, distributed as a structure that spans much of the site, and manufactured with visibility in mind. This thesis finds that these images were products of the frontier ideologies that inhabited the region, and the adaptive practices that emerge from them. Accordingly, the art is characterised as a record of inhabitation, an expression of identity, and the mediation of contact with a changing landscape, in keeping with the behaviours that had marked interactions between communities in the region for long before many of the images were placed on the Strandberg.
... The word 'eland' (?n for the Ju|'hoansi, and s? for the |Xam) meant and still means far more to the San than 'much meat': it is the symbolically richest animal in San thought. It plays a central role in Ju|'hoan boys' first-kill rituals, the girls' puberty eland bull dance, and marriage observances ( Lewis-Williams 1981). Lorna Marshall lists the symbolic associations of the eland as she inferred them from the Ju|'hoansi in the 1950s: meat, fat, health, strength, rain, fertility, plenty, unaggressive behaviour, and general well-being-all life-giving things (Marshall 1999, 82, 195 and 268). ...
... But in the Jackal and Lion tale, the foregrounded association of the eland is its reputation for having more supernatural potency than any other creature; its potency resides principally in its fat ( Lewis-Williams 1981, 2015a). This potency is the n|om (Ju|'hoan) or ?gi: (|Xam; also ?ke:n) that San trance dancers activate in order to enter trance. ...
... In San belief, mythology, and ritual, nasal haemorrhage is closely associated with trance performance (Orpen 1874, 10;D. Bleek 1935, 12, 19 and 34;Marshall 1969, 374;Lewis-Williams 1981). In some instances |Xam shamans smeared their nasal blood on the sick in the expectation that its smell and potency would fend off sickness. ...
This article explores the relationship between southern African Khoekhoe and San folktales through discussion of a specific nineteenth-century tale. Indigenous meanings embodied in the selected narratives rather than in Khoisan trickster tales in general are sought by explication of highly significant words and phrases.
... At first, the marked temporal, environmental, and linguistic differences between the Kalahari people and those from whom the nineteenth-century southern ethnographies were compiled dissuaded researchers from drawing on the recent sources to explain southern San rock art imagery (e.g., Lewis-Williams 1975). Nevertheless, point by point comparisons of rituals and beliefs recorded the northern ethnographies and those of the nineteenth-century southern /Xam San preserved in the Bleek and Lloyd Archive suggest that San religion has much in common across all divides (e.g., Lewis-Williams and Biesele 1978;Lewis-Williams 1981, 1992a. Despite environmental and economic differences, the Kalahari San have retained a degree of integrity of their own through all their vicissitudes (Lewis-Williams 1981, 1992aLewis-Williams and Biesele 1978;Guenther 1989Guenther , 1999. ...
... Nevertheless, point by point comparisons of rituals and beliefs recorded the northern ethnographies and those of the nineteenth-century southern /Xam San preserved in the Bleek and Lloyd Archive suggest that San religion has much in common across all divides (e.g., Lewis-Williams and Biesele 1978;Lewis-Williams 1981, 1992a. Despite environmental and economic differences, the Kalahari San have retained a degree of integrity of their own through all their vicissitudes (Lewis-Williams 1981, 1992aLewis-Williams and Biesele 1978;Guenther 1989Guenther , 1999. ...
... (Guenther 1999, 181) He adds: "In the fashion of shamans all over the world, the [San] trance dancer, by means of altered states, enters the spirit world and obtains from it the wherewithal to restore the health of sick fellow humans" (Guenther 1999, 186; see also Guenther 1989). (On the San's particular form of shamanism and its expression in their rock art see, for example, Lewis-Williams 1981, 1992aPearce 2004a, 2004b.) The trance dance, to which Guenther and Barnard refer, has been described many times (e.g., Lee 1967;Marshall 1969Marshall , 1999Katz 1982). ...
Most religions involve communication between physical beings in this world and spiritual beings in a supernatural realm. This communication occurs across metaphorical bridges that connect the contrasting realms. Focusing on the hunter-gatherer San of southern Africa and the mixed agriculturalist and hunter Cherokees and Creeks of southeastern North America, this article shows that San painted in rock shelters and Cherokees and Creeks engraved open-air rock surfaces. In doing so, both communities juxtaposed and integrated entities from the material and spiritual realms. Ritual practitioners moved between realms and manifested this movement on the rock surfaces that bridged the realms. The cumulative effect of continually adding images was not, for the indigenous people, chaotic but rather the creation of a powerful, inter-realm construct. Ritual practitioners' ability to cross the bridges between realms gave them an opportunity to further their own social standing and influence, as is indicated in the historical records of both societies.
... The Bleek and Lloyd Collection of the 1870s covers a wide range of southern San lifehistories, foraging strategies, myths and rituals (Lewis-Williams & Biesele 1978;Lewis-Williams 1981, 2000Deacon 1986Deacon , 1988Deacon , 1996Guenther 1989;Deacon & Dowson 1996;Bank 2006;Skotnes 2007;Hewitt 2008;Lewis-Williams & Challis 2011). It comprises verbatim, phonetic /Xam language transcriptions that the philologist Wilhelm Bleek and his sister-in-law Lucy Lloyd wrote down and transliterated into English. ...
... The Bleek and Lloyd Collection of the 1870s covers a wide range of southern San lifehistories, foraging strategies, myths and rituals (Lewis-Williams & Biesele 1978;Lewis-Williams 1981, 2000Deacon 1986Deacon , 1988Deacon , 1996Guenther 1989;Deacon & Dowson 1996;Bank 2006;Skotnes 2007;Hewitt 2008;Lewis-Williams & Challis 2011). It comprises verbatim, phonetic /Xam language transcriptions that the philologist Wilhelm Bleek and his sister-in-law Lucy Lloyd wrote down and transliterated into English. ...
... Among those twentieth-century ethnographers were Lorna Marshall (1999), Richard Katz (1982), Alan Barnard (1992), Megan Biesele (1993), Richard Lee (1968Lee ( , 1993 and Mathias Guenther (1999), all of whom described the San healing, or trance, dance. Traditionally, this dance is held in the camp and everyone attends (e.g. ...
Cave paintings and first-hand ethnographic accounts from living peoples have led to the notion that southern African spiritual experts routinely mediated with the other world through energetic dances leading to the trance state. The evidence for this idea has been challenged in recent years, and the importance of the trance dance diminished accordingly. The authors confront these criticisms and place the shamanistic dance back on centre stage—with important consequences not only for the study of San peoples, but for wider prehistoric interpretations.
... Ritual liminality can be induced by several identifiable human behaviors, including what we term 'the 4D's' , which are: (1) dancing (Lewis-Williams, 1992); (2) intense rhythmic drums (Savage et al., 2020); (3) sleep deprivation (Dahl, 2013); and (4) drugs, especially psychedelics (Hood, 2014). This suite of behaviors is powerful enough to alter our state of consciousness and in so doing take a group far away from its conventional realms of normality (or the profane), and into the surreal and sacred. ...
... Dance as flow merges the dancer with the act resulting in loss of identity and a fusion with the wider world, an experience that can be identified in the popular expression 'I lost myself in the music'. These sentiments are doubtlessly found cross-culturally, from the dancing of Egyptian Sufis (St John, 2004) to the medicinal trance-dance of the !Kung (Lewis-Williams, 1992). Indeed, dance is ubiquitous across human societies, perhaps partly because the synchronous element of dance produces endorphins, which are central to human bonding merge (Tarr et al., 2014;Fink et al., 2021). ...
Psychoactive drugs have been central to many human group rituals throughout modern human evolution. Despite such experiences often being inherently social, bonding and associated prosocial behaviors have rarely been empirically tested as an outcome. Here we investigate a novel measure of the mechanisms that generate altered states of consciousness during group rituals, the 4Ds: dance, drums, sleep deprivation, and drugs. We conducted a retrospective online survey examining experiences at a highly ritualized cultural phenomenon where drug use is relatively uninhibited- raves and illegal free parties. Engaging in the 4Ds at raves or free parties was associated with personal transformation for those who experienced the event as awe-inspiring, especially for people with open personalities (n = 481). Without awe, or a ritual context, indulging in the 4Ds was associated with a lack of personal growth, or anomie. A complex SEM revealed that personal transformation following awe-inspiring raves was associated with bonding to other ravers and prosocial behavior toward this group at a cost to self in a simple economic game. Bonding to humanity was not associated with these events. The findings suggest that employing the 4Ds in a ritualized environment - particularly dancing and drug use – can help build meaningful social bonds with associated positive behavioral outcomes.
... We therefore point out that 'shamanism' on its own, as a defined category of belief and ritual, does not explain the images. It simply places the rock art in a conceptual sphere supported by historical and ethnographic evidence (Lewis-Williams 1992, 1998Lewis-Williams and Challis 2011: 51-72;Lewis-Williams and Pearce 2012). To explain the images, we need to draw on specific San beliefs and rituals and link them to specific, repeated features of the images. ...
... Some of these details, such as nasal bleeding (Lewis-Williams 1981: 78), hoofs (Lewis-Williams 1981: 89), 'tusks' (Blundell and Ferreira 2018) and antelope-eared caps (Lewis-Williams 1981: 77), are all nuggets that suggest that the kaross-clad figures are not ordinary human beings but either spirits of the dead or shamans (living or dead) who, in San belief, transform into animals (e.g. Bleek 1935: 15;Lewis-Williams 1992;Keeney 1999: 61;Marshall 1999: 238). The enveloping karosses mimic and sometimes grade into the hump of an eland thus expressing an affinity, perhaps even identity, between eland and shamans (Lewis-Williams 1983: 56, Figures 20, 22, 59, 76 and 82). ...
Recent work on a well-known San rock art panel from South Africa shows that continued movement between, on the one hand, San beliefs and rituals and, on the other, the images themselves allows us to move from general statements about San rock art to specific understandings. We demonstrate that continuing field research, combined with the revisiting of painted panels, is uncovering diverse ways in which San rock painters deployed and, at the same time, individually transmuted abstract ideas and experiences into material images, often in easily missed details. One of these instances, hitherto unknown, is described. By following-up the heuristic potential of this approach researchers are able to explore the ways in which San imagery played a social role at different times and in different places in San history.
... During the 1980s, South African rock art researchers found an interest in San ethnography and the documentation of amongst others of Katz (1982) and Marshall (1969) were to impact on interpretations of rock art. The pioneering efforts of Vinnicombe (1976) and Lewis-Williams (1982, 1992 who turned to San ethnography to interpret the rock art of the south-eastern mountains have been widely acclaimed. ...
... Pertinent to the research methods employed by Frobenius in establishing historical cultural continuity and links to shamanism are comparative studies undertaken amongst prominent researchers of today. David Lewis-Williams engaged in a novel approach to the study of South African rock art in the 1980s and 1990s by focusing on the ethnographic records of the Bleek-Lloyd archives.He maintained that rock art represented the religious aspects of the San worldview and advocated the shaman hypothesis linking it to images of therianthropes (human images with animal heads) and trance(Lewis-Williams 1981, 1983, 1992 Lewis-Williams & Dowson 1999, Lewis-Williams & Pearce 2004. This has been a conventional theme in rock art research for several decades. ...
... Skotnes 2007) 2 . The twentieth-century 'Kalahari ethnographies', particularly as they relate to religious practices and cosmological beliefs (Biesele 1993;Katz 1982;Katz et al. 1997;Lee 1979), have provided important contextualizing information pointing towards similarities between Bushman groups widely separated in time and space from nineteenth-century huntergatherers (Lewis-Williams 1992;Lewis-Williams & Biesele 1978). The third ethnographic source is the testimony of Qing, a Bushman of the southern Maloti-Drakensberg Mountains (South Africa and Lesotho), whose account of beliefs, practices and 'mythological' narratives represents the cornerstone of the ethnographic decipherment of Bushman rock art (Challis 2005;Jolly 1995;Lewis-Williams 1972;1980;Lewis-Williams & Challis 2011;Lewis Williams & Dowson 1989;Lewis Williams & Pearce 2004a;Mc-Granaghan et al. 2013;Vinnicombe 1976). ...
... Cited by numerous authors (e.g. Jolly 2002;Lewis-Williams 1992;Lewis-Williams & Challis 2011;Lewis-Williams & Pearce 2004a,b;Vinnicombe 1976, 332) who have discussed the abilities of these specialists, her 'possession' allowed her to direct the springbok herds and to 'make travel for her the springbok, that mamma might eat springbok' (LL.V.10.4723'). She did this by using a 'short-horned springbok' (|kwi-sa) as a Judas goat: when she let it out amongst the springbok herd, it led the animals to a spot where they could be killed (LL.V. 10.4724-4725, 4740). ...
The ethnographic decipherment of the Bushman (San) rock art of southern Africa instigated a revolution in our understanding of hunter-gatherer rock arts worldwide, even in regions widely separated from the original context of the model. Crucial to this decipherment were the narratives of the Bushman Qing, an inhabitant of the nineteenth-century Maloti-Drakensberg. This article returns to Qing's testimony to investigate why it is that a putative ‘hunter-gatherer’ of the Maloti-Drakensberg should have chosen to express the relationship between ritual specialists (‘shamans’) and non-human entities (game animals and the rain) through taming idioms. It discusses the wider context of ‘taming’ and ‘wildness’ in Southern Bushman thought, responding to calls to consider these communities and their visual arts in light of the perspectives of the ‘new animisms’. It explores how these idioms help us to understand particular visual tropes in the rock art of the Maloti-Drakensberg and highlights the integrated nature of ‘ritual’ and hunting specialists in Southern Bushman life.
... Skotnes 2007) 2 . The twentieth-century 'Kalahari ethnographies', particularly as they relate to religious practices and cosmological beliefs (Biesele 1993;Katz 1982;Katz et al. 1997;Lee 1979), have provided important contextualizing information pointing towards similarities between Bushman groups widely separated in time and space from nineteenth-century huntergatherers (Lewis-Williams 1992;Lewis-Williams & Biesele 1978). The third ethnographic source is the testimony of Qing, a Bushman of the southern Maloti-Drakensberg Mountains (South Africa and Lesotho), whose account of beliefs, practices and 'mythological' narratives represents the cornerstone of the ethnographic decipherment of Bushman rock art (Challis 2005;Jolly 1995;Lewis-Williams 1972;1980;Lewis-Williams & Challis 2011;Lewis Williams & Dowson 1989;Lewis Williams & Pearce 2004a;Mc-Granaghan et al. 2013;Vinnicombe 1976). ...
... Cited by numerous authors (e.g. Jolly 2002;Lewis-Williams 1992;Lewis-Williams & Challis 2011;Lewis-Williams & Pearce 2004a,b;Vinnicombe 1976, 332) who have discussed the abilities of these specialists, her 'possession' allowed her to direct the springbok herds and to 'make travel for her the springbok, that mamma might eat springbok' (LL.V.10.4723'). She did this by using a 'short-horned springbok' (|kwi-sa) as a Judas goat: when she let it out amongst the springbok herd, it led the animals to a spot where they could be killed (LL.V. 10.4724-4725, 4740). ...
... 作的学习和学徒过程。对桑人绘画为数不多的认识之一，来自于20世 纪30年代莱索托的巴普提人 (Baputhi) 马波特 (Mapote)。19世纪末， 他在避难所里和桑人一起学习绘画。他描述了"真正的"桑人是如何在洞 穴的一侧作画的，而他和他的半桑人兄弟 (他父亲的桑人妻子的儿子) 在另一侧作画 (How, 1962: 33)。从马波特的叙述中可以看出，他的绘 画制作过程。族群中的其他成员，不一定是画家 (同一个实践社群)， 但也参与了颜料的制备工作 (How, 1962: 34)，这表明次等的实践社群 会影响到图像最终绘制的结果。许多关于颜料的配方中可能有关于所 使用颜料的记录，但不幸的是，这些几乎都是第二或第三手资料，而 且没有讨论颜料的制作过程 (参见Rudner, 1982，了解颜料和颜料制作 相关的文献综述)。 在缺乏关于个人如何获得绘画技能具体信息的情况下，我调查了在有 民族志记载的桑人社会中关于学习的其他方面，特别是关于Ju|'hoan 4 人 的叙述 (见图1)。这些族群不制作岩画，并且有关措迪洛山 (the Tsodilo Hills) 上的图像对其而言所具有的有意义的信息很少，而这是他们附近 地区唯一的岩画 (Campbell et al., 1994: 155)。尽管如此，研究仍令人 信服地指出，卡拉哈里人的信仰与更南边的桑人族群的信仰有显著的 重叠 (Lewis-William和Biesele, 1978;Lewis-Williams, 1992)。 有迹象表明，并非特定社群的所有桑人都是图像制作者。斯托 (Stow) (1905: 200, 230) 指出，图像制作是由特定的人完成的。画作的主题 指向了宗教仪式、实践和精神世界的各个方面，这是仪式专家或萨满 5 的领域 (Lewis-Williams, 1995: 145)。绘画的确切原因尚不清楚， 但一个可能的原因是为了传达精神世界的愿景。因此，在图像中使用 隐喻可以帮助新手萨满为进入出神状态作好准备，并将有时令人恐惧 的经历减少到可控的范围内 (Lewis-Williams和Loubser, 1986: 280;Lewis-Williams, 1988: 142)。画家们很可能本身就是萨满 (Lewis-Williams, 2019: 96-98)。甚至有可能，除了"雨之萨满"和"游戏之萨 满"外，另一个重叠的类别"颜料之萨满"也被认可(Lewis-Williams, 2019：97)。因此，我专注于仪式专家如何获得进入出神状态和治疗的 能力。 从民族志角度观察，桑人社会的核心仪式是出神或治疗性舞蹈 (Lee, 1968;Marshall, 1969)。随着舞蹈的加强，仪式专家们的精神能量被 激活，他们进入一种出神状态，从而与精神世界有了联系 (Katz, 1982: 34-36)。通过这种舞蹈，许多有抱负的治疗师 (即"萨满") 学会了 如何进入出神状态 (Katz, 1976, 1982；也见于Lee, 1968；Marshall, 1969。与桑人生活的其他方面一样，儿童并没有与成人世界分开 (Draper, 1976)。整个村庄，包括小孩子都会这种舞蹈 (Katz, 1976: 286;Marshall, 1999: 50)。因此，出神是正常社交的一部分。而大多数 Ju|'hoan人，即使他们从未学习过如何进入出神状态，也能描述出出神 的感觉 (Katz, 1976: 289-290)。儿童从观察和参与中学习这种舞蹈， 而不是通过正式的指导 (Marshall, 1999: 50;Lee, 1968: 46)，但只有在 成年后，真正的训练和进入出神状态的尝试通常才会开始 (Lee, 1968: 47)。 尽管诱导出神状态很困难，很可怕，有时甚至很痛苦 (Lee, 1968: 49;Katz, 1976: 290)，但几乎所有的年轻Ju|'haoan男子都渴望成为萨满 (Lee, 1968: 46;Katz, 1976: 289)。成为"萨满"并不是少数人的专利，在 Ju|'haoan社会中，大约一半的男性和三分之一的女性 6 都在学习如何进 入出神状态 (Katz, 1976: 285；也见于Lee, 1968: 51)。 那些想要学习如何达到出神状态的人，会向有经验的萨满寻求帮助 (Katz, 1982: 118-140)。在跳舞过程中，新手会抱着长辈的腰部，通 常会在3到5个晚上的舞蹈中提供帮助。之后在大多数情况下，新手能 够在没有帮助的情况下进入出神状态 (Silberbauer, 1965: 99)。同样， 当获得造雨技能时，这是一项属于"萨满"的活动，新手要经历一个学 徒期，他们要协助造雨者 (Hewitt, 2008: 214)。学习是经验性的而不 是教学性的 (Lee, 1968: 51;Katz, 1976: 294)。随着时间的推移，"新手 萨满"通过实践，从"观察性的"转变为"实践文化" (见于Lave和Wenger, 1991：94-95关于这些术语的讨论)。一个人观看舞蹈并以新手的身 份参与其中，一旦他开始学习，就会通过参与舞蹈来进入出神状态， 并成为该实践社群的一部分。仪式专家可以与他人自由地分享他们的 出神经验。虽然长者帮助学生们进入出神状态，但精神世界的幻象和 体验都是学生自己的，并且一些怪异的见解也被接受 (Biesele, 1978: 937-938)。在讲故事和宗教启示的叙述中都可以看到个人主义的影子 (Biesele, 1978: 937;Guenther, 1979: 106;: 252)。 当新的"萨满"能够进入出神状态时，他们也"获得"了后来被固定在岩壁 上的图像 (Lewis-Williams, 1994: 279-281;1995: 149 (Guenther, 1999: 196)。独特的图像 (Dowson 1988 (Stow, 1905: 228 ...
区域差异性和风格界限的确定一直是岩画研究者长期以来感兴趣的话题。然而，对支撑区域性和区域差
异性概念的社会进程的理解一直很难。本文通过对学习、领地行为和交流网络有关的桑人民族志材料的
研究来解决这个问题，以确定岩画区产生的可能过程。3个空间上不同的岩画区——格罗特温特霍克山
脉 (Groot Winterhoek Mountains) (南非东开普省) (Eastern Cape, South Africa) 、马罗提—德拉肯斯堡
(Maloti-Drakensberg) (南非和莱索托) (Lesotho and South Africa) 和赛德伯格 (Cederberg) (南非西开普省)
(Western Cape, South Africa) ——作为一个案例进行了研究。根据民族志材料，对社会进程如何解释相距
甚远的岩画群之间在图案选择和图像制作方面的异同提出了建议。如格罗特温特霍克和赛德伯格的岩画具
有很强的相似性，而这两个地区的岩画与马罗提—德拉肯斯堡的岩画又存在着相应的差异性。根据民族志
材料，实践社群的概念显示了可能存在的远距离信息交流机制，这有助于解释某些地区的相似性和其他地
区的差异性。
... Many of these actions are mediated with supernatural potency or n/om (a Ju/'hoan term) -an ethereal, invisible substance, seen only by ritual specialists, and present only in certain things, most prominently the eland (southern Africa's largest antelope). The /Xam had a word to denote a seemingly identical concept, !gi, with both the Ju/'hoan's n/om kxao -quite literally 'owners of potency' -and the /Xam's !gi:ten -literally those people that were 'full of potency' -translated by Lewis-Williams (1992) as 'shamans'. ...
San hunter-gatherers of southern Africa have long been perceived as an exclusively egalitarian society. Through a comparative analysis of ‘rain-animal’ scenes in the San rock art of the Maloti-Drakensberg Mountains, incorporating approaches rooted in ethnography, landscape, and power, I elucidate individual agency within the painted record. From this, the egalitarian trope is subverted to situate rain-animal paintings as agents for individual social elevation. Throughout, an emphasis is placed on the temporality of this process, foregrounding an appreciation of change through time, and thus an understanding of San interactions with their Bantu-speaking neighbours through to the colonial period. From this comparative analysis, I outline a refigured framework for the understanding of rain-animal scenes, proposing a new interpretation for one of the most widely debated rock art panels in southern Africa.
... These are the individuals that Lewis- Williams (1992), among others, argues can be called shamans. In |Xam thought a similar concept arises: !gi. ...
The rock art created by southern African hunter-gatherers has often faced difficulties surrounding its integration into the broader corpus of ‘dirt’ archaeology. Bringing excavated and artistic data into meaningful conversation with each other, in lieu of a rock art chronology, has not been easy. Within San rock art itself, paintings of fish and fishing have long been discussed as if dichotomous. They are viewed either as facsimiles of everyday life from which technological knowledge can be gleaned, or as underwater metaphors for other, more central images; little, if any, attention has been given to the fish themselves. This thesis addresses these two lacunae via a process of mutual illumination, whereby each is used to inform the other. Through a review of previous literature, a template is proposed for a more practicable integrated archaeology moving forward. This is then recursively applied to two bodies of evidence: the ichthyofaunal assemblages of the Lesotho highlands, and the paintings of fish in the surrounding areas. From this fundamentally integrated approach, drawing on ethnographic, ethological, and animistic frameworks, a new regional model is put forward that situates the painted imagery at centre stage within seasonal performances of rainmaking. This has implications for forager seasonal mobility models across the subcontinent more generally.
... Analogously, ethnography records how traditional shamans often use 'sleep' and 'dreaming' as descriptions of trance experiences (Eliade 1989(Eliade [1964, Lewis-Williams 1992:59, Sales 1992:26, Whitley 1992. Evidently, religious knowledge among the Celts was "achieved through trances, frenzies or stimulated inspiration of some kind" (Powell 1958:183). ...
p>'Shamanism' is an anthropologically constructed concept to explain a socio-religious phenomenon in many non-Western societies that enables community healing via interactions with spirits. In this thesis I explore archaeological and anthropological perspectives on, and more importantly, attitudes towards, 'Neo-shamanism'. I use such theoretical and methodological approaches as alternative archaeology and experiential anthropology, which coalesce, into what I call an 'Autoarchaeology': to understand the past it is imperative we explicitly consider, and take into account, our own sociopolitical locations and motivations. An archaeology of shamanism therefore begins not with shamanism in the past, but with neo-shamanism in the present.
In presenting an ethnography of neo-shamanism, I first discuss how our perceptions of shamanism are heavily influenced by neo-shamanism. I scrutinise main figures in neo-shamanism and specific examples of neo-shamanic practice, on the basis of their universalising, psychologising and romanticising of shamanism. I then critically compare a neo-shamanic case example of Celtic neo-shamanism with Heathen neo-shamanism, two traditions that reconstruct and revive ancient north European pagan religions. I assess these practices in terms of their authenticity and value to archaeologists and historians. Neo-shamanic interactions with archaeological sites, particularly Stonehenge and Avebury are also discussed. The preservation ethic of the heritage industry is contrasted with the neo-shamanic view that perceives ancient monuments to be spiritually alive. Finally, I examine neo-shamanic appropriations of indigenous shamanisms, particularly with regard to Native America. Chaco Canyon in New Mexico is used as a case example of a disputed archaeological site.
Critics perceive neo-shamanism in stereotypical ways; it is seen as a monolithic entity and dismissed. In contrast, I point to great diversity in neo-shamanism and argue that exploring this variety reveals both positive and negative aspects. A more contextualised approach that is socially and politically sensitive, is essential. In conclusion, I suggest strategies looking towards reciprocal benefit, such as forums for meeting and negotiating where communication and education are otherwise lacking. Despite the extremely sensitive and intrinsically political nature of the issues, they must not be left untouched. On the contrary, if the socio-political issues arising from this discussion are not addressed by the interest groups concerned, a contemporary neo-shamanic agenda for the archaeological past and ethnographic present will compromise all voices into increasingly difficult positions.
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... the significance to them of the Tsodilo Hills images, the only rock art in their immediate area (Campbell et al. 1994: 155). Nonetheless, studies have argued persuasively that there are significant overlaps between the beliefs held in the Kalahari and those of San groups further south (Lewis-Williams and Biesele 1978;Lewis-Williams 1992). ...
The identification of regional differences and stylistic boundaries has long been a topic of interest for rock art researchers. However, understandings of the social processes that underpin concepts of regionality and regional difference have been elusive. This paper approaches the problem by examining aspects of the San ethnographic material related to learning, territorial behaviour, and exchange networks to identify the possible processes through which rock art zones arise. Three spatially distinct rock art zones — the Groot Winterhoek Mountains (Eastern Cape, South Africa), the Maloti-Drakensberg (Lesotho and South Africa), and the Cederberg (Western Cape, South Africa) — are examined as a case study. Drawing on the ethnographic data, suggestions are given on how social processes may account for similarities and differences in motif selection and image production between widely separated bodies of rock art. Strong similarities in the rock art of the Groot Winterhoek and the Cederberg and corresponding differences between these two zones and the rock art of the Maloti-Drakensberg were identified. The concept of communities of practice, informed by the ethnographic data, indicates possible information exchange mechanisms across vast distances that help explain both the similarities between certain areas and differences between others.
... Hall et al. 2013), one of which was the transfer of socially important concepts (Hall 1994;Jolly 1996). For instance, it is thought that certain divination rites and rituals among the modern-day South African Xhosa people may have originated as borrowings from Bushman cosmology (Lewis-Williams 1992;Pinto 2013). In South Africa, the frequent depiction of certain animals, such as eland and rhinoceros in hunter-gatherer rock art illustrates the cultural importance of these animals (e.g. ...
The identification to species of completely worked bone tools is impossible using standard skeletal morphological markers. Worked bone studies therefore have focused on questions about manufacture and use, rather than on issues of raw material selection strategies. Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS) is a technique that uses unique collagen biomarkers to fingerprint and identify species of origin from small amounts of bone or ivory. We present the first ZooMS analysis of bone arrowheads from southern Africa. Our findings show that a narrower selection of species was selected for tool manufacture than for food, while, at some sites, certain antelope species were selected for tools that are not present in the unmodified faunal remains. We examine what this selectivity might suggest about mechanical suitability and symbolic associations of the species chosen to make tools. We conclude that mechanical suitability was probably of primary concern and that probable symbolic connotations that were attached to certain species did not translate to the technological sphere to the same extent that they did in other parts of the world.
... Despite the apparent adequacy (to use de Bono's phrase) of Bleek's ethnographically informed interpretations of these rock art images, they do not hold when scrutinised in light of what we now know about the fit between San rock art and the ethnography of northern and southern San groups (e.g. Lewis-Williams and Biesele 1978;Barnard 1992;Lewis-Williams 1992). It is indeed possible to assess the relative strengths and weaknesses of competing interpretations on empirical grounds: 'arguments should be judged on the basis of explanatory power, generality, simplicity, and replicability' (Wylie 2000;Gerring 2012;Smith 2015: 18). ...
Social status and experience both play a role in the history of rock
art research. The weight of such influence has led to the
questionable identification of certain images. Following her belief
that much San (Bushman) rock art illustrated myths, Dorothea
Bleek suggested that two copies made by Helen Tongue depict
/Xam San narratives concerning the ‘New Maiden and the Rain’.
Bleek argued that they show people transformed, or transforming,
into frogs. More recent research shows that Tongue’s copies refer
not to mythical narratives of humans transforming into frogs, but
to the central religious ritual of San life.
... Healing and trance dances performed by Ju/'hoan healers were also linked to images in rock paintings throughout the subcontinent, which appear to portray scenes of group dancing. 5 Although the Ju/'hoansi were not the only hunter-gatherers extant in the twentieth century, because of intense media attention promoting the group as the "last remnants of the Stone age," anthropologists throughout the world viewed the Ju/'hoansi as an opportunity through which to test their numerous theories on the evolution of culture and social organization in "simple" societies. As John Marshall discusses throughout his film series, the close media attention to their indigenous huntergatherer lifestyle undoubtedly fed stereotypes such as the San being "one with nature" and, therefore, incapable of adapting to changing economic and social circumstances. ...
... Janette Deacon (1996: 32-5;see also 1986;) convincingly argues that 'he had probably undergone some training as a shaman' who specialized in rainmaking. 'Shaman' is used here and elsewhere in the present article in place of Bleek and Lloyd's 'sorcerer' without implying identity with classic central Asian shamanism ( Lewis-Williams 1992;see also Guenther 1999: 7). The following is a lightly edited version of Lloyd's translation, with punctuation and paragraphing added. ...
Indigenous significances of nineteenth-century |Xam San folktales are hard to determine from narrative structure alone. When verbatim, original-language records are available, meaning can be elicited by probing beneath the narrative and exploring the connotations of highly significant words and phrases that imply meanings and associations that narrators take for granted but that nonetheless contextualize the tales. Analyses of this kind show that three selected |Xam tales deal with a form of spiritual conflict that has social implications. Like numerous |Xam myths, these tales concern conflict between people and living or dead malevolent shamans. Using their supernatural potency, benign shamans transcend the levels of the San cosmos in order to deal with social conflict and to protect material resources. As a result, benign shamans enjoy a measure of respect that sets them apart from ordinary people.
... Many cultures would have discovered the practice of intense concentration upon images and other somatic phenomena available to their mind's eye, and this perhaps widespread practice could well have influenced the evolution of certain cognitive functions (see Mithen, 2003;Rossano, 2007). Doubtless also, meditation of various types would have played a central role in ancient shamanic mysticism and healing (Lewis-Williams, 1992MacDonald , Cove, Laughlin, & McManus, 1987;Pearson, 2002, p. 95;Peters, 1989;Winkelman, 2010, pp. 72-73). ...
Based on the author’s nearly 50 years of meditation, it is observed that as a given alternative state is accessed and used over the span of years, experiences and capacities within that state are not merely static but may themselves shift as a practitioner develops neuropsychologically. An ethnographer using a substance within the context of a cultural practice may gain helpful direct insights into that cultural practice, but the researcher may fail to realize that the state attained by a novice may be substantively different from that gained by an elder or shaman with years of experience in the practice. The author’s meditation led to insight that visual and other phenomenal experiences are constructed out of sensory particles, or sensory dots. This practice later led to a state in which pure awareness was aware only of itself, and to an experiential realization of the Buddhist teaching of no-self.
... South African rock art turned out to be inspiring for yet another reason. Namely, research on the ritual sphere of the Bushmen has shown that an important part of South African rock art was intimately bound up with curing dance, the most signifi cant religious ritual of the San (Lewis-Williams 1980, 1981a, 1983a, 1983b, 1987b, 1992Lewis-Williams and Dowson 1989;Lewis-Williams and Challis 2011). This ritual involved whole local community, but the key role played a medicine man or a shaman, who achieving a state of trance got into the possession of supernatural potency n/um, required to cure a sick person. ...
The paper describes the story of discovering South African rock art as an inspiration for research in completely different part of the globe, namely in Central Asia and Siberia. It refers to those aspect of African research which proved to importantly develop the understanding of rock art in Asia. Several aspects are addressed. First, it points to importance of rethinking of relationship between art, myth and ethnography, which in South Africa additionally resulted in reconsidering the ontology of rock images and the very idea of reading of rock art. From the latter viewpoint particularly inspiring appeared the idea of three-dimensionality of rock art ‘text’. The second issue of South African ‘origin,’ which notably inspired research all over the world, concerns a new theorizing of shamanism. The paper then discusses how and to what extent this new theory add to the research on the rock art in Siberia and Central Asia.
... Secondly, we must not allow disputes over words to become confused with disputes over facts. Whether 'shamanism' is an appropriate word in the southern African context or not does not in any way affect what the San actually did -and still do-in their rituals (Lewis-Williams 1992; see also Price 2001 on the disputed word). ...
... n/om kx " au ). Numerous modern researchers translate these words as " shamans " (Lewis -Williams 1992 ;Guenther 1999 ;Hewitt 2008 ). Some writers, however, prefer the word " healers. ...
Although researchers sometimes speak of a shamanistic approach to rock art, there is no such thing. This chapter points out that " shamanism " is merely one possible outcome of interpretative research: many rock arts are not shamanistic in their origin. To clarify the matter, shamanism is defined and possible indicators of it in rock art contexts are discussed. Altered states of consciousness, a controversial feature of shamanism, are considered from phenomenological and neurological points of view. The social role of rock art in shamanistic communities is also considered. Case studies from west European Upper Paleolithic cave art, Southern African San (Bushman) rock art, and North American rock art illustrate the theoretical and methodological points made.
... This complex situation at first led me to believe that researchers should not draw on the northern ethnography when they are trying to understand nineteenth-century southern beliefs and the largely undated rock art (as proposed in 1972 at a Valcamonica conference; published, see Lewis-Williams 1975: 414). Later, having noted parallels as well as differences between northern and southern San girl's puberty rituals, hunting observances, marriage and what Bleek and Lloyd called 'sorcery', and having set aside the suggestion that the paintings are merely 'icons' illustrating now largely lost myths, I revised my earlier view (Lewis-Williams 1977; see also Lewis-Williams & Biesele 1978;Lewis-Williams 1992). I now conclude that the recent Kalahari material can be used to explicate and supplement the comparatively limited, though none the less considerable, nineteenth-century southern San records, not indiscriminately but rather in those conceptua areas where fundamental parallels can be demonstrated. ...
This article deals with methodological and theoretical issues that underlie researchers' use of the temporal and geographic mosaic of San ethnographic texts. A review of the history of these issues shows that there has long been an awareness of both differences and parallels between the various ethnographic sources. There are more complementarities in some areas of San life and belief than in others. The article shows that deep familiarity with the texts and their backgrounds is necessary to diminish the possibility of misinterpretations.
How old is war? Is it a deep-seated propensity in the human species or is it a recent cultural invention? This article investigates the archaeological evidence for prehistoric war across world regions by probing two competing hypotheses. The “deep roots” thesis asserts that war is an evolved adaptation that humans inherited from their common ancestor with chimpanzees, from which they split around seven million years ago, and that persisted throughout prehistory, encompassing both nomadic and sedentary hunter-gatherer societies. In contrast, the “shallow roots” viewpoint posits that peaceful intergroup relations are ancestral in humans, suggesting that war emerged only recently with the development of sedentary, hierarchical, and densely populated societies, prompted by the agricultural revolution ~ 12,000–10,000 years ago. To ascertain which position is best supported by the available empirical evidence, this article reviews the prehistoric archaeological record for both interpersonal and intergroup conflict across world regions, following an approximate chronological sequence from the emergence of humans in Africa to their dispersal out of Africa in the Near East, Europe, Australia, Northeast Asia, and the Americas. This worldwide analysis of the archaeological record lends partial support to both positions, but neither the “deep roots” nor the “shallow roots” argument is fully vindicated. Intergroup relations among prehistoric hunter-gatherers were marked neither by relentless war nor by unceasingly peaceful interactions. What emerges from the archaeological record is that, while lethal violence has deep roots in the Homo lineage, prehistoric group interactions—ranging from peaceful cooperation to conflict—exhibited considerable plasticity and variability, both over time and across world regions, which constitutes the true evolutionary puzzle.
Rock art studies are a field of research that includes many different (and diverse) national traditions. While most of these traditions have their own research histories and trajectories, during most of the twentieth century, rock art literature was marked by a certain prominence of European Palaeolithic art. The privileged position of the European record was the result of a combination of factors, including the traditional focus on European archaeology, the abundance of and research support for decorated caves in Southern France and Northern Spain, and, especially, a number of ethnocentric prejudices against Indigenous peoples. However, in a context marked by globalization, a number of developments in the past decades have called into question the divide that favours European cave art at the expense of other rock art corpuses. For instance, new dating techniques have showed that the traditional belief that the temporal ‘origins’ of rock art was in Europe cannot be sustained. Similarly, innovative theoretical approaches mainly based on Indigenous rock art have generated many new avenues of research for the meaning, the making, and the context of rock images. With reference to the history of research, we argue that we need to overcome the divide that privileges the European record in rock art research. However, the favoured position of the European caves is deeply rooted in many conscious and unconscious biases. For this reason, we explore in this paper a number of strategies that can help us to counteract Eurocentrism, including the abandonment of traditional narratives, the focus on the materiality, making, location, and contents of rock images, and the development of new styles of theorizing.
The Linton panel has been the subject of great awe for many decades. It has been
displayed in various exhibits worldwide and the subject of multiple research
publications. However, its history and origin are not nearly as well understood as
once believed, as a large part of its past has been omitted or forgotten. In this
dissertation the images of not only the Linton panel are discussed, but those that
remain in the shelter from whence it came are brought out of obscurity. How the
panel came to be where it is today and the images’ relationship with the shelter
and the remaining paintings are examined. Lastly, a forgotten piece of the shelter,
a second panel, will be examined in greater detail than ever before: how it fell into
relative obscurity and what its images tell us about the Linton shelter and its
artists’ beliefs and purposes.
San forager populations in nineteenth-century southern Africa were forced to adapt to greatly destructive aspects of the colonial project. Forging new societies from heterogeneous sources, they engaged in prolonged armed insurgency, recording their exploits, presence and beliefs in the rock-art archive of the Maloti-Drakensberg. These images reference conflict and trauma, conventionally interpreted as visions of spiritual warfare. However, viewed through the lens of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), deeper dimensions emerge. PTSD is the culturally subjective experience of generalizable neuropathologies which develop following a traumatic event. Diagnosable in diverse communities worldwide, it nonetheless requires insider idioms to understand its local expressions. We explore how PTSD manifested in this historic and cultural context; how its symptomatic social dysfunctions would have been understood in forager aetiology, and how its intrusive flashbacks would have intruded on altered-state experiences induced to heal the consequences of violence. We find that the artists were not passive victims of trauma, but rather used art symbolically to reconsolidate individual and collective understandings of traumatic events.
From the form and composition of painted images of humans, elephants and ‘elephanthropes’ (elephant human therianthropes) from the northern Cederberg, we propose that elephants were considered as ‘other-than-human-persons’ by painters. This is supported by the role of elephants in San stories, the ethnography of relational ontologies among hunter-gatherer communities in southern Africa and beyond, and the selective choices of painters in constructing images. We argue that paintings and stories of deliberately associated elephant and human subjects from a range of San expressive contexts are evidence for this ontological position, derived from ecological entanglement in ‘real life’. Painters considered their and elephants’ lives to intersect at conceptual as well as ecological levels. From the contexts in expressive culture, elephants were viewed as intelligent and socially coherent beings, occasionally difficult neighbours, and sensitive affinal relatives, needing respect and careful treatment. Paintings of elephants reference these relationships.
The collective monograph dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the birth of the famous Russian archaeologist V.D. Kubarev evaluates his scientific heritage; publishes memoirs of him from the Russian and foreign archaeologists; considers scientific problems related to searching for, dating and interpreting the archaeological monuments and finds. The authors’ research interests focus on the problems of archaeology of Altai and neighboring regions from the Bronze Age to the Middle Ages. Special attention is given to the rock art.
In the Maloti-Drakensberg mountains of southern Africa, beliefs about snakes and their representations in rock art images are emblematic of hybrid histories of regional societies. The snake symbol initially represented an attempt at 'reaching out' as forager societies incorporated a prominent figure in the mythologies of incoming societies into their own-a figure which became a symbolic reference to cross-cultural symbiosis and admixture. Reflecting the long history of such contact, the ritual uses and ontological positions of snakes in contemporary knowledge systems of the Maloti-Drakensberg are coherent with those of earlier societies. This offers fertile ground for novel forms of interpretation. Using contextual historic and modern ethnographic material, this paper presents a relational account of regional idioms. It dwells on the language of taming and domestica-tion that permeate these ethnographies, and the concern they show for the mitigation of 'wild', sometimes 'mon-strous', consequences of spiritual power in the social world. Symbolic resolutions of these consequences are discernible in rock art images, particularly those of snakes, demonstrating the ritual brokerage of relations between human and non-human communities, with both forms of agency depicted in various states of 'domestication', bridging forager and farmer understandings of human-animal relations.
With earlier origins and a rebirth in the late 1990s, the New Animisms and the precipitate ‘ontological turn’ have now been in full swing since the mid-2000s. They make a valuable contribution to the interpretation of the rock arts of numerous societies, particularly in their finding that in animist societies, there is little distinction between nature and culture, religious belief and practicality, the sacred and the profane. In the process, a problem of perspective arises: the perspectives of such societies, and the analogical sources that illuminate them, diverge in more foundational terms from Western perspectives than is often accounted for. This is why archaeologists of religion need to be anthropologists of the wider world, to recognise where animistic and shamanistic ontologies are represented, and perhaps where there is reason to look closely at how religious systems are used to imply Cartesian separations of nature and culture, religious and mundane, human/person and animal/non-person, and where these dichotomies may obscure other forms of being-in-the-world. Inspired by Bird-David, Descola, Hallowell, Ingold, Vieiros de Castro, and Willerslev, and acting through the lens of navigation in a populated, enculturated, and multinatural world, this contribution locates southern African shamanic expressions of rock art within broader contexts of shamanisms that are animist.
The contexts of hunter-gatherer rock arts of the southern Maloti-Drakensberg are characterized by enduring patterns of cultural acquisition and social transformation, resulting in communities with highly contextual identities and cultural possessions, but with nonlinear relationships between the two. Attempts to mitigate discontinuities between ethnographic source and interpretive subject, however, have left interpretive methodologies to represent authorship in more singular terms, to the exclusion of potential contextual sources who express identities not outwardly San, despite ancestral trajectories overlapping those of the artists. Recognition of the inheritances of the communities of the present Maloti-Drakensberg, and their transformative histories, necessitates their inclusion not only as sources, but as contributors to ethnoarchaeological process.
Xam !gi:ten (shamans) accomplished much of their supernatural work by 'dreaming', in which thought played a pivotal role. According to the |Xam worldview, thought was generated by the throat arteries or 'thinking strings'. Moreover, thoughts generated by thinking strings were conceptually similar to the blood that !gi:ten used to cure illness; both were a means of 'working magic'. Thus, the healing power of blood was part of a conceptual system that imbued thinking strings with the capacity to facilitate various kinds of supernatural work. Thinking strings lived on as spirits after death. This conceptual system has interpretative implications for the long and often sinuous painted red lines that occur in the rock art of the Maloti-Drakensberg and in the Cederberg of southern Africa. These thin red lines probably represent the thinking strings of !gi:ten.
Cambridge Core - Archaeology of Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and The Pacific - Image-Makers - by David Lewis-Williams
Southern African San (Bushman) rock art is one of the most well-researched rock arts globally. Some aspects of it, however, remain under-researched and under-theorised. While the study of San rock art is informed by ethnographic sources, they are frustratingly mute about the practice itself. This dissertation addresses that gap by investigating the processes that resulted in a pattern of simultaneous differences and similarities at painted sites on the MEL ridge. It acknowledges that rock painting and other forms of San expressive culture—which, in contrast to rock painting, were ethnographically observed and historically documented—are of a kind. It draws on performance studies literature, San rock art research, San ethnography, and the painted places along the MEL ridge to show that the production and consumption of San rock paintings were performative. By understanding the practice of San rock painting in terms of performance we can understand better the practice itself.
We present previously unpublished comments made early in 1875 by Dia!kwain, a |xam man, on George William Stow's copies of San rock paintings and engravings. The comments are contained in two overlooked documents that are part of the Bleek and Lloyd Collection housed at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. These two documents provide comments on rock paintings from South Africa's Eastern Cape Province, and on rock engravings from the well-known site of Driekopseiland in the Northern Cape Province. We describe how Wilhelm Bleek and Lucy Lloyd, who elicited testimony from |xam San interlocutors in the 1870s and 1880s, became interested in soliciting comments on rock art. We provide a chronology of these explanatory remarks and discuss the acquisition by Lucy Lloyd of Stow's copies. The contents of the two overlooked manuscripts-one catalogued as E1.1.8, the other a loose sheet of paper that we call the 'Driekopseiland manuscript' included within notebook L.V.3-are given in full together with the Stow copies on which the comments were based. We recognize that the comments themselves are data that require explanation and that Stow's copies are not facsimiles of the rock art. We therefore provide annotations for each of the 14 Stow copies about which the comments were made and comment on the relevance of Dia!kwain's remarks to rock art research.
Conkey and Spector (1984) discussed androcentric biases and how certain assumptions about human behaviour underlie archaeological research.1 They stressed that these assumptions must be examined and evaluated in the light of recent feminist research. Conkey and Williams continued in the 1990s to challenge the privileging of the commonly accepted techno-environmental model used in archaeology because of the tacit association of this type of data with male categories. Knowledge about archaeological reconstructions or interpretations involving gender in the past is, of course, closely related to the socio-political history of archaeology, with strong male bias firmly entrenched. Feminist enquiry has revealed problems about how archeologists have ‘gendered’ the past by applying stereotypical notions about men and women to specific kinds of artefacts and activities. This notion of a gender-specific ideology has roots, not in the generic prehistory of men and women, but in western European social institutions which may have emerged during the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century: mainly the nuclear family and a gender-based division of labour.2
This article considers the theme of shamanism in those novels of Zakes Mda that trace it to the people named respectively ‘abaThwa’, ‘Khoikhoi’, ‘Barwa’, ‘San’ and ‘IXam’, as opposed to amaXhosa and Basotho who comprise this fiction’s dominant orders. The proposition is that shamanism is a discourse in which it is believed that, having entered into a trance, the performer articulates alterities and effects healing in his/her people. Notable in this examination is the fiction’s representations of the trance in terms of audience formation and how they, in turn – and well after the executor’s descent into a trance – actualise it as mediations of plights.
The article proposes that understanding shamanism through Mda’s fiction calls for a foregrounding of the complex histories of cultural exchange between these indigenous people and the Bantu, and also offers an opportunity to define Africa without first having to peel off the European colonial moment. The suggestion is that, taking the subject of shamanism as the focal point, more than one scholarship on this theme needs to be deployed in order to outline the significant inflections of the emergent culture, its technologies of cognition and microphysics of power. The first section, which theorises shamanism, emphasises that Mda moulds the essence of the trance in a compass that chimes in with scientific cosmological and neuro-psychological discourses. The final part of the discussion applies this delineation to a reading of select texts of Mda.
Hunter-gatherers frequently incorporate detailed observations of organisms and biological processes in their art. These natural models' are used to represent and explain psychological, social and spiritual phenomena through myth, art and mime.(1,2) Here I examine how San painters in the southeastern mountains of South Africa used their knowledge about the bristling of hair on animals, known as pilo-erection, as a natural model for beliefs about the nature of !gi, a /Xam San word that may be translated as 'magic power',(3) or 'supernatural potency' or 'energy'.(4) !Gi is a central concept in San thought. I use /Xam ethnography extensively as a basis for interpreting the paintings; previous writers have argued cogently that ethnography collected from different San groups provides a firm foundation on which to base any attempts to understand southern African San engravings and paintings.(5,6).
From earlier interpretations of animal imagery in San rock art as desirable menu items or art objects,1-3 researchers of southern African hunter-gatherer rock art have progressed to the understanding that painters and engravers portrayed particular species in specific postures in order to communicate cosmological and religious insights.4,5 Here we comment on an uncommon image that advances our understanding of the ways in which painters in a specific time and place combined observations and beliefs about antelope and large herbivores (terrestrial grazing animals heavier than 1000 kg) to produce sophisticated statements about the hunter-gatherer cosmos.
Is the meaning of prehistoric art beyond recovery - especially the meaning of early art in deep caves, a remote and strange location which itself suggests some out-of-the-ordinary purpose? David Lewis-Williams has been extending his explorations of meaning in later southern African rock-art to the famous enigma of the European Palaeolithic, here in the particulars of a single distinctive motif.
Whether or not a ‘trance-dance’ akin to that of today's Kalahari San (Bushmen) was performed by southern /Xam San in the nineteenth century has long been the subject of intense debate. Here the authors point to parallels between nineteenth-century records of San life and beliefs and twentieth-century San ethnography from the Kalahari Desert in order to argue that this cultural practice was shared by these two geographically and chronologically distant groups. More significantly, it is suggested that these ethnographic parallels allow a clearer understanding of the religious and ritual practices depicted in the southern San rock art images.
The ethnographic data of the Bleek-Lloyd archive pertaining to the ǀXam Bushmen (San) of the Karoo have been marshalled to great effect in developing understandings of Bushman rock art throughout southern Africa, with implications for archaeological interpretations of hunter-gatherer rock arts worldwide. Rock art from their homelands, however, has received comparatively little attention, and obvious historical content—which would tie the art to the socio-cultural milieu of the Bleek-Lloyd informants—has occasioned relatively little comment. This paper returns to one site (the Strandberg) known to have been a prominent feature in the cultural landscape of the ǀXam to explore the historical imagery present there, examining the ways in which this art demonstrates the ongoing vitality of certain aspects of ǀXam life in the face of the dramatic socio-cultural changes experienced by these groups from the nineteenth to early twentieth centuries. The paper investigates the range of potential authors for the art, and looks at the context of its production within the expansion of global markets, violent interactions and shifting subsistence options that characterized the late nineteenth-century Northern Cape.
The ability of hunting and gathering populations to adopt herding forms of subsistence constitutes the crux of a long-standing debate in southern African archaeological and anthropological scholarship concerning the spread of livestock to the subcontinent. This article takes as a detailed case study the subsistence strategies of the nineteenth-century |Xam Bushmen of the Northern Cape (South Africa), extracted from a transcription of the entirety of the Bleek-Lloyd Archive. It focuses on |Xam characterization of and relationships with the various domesticated species that shared their Karoo landscape, and asks whether these relationships differ markedly from their conceptions of non-domesticated animals. Turning to the wider context of hunter-gatherer engagements with domesticates, the article concludes by proposing that, for the |Xam, domesticated fauna were part of a spectrum of differentiated resources, and did not entail an interaction with a wholly alien suite of new demands.
Joseph Millerd Orpen’s article recounting the ethnographic data he collected from a Bushman informant (Qing) whilst searching for Langalibalele in the southern Maloti-Drakensberg is a key document for southern African archaeology, one of the cornerstones in the decipherment of the rock art of the region. This article publishes a slightly edited version of Orpen’s article with paragraph breaks and headings to facilitate the reading of this crucial document, as well as selections from Bleek’s
Second report concerning Bushman researches
and Lloyd’s
A short account of further Bushman material collected
that help situate Orpen’s work within the intellectual community of the nineteenth-century Cape Colony. The article also locates this work within the substantial corpus of Qing- and Orpen-related scholarly material, outlining the major uses made of the work thus far.KEY WORDS: Archaeology, history, Melikane, oral history, Orpen, Qing, rock art, Sehonghong
The significance of the remarkable rock art of the extinct southern San (Bushmen) has remained enigmatic for a hundred years. This article considers the unique and detailed explanations which were given by two nineteenth-century San informants in response to four sets of paintings. These independent explanations are not confused and contradictory, as has been supposed; rather, they are expressed in unfamiliar metaphors. Once these key metaphors are understood it becomes clear that both informants were saying that much of the art is related to trance performance, the central religious ritual of the San; some of the paintings probably depict the hallucinations of trance performers.
Two examples are given from the folklore of /Xam San informants, interviewed by Bleek and Lloyd in Cape Town in the 1870s, to suggest that the legendary and ritual significance of particular places in the landscape was enhanced by rock engravings. The nature of the power and of the ritual significance of a place may be discerned from the ethnography and from themes represented in the engravings.
The ability to experience mental imagery is innate in human beings. "Mental imagery cultivation" is proposed to identify technological traditions devoted to the deliberate, repeated induction of enhanced mental imagery, usually in select individuals. Mental imagery enhancement training increases the vividness and the controlledness of mental imagery for its functional and adaptive value. Mental imagery cultivation is usually embedded within magico-religious traditions and is independent of societal complexity. The cultivation of visions in shamanism is explored as an example. Experimental evidence from the psychological literature is presented that demonstrates the functional equivalence of mental imagery and perception at specific nonvolitional levels of the psychophysiological apparatus, thus suggesting that the shaman experiences "visions" as "real" and reacts on a deep psychophysiological level to their contents. Individual differences in mental imagery ability may be a major determinant of the social role of the shaman. Experimental evidence for the functional importance of mental imagery in human memory is presented to suggest that the shaman's legendary superior mnemonic skills may be due to the development of his use of mental imagery.
This paper suggests a new theoretical framework for understanding southern San rock art. The traditional explanations have been either innatist or functionalist. To escape the tautology of the former and the restrictions of the latter it is suggested that the articulation between the art and the social relations of production be sought. This articulation was expressed in the activities of medicine men, whose symbolic work acted upon the reproduction of the natural order by making rain and controlling animals and then upon the social relations necessary for efficient production and distribution by reducing tensions within the camp. By reports of supposed out-of-body travel the medicine men also reflected the networks of links between camps which facilitated the reproduction of the social formation over extended periods that might include times of extreme strain on local resources. At least some of the medicine men were also artists and painted symbols of trance performance as well as representations of the...
This article addresses some of the recent controversy over the role of psychoactive substances in the !Kung Bushmen healing ceremonies and trance induction. Although some contemporary works on the !Kung and their healing ceremonies give no evidence of the use of psychoactive plants, an examination of the available biochemical and pharmacological literature on the properties of these plants indicates that most contain psychoactive or toxic substances that are likely to have trance-inducing properties. Almost half of the !Kung medicine plants contain psychoactive substances or have toxic pproperties, and a similarly large group of these plants has psychoactive or toxic properties in related species. Although recent reports have shown little concern with the use of psychoactive substances, the earlier literature illustrated a major concern with their use in !Kung Bushmen trance and healing. This contrast with more recent research suggests a decline in the use of psychoactive plants in the recent past. This decline is examined with respect to changes in the !Kung Bushmen society and how altitudes in the United States regarding drug use may have influenced investigators and their research reports.
Shamanism and schizophrenia are examined as altered states of consciousness. A state-specific approach to the phenomenology of these altered states is employed to demonstrate that the existence in the anthropological literature of the “schizophrenia metaphor” of shamanism and its altered states is untenable. A current psychiatric diagnostic manual is utilized to show that significant phenomenological differences exist between the shamanic and schizophrenic states of consciousness. [shamanism, schizophrenia, altered states of consciousness, spirit possession, ethnopsychiatry, psychological anthropology].
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The ! Kung Bushmen whose medicine dance is described in this paper live in the interior of the Nyae Nyae region in South West Africa. The observations were made in the years 1951–61, in the course of five expeditions. The bands with which expedition members had the closest and most prolonged contact were those that the author numbered 1-7, 9, 10, and 12 on the map (Fig. 1). The present study is concerned principally with the people in those bands, who numbered, in all, 225 persons. The information gathered from informants was obtained for the most part in 1952–3, when twelve consecutive months were spent in the Nyae Nyae region.
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The Nharo (also known as Naron or //Aikwe) are a Khoe- (or ‘Hottentot-’) speaking people who live in the western Ghanzi district of Botswana, in the central-western Kalahari. They number about 5000 and live in small bands of eight to 40 people each. Traditionally they were hunter-gatherers, and among their closest linguistic relatives are the G/wikhwe and G//anakhwe Bushmen (or San) of Botswana's Central Kalahari Game Reserve, who speak dialects mutually intelligible with Nharo. The Nharo are not linguistically related to the !Kung, who live to the immediate north, but a great many aspects of their medico-religious belief system resemble those of the !Kung, and the ‘superiority’ of !Kung medicine is recognised by the Nharo and indeed by other Bushman peoples as well. The Nharo come second, with a greater spiritual and medical knowledge that the G/wikhwe and G//anakhwe, or the !Kõ, who live to the south (cf. Heinz 1975: 28-9).
Accounts of San (Bushman) shamanistic rock art have concentrated on the role of the trance dance in the generation of the paintings. This paper considers the role of dreaming to achieve ends similar to those served by the dance. Animal behaviour was depicted to suggest trance‐dreaming, as it was to suggest other shamanistic experiences. Sleeping eland probably represent San shamans in trance‐dreaming.
A sample of paintings from the south-western Cape was analysed for evidence of trance symbolism. These symbols are found to exist, despite differences in appearance between the paintings in this sample and those from the Drakensberg. Such differences are deemed to be superficial. The implications of these interpretations are considered briefly with respect to two image types: 'group scenes' and 'conflicts'.
The issue of cross-cultural similarities and differences in trance practitioners engaged in healing is examined, based on a formal quantitative cross-cultural study and analysis. The findings suggest distinct types of healers: shamans, shaman/healers, healers, and mediums. The data illustrate not only some universals of healers, but more importantly it reveals systematic differences between the shamans of hunting and gathering societies, the shaman/healers of agricultural societies, and the possessed mediums of politically stratified societies. These different types of trance healers are characterized and compared in order to illustrate the importance of terminological clarity, as well as to examine the characteristics and functions of shamanistic healers with respect to the social and cultural context of their activities.
The painted caves: an introduction to the prehistoric rock art of Zimbabwe
- P S Garlake
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The Nharo Bushmen of Botswana: tradition and change
- M Guenther
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Shamanic voices: the shaman as seer, poet and healer. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books
- J Halifax
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Elements of !Ko Bushman religious beliefs
- H-J Heinz
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!Kung healing: the symbolism of sex roles and culture change The past and present of !Kung ethnography: critical reflections and symbolic perspectives
- R Katz
- M Biesele
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A glimpse into the mythology of the Maluti Bushmen
- J M Orpen
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Nisa: the life and words of a !Kung woman Hunter and habitat in the central Kalahari Desert Wilhelm Heinrich Immanuel Bleek: a bio-bibliographical sketch
- M Shostak
- Allen Lane
- G B Silberbauer
Shostak, M. 1981. Nisa: the life and words of a !Kung woman. London: Allen Lane. Silberbauer, G.B. 1981. Hunter and habitat in the central Kalahari Desert. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Spohr, D.H. 1961. Wilhelm Heinrich Immanuel Bleek: a bio-bibliographical sketch. Cape Town: University of Cape Town Libraries.
Mother! Sing loudly for me!': The annotated dialogue of a Basarwa healer in trance
- P Wiessner
- F T Larson
Wiessner, P. & Larson, F.T. 1979. 'Mother! Sing loudly for me!': The annotated dialogue of a Basarwa healer in trance. Botswana Notes and Records 11:25-31.