Cultures of peace and the art of war in Saharan rock art

Abstract

Based on the quality and abundance of its rock art, the Central Sahara constitutes a veritable open-air repository of extraordinary testimonies of the lives of Neolithic herders. How can we understand and interpret this rock art? Why the images? Why do the bovidian representations of daily life in the Saharan Neolithic with surprising realism give way to schematic images and cryptic imprints that express the existential uncertainties of “Round Head” societies confronted with a changing world?In distinguishing the myth, substance of the collective unconscious, from the mythological stories that it generates, the present author brings forth in successive stages the underlying logic of these astonishing compositions. Drawing on the combined methods of prehistoric archaeology, art history, and sociocultural anthropology, I illustrate the principles for an anthropology of rock art. Finally, in placing these results in the context of the prehistoric Saharan ecology, I indicate the potential causes of tension and conflict among the groups of pastoral nomads.Before aridity and desertification favored the emergence of a protohistoric society of merchants and warriors, the Bovidian groups established the conditions that allowed for the rise and maintenance of a grand pastoral civilization. The stories that captured the essence of this society are lost forever, but the mythological system that generated them remains fleetingly visible.