‘People will no longer be people but will have markings and be animals’: investigating connections between diet, myth, ritual and rock art in southern African archaeology

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper was motivated by a mid-twentieth century collection of wooden carvings made by the G/wi Bushmen (San) living in the western Kalahari Desert of southern Africa, in which they represent themselves as part human, part zebra. A reading of relevant ethnographies confirms a close identification of mid-twentieth-century Kalahari G/wi with zebras and their potency. Significantly they are avoided as prey in hunting. It follows that they are not eaten. Previously rock art researchers have noted that certain antelope species dominate in the paintings of parts of southern Africa. It is well known that eland are the most frequently and carefully depicted antelope in the rock paintings of the Maloti-Drakensberg Mountains. Whilst two twentieth-century accounts suggest that blood and fat might have been an ingredient in paintings, there has been little discussion of whether this was the norm or whether eland were part of the everyday diet of those who emphasised them in their paintings. If the close identification with a particular animal was coupled with its avoidance in diet — as suggested by the G/wi — then it might be possible to pinpoint when this occurred in the faunal assemblage and thus meet Mitchell’s (2016: 9) recent call that southern Africanist archaeologists should try to, ‘pinpoint when, where and how ethnographically recognizable behaviours first appeared, thereby identifying discontinuities in their practice’. As a test case this paper explores whether San identification with the eland in the Maloti–Drakensberg region can be framed within a specific time period and context by drawing on various sources of evidence, including the faunal assemblages from it.