The Prehistoric Rock Art of the Lake Victoria Region

Abstract

Summary A gazetteer of rock art sites in the Lake Victoria basin is followed by discussion on the relationship between the different kinds of art both within and outside the area, their interpretation and the evidence they provide of the identity and practices of the artists. The gazetteer includes a selection of previously published sites; the hitherto unpublished material derives mainly from the Bukoba and Mwanza areas and the Lolui Islands. That from Bukoba consists mainly of variations on a form which the author interprets as depicting cattle, while the majority of the paintings from the other two areas are non-representational, including numerous variations on the concentric circle, ‘dumb-bell’ and ‘grid-iron’ forms. The art is thought to be the product of more than one cultural group and to have been produced over several centuries up to about 200 years B.P. The editor considers that the non-representational art of the area has close similarities to that described from Zambia and Southern Africa and that the attribution in those areas of the naturalistic art to Late Stone Age ‘hunter-gatherers’ and the non-naturalistic art to mainly ritual sites used by or contemporary with Iron Age peoples is also very likely to hold for the Lake Victoria basin.