Rock art pigments — a crucial milestone in human culture
- Sarah Hudleston
Cross-disciplinary research unearths how society began depicting images on walls, revealing the cultural dynamics of hunter-gatherers.
In the 1970s, Nick Walker of the Natural History Museum in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, conducted research at the Pomongwe Cave in the Motobo National Park. He proposed that some elements in the layers beneath the rock art could be about 11 000 years old but his research needed more proof.
Now, a research programme underway in the Bambata and Pomongwe Caves in Zimbabwe’s Matobo Hills is challenging previously accepted knowledge about southern African rock art.
Dr Tammy Hodgskiss Reynard, an ochre researcher and Curator at the Wits Origins Centre is collaborating on the interdisciplinary Matobart Research Programme with principal investigator and archaeologist Dr Camille Bourdier from the University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès in France. Over the past eight years, Bourdier, who is also an Honorary Researcher at Wits’ Rock Art Research Institute, has collaborated with researchers and students from South African, Zimbabwean and French academies and scientific institutions.
The collaboration with Hodgskiss Reynard, who Bourdier considers to be a world authority on rock art paint and pigments, began two years ago and also includes Wits PhD student, Takunda Chigwende, whose doctoral research is looking at the rock art of Pomongwe.
Key to the Matobart project is cross-studying rock paintings and the archaeological layers at their base, which include specks of charcoal and rock splinters containing paint fragments. The aim is to look at their chronology and cultural attributes and to understand the prevailing climatic and environmental conditions of the time.
Although recent modern analysis of paintings on portable rocks found in the Apollo 11 cave in southwest Namibia in 1969 revealed that the paint is more than 27 000 years old, there is a huge gap in the dates, which hopefully, according to Hodgskiss Reynard, will now begin to be filled.
The artist’s muse?
The research focuses on analysing the dynamics in the production of rock art in deep time (estimated to be between five and 11 000 years ago). Until now, it’s been accepted that the oldest in situ rock paintings in southern Africa date back around 5 500 years.
“Beyond the generally accepted age of 5 500 years for the rock art, the question of chronology of graphic representation on objects and rock walls remains open,” says Bourdier.
Was the motivation behind the creation of the rock art a natural need relating to physiological, neural or cognitive biological transformations? Rather, can the artists’ behaviour be understood as a social response to other factors such as climatic or sociological changes?
Rock art change and continuity
The team is examining the issue of change and continuity in the rock painting tradition, in terms of techniques, motifs, forms and assemblages. This approach contrasts with the conventional consideration of hunter-gatherer societies as conservative, stable and possibly passive and addresses the issue of dynamics.
Hodgskiss Reynard says, “It could shift the perspective of how the creators of these paintings expressed cultural changes and to what extent these changes reveal adaptations to climatic conditions, environments, economic resources and even the demographic landscape.”
Chemical signatures
While much of the analysis of rock art has up to now focused on the spirituality and meaning behind the images, little attention has been given to examining how the paints were made or where the artists got the pigments.
“Now, particularly in the Matobart project and through Chigwende’s PhD research, the focus is on understanding the paint-making processes, paint recipes and the chemical signature of the paint,” says Hodgskiss Reynard.
These chemical signatures reflect the pigments and binders used to mix and create the paint.
“It won’t tell us anything about the ‘what’ but about the ‘how,’ providing insights into the technology used by the past hunter-gatherers, i.e., their knowledge and know-how about which ingredients to use, where to collect them and how to process them.”
Rock art-archaeology bridges
Hodgskiss Reynard notes that rock art is often treated separately from the archaeological assemblage but the Matobart project changes that.
“Archaeology is greatly enhanced by merging artefactual and experimental insights and rock art analysis with physicochemical understanding of the paint, which Chigwende’s exciting PhD project within the School of Archaeology, Geography and Environmental Studies explores,” says Hodgskiss Reynard.
Bourdier says that this combined approach aligns with the transformational power of hunter-gatherer societies, which enabled them to survive this way for thousands of years.
“Analysing changes and continuities in rock art paint technology is another way to address the issue of the cultural dynamics in ancient hunter-gatherer societies and their relationships to the environment,” she says.
- Sarah Hudleston is a freelance writer.
- This article first appeared in?Curiosity,?a research magazine produced by?Wits Communications?and the?Research Office.
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