Africa has four main hunter-gatherer rock art zones. Each zone has its own particular manners of depiction and these are described and illustrated here. Within each zone one finds considerable regional variation, but, broad and common uses of colour, technique, subjects and symbolism suggest that each is a particular and distinctive artistic tradition.
The subjects and symbolic concerns of each tradition are very different, but they are united by a common concern with the spirit world and with spirit world forces.
In the dry deserts of the Sahara is some of Africa's oldest surviving rock art, made some 12,000 years ago. Engraved just after the last Ice Age it belongs to a much wetter and richer time for the Sahara region than exists today. In the rock art we see hippo, crocodile, giraffe, elephant, lion, ostrich as well as forms of prehistoric bovids that became extinct more than 5000 years ago.
Decades of research, by a range of specialists, has given us a rich understanding of the age, sequence and regional variation in Saharan rock art, but, though the art is now well recorded, the meaning of its complex symbolism remains elusive. Like all of Africa's hunter-gatherer arts, this is far from a simple record of daily life: we see mysterious creatures that are part-human part-animal; giraffe with lines emanating from their mouths that meander across the rock-face until they finally join to a floating human form and many other mysterious features. Unfortunately, we do not have the rich ethnographic testimony that has allowed us to penetrate the meaning of rock art symbolism in other parts of Africa; this is a very ancient art, separated by many millennia from the peoples of today. Cracking its code is amongst the greatest of research challenges in our time.
The central African hunter-gatherer rock art zone has been termed the 'Schematic Art Zone' by J. Desmond Clark. Nearly three thousand hunter-gatherer rock art sites have been found within this zone and some ninety percent of these comprise superimposed layers of massed, finger-painted, geometric designs. The other ten percent of sites comprise highly stylised and distorted animal forms plus rows of finger dots. Both seem to have a history extending back many thousands of years.
Whilst the geometric art always dominates, the two traditions go together as a pair: they co-occur across a huge area and are regularly found close by, but in only a handful of cases can they be found together in the same site. They seem to be kept near, but apart. Both are found in the same overall distribution, in an area that encircles the central African rainforests and includes: Angola, Zambia, Malawi, northern Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of Congo, southern and western Tanzania, western Kenya, Uganda, Congo and the Central African Republic. The dominance of geometric rock art makes this area immediately distinctive from the other hunter-gatherer rock art regions in Africa all of which, by contrast, contain a high percentage of brush painted animals, humans and human-animal conflations. Little research has been conducted on this art tradition and it is therefore still poorly understood by comparison with hunter-gatherer rock art in other parts of Africa.
Throughout most of central Africa, the pre-farmer hunter-gathering populations have gone and they exist today only in the archaeological deposits and in oral traditions. Modern central Africans remember these people as the Batwa (a word that is used widely in eastern, central and southern Africa to refer to any autochthonous hunter-gatherer people). They are described by many groups, and across a wide geographic area, as 'short-statured, dark-skinned and hairy'. In those areas close to southern Africa they are remembered as being immediately distinctive from the San (or Bushmen). The rock art supports this division: it is entirely different from San rock art. The dividing line between southern African San rock art and central African Batwa rock art follows the Zambezi River and the Anglo/Namibia border. The archaeological remains also show strong divergence along this same line. The later Stone Age lithic technologies vary to such an extent that they have been given different names: those in southern Africa are known as the Wilton/Smithfield whereas those of central Africa are known as Nachikufan. The cultural distinctions between central, southern Africa hunter-gatherers are thus profound.
The only surviving groups of central African Batwa are the so-called forest 'Pygmies'. Genetic studies appear to confirm the archaeological division between the ancestral heritage of these groups and that of the southern African San. Geneticists suggest great antiquity to the division between the San and the Pygmies, perhaps with a divergence in excess of 40,000 years. Pygmy groups are known to have occupied many sections of the central African 'Schematic Art Zone' even into historical times, and it is probable that the full former distribution of these groups can be recognised from the distribution of the art. Certainly, elements within recorded Pygmy traditions help us to understand central African rock art.
Pygmy traditions, such as those recorded by Colin Turnbull amongst the Mbuti, are dominated by two major ceremonies. The Mbuti call these molimo and elima. Molimo is organised by men and elima by women. Both ceremonies traditionally take place in a clearing in the forest and involve singing around campfires for night after night, sometimes for as long as a month. Molimo is often held after the death of an important member of the group or in the case of a violent argument, elima usually marks important women's occasions such as coming of age. Turnbull describes how the songs in both ceremonies seek to bring out the spirit of the forest. In molimo the spirit of the forest literally comes out and its unearthly song can often be heard encircling the campfire in the darkness (the song is in fact sung by boys through a special molimo pipe).
Turnbull argues that the purpose of calling out the spirit of the forest in these ceremonies is to restore harmony within the camp and the forest. He argues that the Mbuti see this state of harmony as essential to allowing the dead to be released back to the forest and to giving health and fertility to the girls. The stylised animal depictions mark the symbols and concerns of the ceremony of molimo (specifically the calling of the spirit of the forest) and the geometric designs represent the symbols and concerns of elima (specifically fertility and rain divination). The arts were made by different groups within the same society and, together, they form a conceptual whole. This research has been developed by Namono who argues that the rituals and the rock art are integral to averting gender conflict and creating harmony and balance.
In central Tanzania lies one of the most intriguing of Africa's hunter-gatherer rock art traditions. Whilst the other traditions cover huge geographic areas and are represented at many thousands of sites, this tradition occurs at just a few hundred sites in a small area of land less than 100km in diameter. This area is an island within the more widespread central African Twa rock art tradition. The art contrasts with the geometric Twa art as it is made up entirely of animal and human forms. Its closest parallels are with San art, but a number of its elements, such as its distinctive human head forms, are unique.
The area in which the art is found corresponds closely to the known distribution of the Sandawe people. The Sandawe speak a click language that has parallels amongst the San languages. The Sandawe are one of two East African groups who seem to have a hunter-gatherer ancestry extending back long before the time of the coming of African farmers to this area. The Sandawe have been living amongst farmer groups for nearly two thousand years and their beliefs and traditions show much evidence of borrowing, but, they also maintain a number of special rituals and beliefs that are not found amongst neighbouring groups.
There are a handful of accounts that, tantalisingly, describe Sandawe individuals making rock art early in the twentieth century. These accounts provide evidence that the practice of rock art was linked to particular Sandawe rituals, most notably to simbo. Simbo is a trance dance in which the Sandawe communicate with the spirits by taking on the power of an animal (the lion). Elements in the art provide independent confirmation of this link because they display a range of features that can only be understood by reference to simbo and to trance experiences. For example, groups of human figures are shown bending at the waist (just as happens during the simbo dance), taking on animal features such as animal ears and tails, and floating or flying. These last features show the experiences of those possessed in the dance. The bizarre head forms seen in the rock art are no doubt another key element in the symbolism of simbo, but like much of this art, for now they remain enigmatic.
San rock art is perhaps the best known of all of Africa's rock arts. It is also amongst the most well understood. For decades researchers believed that the art was simply a record of daily life or a primitive form of hunting magic. Those were the days of gaze and guess, when it seemed that the longer one gazed at the art, the better one's guess would be as to its meaning. Thankfully those days are gone. By linking specific San beliefs, written down in recorded interviews with San informants, to recurrent features in the art, researchers have been able to ‘crack the code’ of San rock art.
What has been revealed is one of the most complex and sophisticated of all the world's symbolic arts. Far from a general view of life, the art focuses on a particular part of San experience: the spirit world journeys and experiences of San ritual specialists, or shamans. Thus, we see many features from the all important trance dance, the venue in which the shamans gained access to the spirit world. The trance dance was performed for many hours. The men would dance, following each other in circular patterns, while the women would clap and sing the songs of the different animals. In this dance they would call upon the power, or potency, of important spirit animals. The dancers would feel their own energy, known as n|om, boiling in their stomachs before shooting out the back of their necks. At this, the dancers would enter the spirit world. In this world, the healers may seek out the rain animal, which they would cut to make rain. They may also do battle with the malevolent spirits-of-the-dead who cause sickness in the living. Ritual specialists may also intervene with the spirits of game animals, so as to make them behave nicely in order for hunters to catch them.
A number of common dance postures are frequently depicted in the paintings: bending forward at the waist (sometimes supported by dancing sticks), having the arms held out backwards, bleeding from the nose and the related hand-to-nose posture. In addition, certain items specifically associated with the dance are often painted, most commonly dance rattles and fly-whisks. These images all clearly relate the paintings to the trance dance, including dancers falling down in trance, whereupon they experience visions of the spirit world. Much of the imagery goes beyond the dance itself, and depicts the experiences and actions of shamans in the spirit world such as visions of the aforementioned rain animals and spirits-of-the-dead.
Many of the beings met with in the spirit world are depicted in rock art. We also see images of dancers with antelope hooves and heads showing that they have taken on antelope power, just as San shamans describe in the Kalahari today. Then, we see shamans climbing up the so-called 'threads of light' that connect to the sky-world. We see trance flight, as people are depicted with feathery appendages and their arms back like wings. To show their experiences, the artists also used visual metaphors such as showing shamans 'underwater' surrounded by fish and 'dead', pierced with multiple arrows. These capture aspects of how it feels to be in trance.
But, the art was not simply a record of spirit journeys. Powerful substances such as eland blood were put into the paints so as to make each image a reservoir of potency. As each generation of artists painted or engraved layer upon layer of art on the rock surfaces, they were creating potent spiritual places. This potency could be drawn on by later visitors to the site, both dancers and artists.
We are fortunate to have this detail about the paintings because it provides important insights into the lives of the people living in the past. Unfortunately, it is difficult to know how old most of the paintings are: dating of rock paintings is an abiding problem the world over. The problem is simply that there is very little, if any, organic material in the pigment that can be dated. The majority of pigments are mineral in origin: red, brown and yellow pigments are made from ochres of various forms; while white is derived from silica, china clay and gypsum. Organic binders such as blood and egg albumin were sometimes used in the paint and current research is exploring the dating of these substances. 足球竞彩app排名 at RARI have also undertaken research to date the black pigment in paintings, notably in the Maclear region of the Eastern Cape. Recent findings from this area suggest that some of the paintings are at least 3000 years old.
Rock engravings, or petroglyphs, are found in the interior plateau of Southern Africa. Unlike paintings, which are found in caves and rock shelters, engravings occur on rocky outcrops (usually of dolerite or diabase), sometimes in rocky riverbeds or simply on rocks in the flat veld. During the engraving process the dark, weathered outer skin (or patina) is removed to reveal the paler rock beneath. Three techniques were used to remove the rock patina: incision (lines cut with a sharp rock), pecking (hammering and chipping) and scraping. Over time the engraved surfaces weather and acquire the same dark tint as the original surface.
Despite the similarities, there are obvious differences between engravings and paintings. In the engravings, animals are more common than human figures, but fewer species are depicted than in the paintings. Although there are many large boulders or rock surfaces with hundreds of engravings on them, we often discover rocks with a single geometric shape or solitary animal.