Framed idiosyncrasy: method and evidence in the interpretation of San rock art

South African Archaeological Bulletin 67 (195): 75–87, 2012 75

Research Article

FRAMED IDIOSYNCRASY: METHOD AND EVIDENCE IN THEINTERPRETATION OF SAN ROCK ART

J. DAVID LEWIS-WILLIAMS & DAVID G. PEARCERock Art Research Institute, School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies, University of the Witwatersrand,

Johannesburg, 2050, South AfricaE-mail: [email protected] / [email protected]

(Received August 2011. Revised April 2012)

ABSTRACTAn unusual San rock painting provides the basis for an explorationof method and evidence in rock art research. Using Alison Wylie’sadvocacy of ‘tacking’ and the ‘disunity of science’, the article showsthat researchers can go beyond general statements about the art asa whole to identify personal interventions by San painters. Broadinterpretations of the art, as well as studies of individual panels ofimages, should explicitly and clearly articulate painted features withgeneral ethnographic reports as well as those few that deal directlywith rock art, and vice versa. In addition, certain ‘disunity’ argu-ments can support these interpretations by drawing on corpora ofevidence that have different theoretical underpinnings.

Keywords: San, rock art, method, theory, interpretation.

In the 1930s Dorothea Bleek, daughter of the Germanphilologist Wilhelm Bleek, hired two ‘trained artists’, theMisses Joyce and Mollie van der Riet, to copy paintings in partsof what are now the Western Cape and the Eastern CapeProvinces of South Africa, at that time a little known rock artregion (Fig. 1; Van der Riet et al. 1940: xix; Weintroub 2009). Oneof the sites in which the copyists worked contained a group ofimages that, unlike any others, Bleek considered worth spread-ing over two plates (Fig. 2A; Van der Riet et al. 1940: pls 18 and19). The principal interest of this panel (a group of images,though not necessarily bounded) is a cascade of 11 ‘fallingbuck’ that follow one another down the vertical rock face. Sincethen, the Van der Riet copy has been reproduced wholly or inpart by other writers (Thackeray 1987; Keeney 2003: 40; Tribe2000: 85; Townley Johnson [1979: fig. 64] reproduced a portionof the line of buck but laterally reversed). Next to the ‘fallingbuck’ a long vertical line connects to a human figure’s head.

Today these paintings can be seen not so much as anisolated enigma but rather as a crux that raises fundamentalmethodological and interpretative issues. These issues pertainnot only to San rock art in general, but also to a range of specificpainted panels (we do not consider rock engravings). Is theresome conceptual parallel beyond the visual formality betweenthe vertical line and the adjacent ‘falling buck’ and, if so, is thisparallel recoverable? Or did individual San rock painters treatbasic experiences and concepts in ways so different that under-lying unities escape today’s viewers?

METHODOften writers advance explanations for San rock art with-

out making the reasoning behind them explicit: assertion takesthe place of meticulous adducing of evidence point by point,and a vague conception of ‘the art’ takes the place of actualimages. In some instances, this shallowness is concealed byappeals to ‘theory’, but theory, essential as it is in rock artresearch (e.g. Lewis-Williams 1982, 1984, 1990, 2006a), is nosubstitute for evidence, even allowing for the undoubted

relationship between theory and evidence (Johnson 2011).Advocating theoretical approaches to rock art without demon-strating their usefulness in uncovering new insights is notuncommon. Christopher Tilley, writing of archaeology ingeneral, has made this point: “Merely borrowing theories fromelsewhere and ‘applying’ them to archaeological data does notresult in a critical perspective but rather the reverse” (Tilley1989: 111). James Whitley agrees and adds that such interpreta-tions “circumvent the tedious business of undertaking contex-tual analysis, or testing specific models against the availableevidence” (Whitley 2002: 120). Evidence must be adduced. Indebates in which explicit reasoning and the adducing ofevidence are marginalised, ill-supported criticisms often cometo be accepted at face value and not subjected to the samerigorous level of evaluation as original explanations. Theuncritically repeated assertion that southern San ethnographycontains no reference to the healing or trance dance is anexample (Lewis-Williams & Pearce, in press).

Part of an appropriate methodological strategy is to moveback and forth between the images and carefully evaluated Sanethnography – the process that Alison Wylie calls ‘tacking’(Wylie 1989, 2002). Deriving this notion from Clifford Geertz,Wylie writes of ‘tacking’ between researchers’ theoretical,abstract concepts and the concrete practices and ‘residues’ ofpast peoples. As Richard Bernstein, whose work Wylie devel-ops, points out, we have to resort to “concepts that are notnecessarily familiar to the people being studied but that …make intelligible the symbolic forms [of their culture]” (quotedby Wylie 1989: 163). San rock art researchers can do that, butthey work with more than just two sources of evidence. Forthem, the ‘concrete practices’ of which Wylie and Geertz writeare twofold: ethnography and images. In some rare contexts,San ethnography includes indigenous exegesis of images. As‘tacking’ proceeds, the ethnography sometimes clarifiespuzzling images; at other times, images give a better under-standing of what San informants meant. For example, diversedepictions of rain animals show what /Xam San informantsmeant by !khwa-ka xoro.

This process of ‘mutual illumination’ (Lewis-Williams 1981:131) implies that the images cannot be made passive recipientsof virtually any interpretation. One source does not overridethe other. Rather, the images are a source of evidence in theirown right. San rock paintings – precise and distinctive as theyare – are not infinitely malleable in the hands of interpreta-tions. Both the paintings and the ethnography (at any rateverbatim sources, though these should be contextualised[e.g. Lewis-Williams 1981: 25–37, 2002b: 1–41]) derive from thelinguistic groups now known as San. Both therefore need ameasure of interpretation if we are to understand them at leastto a certain extent in our own terms (including our notions ofcausality). In ‘tacking’ between ethnography and images andthereby clarifying the ‘fit’ between the two, researchers need,

wherever possible, to balance past and present indigenousconcepts against our own interpretative concepts. This can bedone by going back to key San words and their usage in a rangeof contexts. Interpretations that ignore San words and the oftencomplex concepts they denote and connote are suspect.

Then, following Wylie’s advocacy of the disunity of archae-ological arguments (Wylie 2002: 200–225), researchers can gobeyond the ethnography and the paintings to explore othersources of evidence that depend on different fundamentaltheory. Wylie derives this notion from the philosophersBernstein and, ultimately, Charles Sanders Peirce (Wylie 1989:162). In this way, researchers can intertwine different strands ofmutually supportive evidence and, in places, use one strand to‘cover’ a gap in another strand. Thus intertwined, sets ofsources can be mutually reinforcing. Wylie quotes Bernstein:“[T]he cumulative weight of [disparate, multidimensionalconsiderations of] evidence, data, reasons, and arguments canbe rationally decisive” (Wylie 2002: 163). Indeed, archaeologistsroutinely benefit from this kind of disunity in reaching ‘ratio-nally decisive’ conclusions. For instance, the theory that under-pins stratigraphy and excavation differs from that whichunderpins radiocarbon dating, and, when both point in thesame direction, this difference, as philosophers of scienceargue, strengthens the development of an argument. In sum,intertwined cable-like arguments are more appropriate in rockart research, and indeed archaeology in general, thanchain-like arguments that fall down if one link is shown to beweaker than the others (Wylie 1989).

GENERAL INTERPRETATIVE PARAMETERSOver the last four decades this multi-component research

strategy has shown that San rock art was not an open-endedrecord of anything and everything that occurred to the image-makers. A precise appreciation of the selectivity of the subjectmatter was one of the achievements of the quantitative workthat a number of researchers conducted in the late 1960s andearly 1970s (Vinnicombe 1967, 1976; Maggs 1967; Pager 1971;

Smits 1971; Lewis-Williams 1972, 1974). They found that the artwas not a simulacrum of multi-functional Western image-making, as many researchers imagined it to be. Rather, it was aspecific, ritualised practice in its own right with its own aims,concerns, conventions and social consequences. Briefly stated,the making and subsequent use of images were related todifferent kinds of contact between the natural world and thesupernatural realm that the San believed interacted with it (forsummaries see, for instance, Lewis-Williams 2002a, 2003, 2011;Lewis-Williams & Pearce 2004a; Lewis-Williams & Challis2011). This broad explanation does not claim that all Sanimages derived from specific visions of a supernatural realm.On the contrary, the explanation is far more complex than anysummary statement can convey (Lewis-Williams 2006b).

Certainly, it does not imply that the ‘meaning’ of the art wasmonolithic and forever static. The infinite variety of the imagesthemselves and the multiple ways in which the image-makersrelated them to one another point to the kind of subtle andoften personal inflections of experience and belief that arecharacteristic of San religion (on San religion, see for instance,Lee 1968; Katz 1982; Barnard 1992; Biesele 1993; Guenther 1999;Marshall 1999). Other significances in the art, such as image-makers’ attempts to establish their own identity vis-à-visothers, were played out within the encompassing interactionbetween realms, not, for example, in the possession anddisplay of wealth (Lewis-Williams 1998; Lewis-Williams &Pearce 2004a,b). In any event, we must always remember thatSan ethnography itself is fragmentary, no matter how volumi-nous it may be. It reflects the interests of the ethnographers aswell as those of the people studied.

The very general conclusion that San rock art concernsmultiple interactions between material and spiritual realms iscomparable with the statement that the ecclesiastical stainedglass windows of Europe are Christian. The complex ‘fit’between the images in the windows and their significances asrecorded in the Bible, church history and the popular imagina-tion constitute indisputable empirical evidence for their overall

76 South African Archaeological Bulletin 67 (195): 75–87, 2012

FIG. 1. Map of southern Africa showing places mentioned in the text.


Christian provenance. That bald interpretation of the windowsdoes not exhaust what can be said about them. On the contrary,it provides a foundation for explorations of the meaning, socialimpact, changes in subject matter, and other aspects of specificwindows. The same may be said of San rock art: empiricallydemonstrable links between San beliefs and details of theimages point to the essentially religious significance of the artand to personal variations of San religion in their fluid socialsettings.

Finding that a given panel is consonant with the overallinterpretation that the images concern interaction betweenrealms is today, therefore, not in itself surprising. The impor-tant point is that panel after panel, considered individually,takes us further than a general explanation and on to an under-standing of specific human-spiritual and human-human inter-actions. It is in our understanding of the uniqueness of specificpanels of images that specific human beings (or groups ofpeople) come into their own (e.g. Dowson 1988; Lewis-

FIG. 2. (A) The Van der Riets’ copy of one of the ‘falling buck’ panels; the two published plates have been joined (Van der Riet et al. 1940: pls 18 and 19). (B) A recentfalse-colour, digitally enhanced image processed using the CPED Toolset by Kevin Crause (www.fingerprintsintime.com).

Williams 1992; Hollmann 2001; Lewis-Williams & Pearce2004a,b, 2008, 2009; Lewis-Williams & Hollmann 2006; Lewis-Williams & Challis 2011). At the same time, the panels showhow the idiosyncrasy that is characteristic of San religiousbeliefs and experience was constrained, or framed, by the indi-vidual image-maker’s intellectual and social milieu. As theimages and the ethnography show, the ‘imagination’ of theSan image-makers did not range unconfined. Biesele writes:“[E]xperience itself is, from an early age, already culturallyinformed and mediated. Initiates have certain experiences intrance because they expect to do so, basing their expectationson other accounts they have heard.… Yet [these stereotypical]experiences.… [are] treat[ed] as unique messages from thebeyond, accessible in no other way save through trance”(Biesele 1993: 72).

As a result of individual contributions, San rock art panelswere cumulative and unstable. They were cumulative in thatpeople added images to them over extended periods: panelsbecame communal loci of inter-realm and inter-personal expe-rience (Lewis-Williams 1992). They were unstable in that, insome instances, newly added images had the potential tosubvert the original image-makers’ intentions: some paintedpanels may have been sites of conflict rather than comfort(Dowson 1988; Lewis-Williams & Pearce 2004b). Moreover, wemust allow that some subsequent painters may have misun-derstood the intentions of earlier painters.

If we follow these methods and insights in a considerationof the ‘falling buck’ panel, we can go further than general state-ments about ‘the art’ and explore significances that are deeperand more personal.

‘FALLING BUCK’The site of the ‘falling buck’ copied by Van der Riet is

located close to Oudtshoorn in the Western Cape Province ofSouth Africa. Members of the Rock Art Research Institutechecked the Van der Riet copy against the original images.Figure 2 presents the Van der Riet copy and a recent enhancedphotograph. Even allowing for some deterioration since thetime when the copy was made in the 1930s it is accurate enoughfor our present purposes.

The images, all executed in red paint, include a long verticalline on the left; it leads to a human figure. The line appears tocome from, or to enter into, the top of its head, and the figureholds it with both hands. Just to the right of this line and parallelwith it is the vertical series of 11 elegantly drawn running buckof a small but indeterminate species. The lower part of the lineof buck ends in an ill-preserved area of the panel, but just to theleft of it is what appears to be a seated person. Below it arefurther remains of images and two human figures, one with itshands seemingly held in front of it and another that appears toreach out towards its back. To the left of the line are a number offigures (some with bows) that are surrounded by short lines or‘flecks’. There are further figures to the right of the ‘fallingbuck’. It is impossible to tell if all these images were painted atthe same time and by the same person; differential fading doesnot necessarily point to a temporal sequence.

Lines of antelope, and also of human figures, are notuncommon in San rock art. The book in which Bleek publishedFigure 2A illustrates two instances of horizontal lines of buck(Van der Riet et al. 1940: pls 17B, 20) and, in a rock shelter some50 kilometres away from the panel shown in Figure 2, a secondvertical line of buck. This second example (Fig. 3; Van der Rietet al. 1940: pl. 15; Thackeray 1987: fig. 3, 1994: fig. 2) is stronglyreminiscent of the one shown in Figure 2, though the buckappear to move from right to left, then to fall vertically before

swinging, again horizontal, to the right. In this instance, somesort of interrupted ground-line is depicted. Francis Thackerayhas rightly dismissed the possibility that Figure 3 (and by impli-cation Figure 2 as well) depicts game being driven over a cliff:“[T]he animals at the bottom of the painting are depicted asthough they had survived the ‘descent’” (Thackeray 1987: 4).This panel also contains comparatively crude images of sixoverlapping human figures, two other human figures and aU-shape. Thackeray (1994: 232) interprets the human group “aspossibly representing a trance-dance”. A third site in the samearea shows two buck heading downwards (Van der Riet et al.1940: pl. 21A), but it is unclear if this pair of images depicts thesame concept as the two longer cascades of buck. All in all, itseems probable that a single concept is expressed in the ‘fallingbuck’ in Figures 2 and 3, though whether they were painted bythe same person cannot be determined. (For a panel in theHerschel district that has been interpreted as game driven overa cliff see Lee & Woodhouse [1970: figs 45, 85, 87] and Pager[1975: 42–43].)

Accepting a literal interpretation of buck falling off a cliff,Geoff Tribe (2000) sees the adjacent line as a rope letting a mandown the cliff to collect honey. He takes the dots around theman’s head to represent bees. The rock shelter is today indeedoccupied by swarms of bees.

DOROTHEA BLEEK’S COMMENTSDorothea Bleek approached San rock art from a perspec-

tive that she derived from George William Stow, a geologistwho copied San rock paintings in the 1870s (Young 1908;Rosenthal 1953; Dowson et al. 1994; Skotnes 2008; Weintroubn.d.). For him, and for Dorothea herself, the art was largely,though not entirely, a record of daily life (Stow 1905). She held


FIG. 3. The Van der Riets’ copy of one of the ‘falling buck’ panels (Van der Rietet al. 1940: pl. 15).


that most of the images were “of animals and men engagedin ordinary pursuits – walking, running, jumping, fighting,hunting, eating” (Van der Riet et al. 1940: xiii–xiv; Bleek 1932).In addition, she allowed that a minority of images in the areafrom which the ‘falling buck’ come may have “illustrated”myths, “but not the myths of the /Xam people” whose folkloreher father and his co-worker, her aunt, Lucy Lloyd, had exten-sively recorded in the 1870s (Van der Riet et al. 1940: xi; on theBleek and Lloyd Collection see Deacon & Dowson 1996;Lewis-Williams 2002b; Bennum 2004; Hollmann 2004; Bank2006; Skotnes 2007).

Wilhelm Bleek himself, moved by the paintings that JosephMillerd Orpen (1874) copied and by San comments on them,went beyond the ‘daily life’ explanation and concluded that thecopies “publically demonstrated” for the first time that at leastsome images were “illustrating Bushman mythology” (Bleek1874: 13). Dorothea and her father both used ‘mythology’ ina fairly loose sense to cover narrative myths and also rain-making rituals (Bleek 1933a,b). Consequently, when con-fronted with the enigmatic images in Figure 2, Dorothea wrote,“What myth this illustrates we cannot tell, but I am sure that itmust have some connexion with rain-making” (Van der Rietet al. 1940: caption to pls 18 and 19).

Dorothea Bleek also noted “a rope dangling from the sky, tothe bottom of which a man is clinging with both arms stretchedabove his head.… Very curious are the dots in the circle madeby his outstretched arms, probably rain drops.” Staying withher rain-making interpretation, she suggested that some of thepoorly preserved lines elsewhere in the panel “may be meantfor lightning”. Above and to the right, she identified “whatmay be a waterbag made from an animal’s stomach, such asBushmen often use for carrying water”.

Her view of the ‘falling buck’ themselves seems to havebeen prosaic: she did not tie them in with her rain-makinginterpretation. Puzzled by their leaping postures, she won-dered if they represented not buck but rather hares “jumpingdown from the sky”. She also referred to the “seated man with acurious head, or head-dress,” but offered nothing furtherabout him. Writing of the other panel of ‘falling buck’ (Fig. 3),she suggested: “The line of leaping buck apparently descend-ing from a high cliff or from heaven seem to me to be the illus-tration of some myth” (Van der Riet et al. 1940: caption to pl. 15).

The principal questions that the panel and Bleek’s com-ments together raise are: What does the vertical line attached tothe man’s head represent? What is the relationship – if any –between it and the seemingly parallel, but unusual, feature ofthe panel, the ‘falling buck’? Can tacking between San ethnog-raphy and the images, together with ‘disunity’ arguments,answer these questions?

ETHNOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE FOR ASIGNIFICANT POSTURE

The first evidence that we consider is the apparently seatedhuman figure to left of the lowest buck in Figure 2. Its head,possibly a version of the ‘hooked’ type common in the region, isapparently turned to the left (on head types see Vinnicombe1967). On the other hand, comparison of its head with those ofthe buck suggests that it may be an antelope head with its earspointing to the back of the figure (cf. Townley Johnson 1979:caption to fig. 64). Buck-headed human figures and figureswearing eared caps are, of course, common in San rock art (e.g.Vinnicombe 1976; Lewis-Williams 1981; Lewis-Williams &Pearce 2004a).

Either way, the figure’s arms are in a distinctive backwardposition. The posture is striking and unnatural: it could not be

confused with any posture that people may casually adopt indaily life. Yet it is repeatedly painted throughout southernAfrica and across all rock art regions (however defined, stylisti-cally or otherwise) from the Drakensberg in the east(Lewis-Williams 1981; Lewis-Williams & Pearce 2004a) to theCederberg in the west (Yates et al. 1985: fig. 3, table 1;Parkington 2002: 56; see also Yates & Manhire 1991). It musthave had important and widespread significance. It is, more-over, one of the suite of interrelated, distinctive paintedfeatures described in the next paragraph.

Figure 4 illustrates an example of the context of the posture.It appears at least seven times in this group of eastern Free Stateimages. In 1974 a Ju/’hoan man, who demonstrated theposture, explained that participants in the trance, or medicine,dance sometimes dance like this when they are asking god togive them more potency and, thereby, to send them into thespirit realm (Lewis-Williams 1981: 88). The position is impor-tant, though not sustained (Lewis-Williams & Pearce 2004a: 66,98–99; Thackeray 1987: 4). Two of the seven arms-back figuresin Fig. 4 are also in an acute bending-forward posture thatSan trancers say they are forced to adopt when their potency‘boils’ painfully in their stomachs (Lewis-Williams 1981: 88;Lewis-Williams & Pearce 2004a: 66, 145, 173). A Ju/’hoan manexplained: “Your gebesi [diaphragm] tightens into a balled fist.Your breathing stops” (Katz 1982: 46). In addition, there areimages of four seated figures in the clear and oft-paintedclapping posture of women who sing and clap the rhythm ofpotency-filled songs (Lewis-Williams 1981: 76; Lewis-Williams& Pearce 2004a: 87–89); a number of other figures, some stand-ing, may also be clapping. One figure is supine: in deep tranceSan trancers fall to the ground. The combination of thearms-back, bending-forward, clapping and supine posturesleaves no doubt that this is a painting of a San trance dance. Insome paintings of the dance there are additional features thatpoint to trance, such as nasal bleeding (Lewis-Williams &Pearce 2004a: 66, 90, 97–100, 112, 149, 207–208), the presence offlywhisks (Lewis-Williams & Pearce 2004a: 88, 97, 99, 112, 152,171, 173, 132, 151), and the expulsion of sickness from the napeof the neck, something only people in trance can see (Biesele1993: 109). The common use in San rock art of only one distinc-tive painted element (rather than a whole dance) to refer to thetrance dance and associated web of beliefs has been calledsynecdoche (Lewis-Williams & Pearce 2004a: 98–100).

The trance dance, also known as the ‘great dance’ or the‘healing dance, is the San’s central and oft-performed ritual. Itwas frequently painted in whole or part. Mathias Guenther, ananthropologist who has worked extensively with many Sangroups, concludes that the importance and ubiquity of thedance for understanding San rock art

is borne out by centuries-old rock paintings in many parts ofsouthern Africa that are replete with the trance motif.… It isdepicted either figuratively, through metaphorical or mysticalimages of trance, or literally, through bent-over, collapsing, orcollapsed dancers who bleed from the nose and dance tochanting and clapping. The fact that trance dances aredescribed by all writers who have visited the Bushmen, evennineteenth-century ones, further attests to the ubiquity andantiquity of this key Bushman ritual (Guenther 1999: 181).

Biesele agrees: “Rock paintings made hundreds or eventhousands of years ago in the mountainous areas of southernAfrica testify to the existence of a similar dance among theBushmen of long ago. The Ju/’hoansi speak of it as an ancientpart of their culture” (Biesele 1993: 74).

The people who play a leading role in the dance are centralto understanding San rock art. In the Kalahari Desert today

they enter an altered state of consciousness at trance dances, aswell as in more solitary circumstances, in order to heal the sick,travel to god’s house in the sky, journey to distant parts of thecountry to see how their friends and relatives are faring, tomake rain and to control antelope (Lewis-Williams & Pearce2004a; Lewis-Williams & Challis 2011: 55–58). The enhancedphotograph shows a figure reaching out to another in a typi-cally healing gesture (Fig. 2B).

Amongst the /Xam, a person who controlled the move-ments of game was known as a �pwaiten-ka !gi:xa (Lewis-Williams 1981: 77). The first part of this term is the /Xam wordfor game; the suffix -ka forms the possessive case. It is now wellknown that the nineteenth-century /Xam word !gi:xa (pl.!gi:ten) that Bleek and Lloyd translated as ‘sorcerer’ is the /Xamequivalent of the Kalahari Ju/’hoan word n/omkxao (owner ofn/om, potency). In addition to Bleek and Lloyd’s ‘sorcerer’, ithas been translated as ‘medicine person’, ‘trance performer’,‘healer’ and, the word we prefer, ‘shaman’ (Lewis-Williams1992; Lewis-Williams & Pearce 2004a; Lewis-Williams & Challis2011: 55–56). Among other writers, Guenther accepts ‘shaman’as appropriate to denote these San ritual specialists: “In thefashion of shamans all over the world, the [San] trance dancer,by means of altered states, enters the spirit world and obtainsfrom it the wherewithal to restore the health of sick fellowhumans” (Guenther 1999: 186; see also Hewitt 1986; Katz et al.1997).

Some rock art researchers underestimate the importance ofthe trance dance for the San: erroneously, they think of it as an‘optional extra’ to San intellectual activity, or as something sub-sidiary to ‘mythology’ (e.g. Solomon 1997). It is therefore salu-tary to recall Megan Biesele’s emphasis on the crucial place ofthe dance in, as she puts it, “[c]ontact with the beyond”. Herobservations are founded on years of living with the Ju/’hoansiand her fluency in their language:

Though dreams may happen at any time, the central religiousexperiences of Ju/’hoan life are consciously and, as a matter ofcourse, approached through the avenue of trance. The trance

dance involves everyone in the society, those who enter tranceand experience the power of the other world directly, andthose to whom the benefits of the other world – healing andinsight – are brought by the trancers.… The trancers areknown as n/omkxaosi, meaning ‘owners of medicine’ or‘owners of supernatural power’. They mediate to the commu-nity not only healing power but also information about howthings are in the other world and how people in this worldwould do best to relate to them. Great attention is given totrancers’ accounts of what they have experienced, and noone’s account of a genuinely altered state is belittled.…Through the physical and artistic discipline of the highlystructured dance, an altered state of consciousness is producedin some participants which has benefits for the entire commu-nity. Contact with the beyond is regularly made, and all whocome to the dance experience an uplifting energy which theyfeel to be a necessary part of their lives (Biesele 1993: 70, 74).

Nor is the dance an isolated component of San life. Bieseleshows how metaphors of the animal potency harnessed in thetrance dance and metaphors of ‘transformation’ permeatemany, though not all, Ju/’hoan myths that involve animals,such as lions (often transformed people in trance), eland(greatly desired because it was considered to be the animalwith the most potency) and the trickster, who placed coals oneland fat in a tortoise shell, “sniffed the smoke, and . . . began totrance” (Biesele 1993: 96–115). A similar deployment of trancemetaphors is found in some nineteenth-century /Xam myths(Lewis-Williams 1996, 1997, 2010a; Lewis-Williams & Pearce2004a: 109–116; Lewis-Williams & Challis 2011: 153–180).

A METAPHOR OF TRANSITIONBiesele’s insights into the centrality of the trance dance in

San life and thought enable us to consider other components ofthe ‘falling buck’ panel (Fig. 2). In the upper left there is thedepiction of a bag to which Bleek referred; it has two unnatu-rally long parallel lines falling from it. In numerous instances,painted bags, quivers and bows are arranged around dancegroups; this peripheral depiction of bags and other equipment


FIG. 4. An eastern Free State San rock painting of a dance scene. Inset: San rock painting of a bag transforming into an eland (after Vinnicombe 1976: fig. 107).


is found in dance paintings across southern Africa from east towest (e.g. Yates et al. 1990: fig. 4; Lewis-Williams & Pearce2004a: figs 6.5, 6.6, 8.7). A prosaic way of interpreting the bags isto say that the dancers placed them on the ground prior tobeginning the dance, but this interpretation does not explainwhy the San frequently painted isolated bags, nor does it takeinto account their beliefs about bags. These images were notmerely depictions of everyday, utilitarian objects: they hadmeaning beyond their pragmatic function.

Indeed, there is both ethnographic and painted evidencethat depictions of bags imply transformations and transitionsbetween realms (Lewis-Williams & Pearce 2004a: 120, 126–128).George Silberbauer has pointed out that the San do not sepa-rate artefacts from the raw material from which they are made.Writing specifically of the G/wi, Silberbauer says that they donot “feel that the process of manufacture alters the essentialidentity and nature of the material used” (Silberbauer 1981:132). This blurring of the distinction between raw material andproduct is significant when we recall that the San made bagsout of the skins of small antelope. The blurring is illustrated in arock painting of a bag transforming into an antelope (Fig. 4,inset). Significantly, the antelope head shown in this transfor-mation is an eland head, not that of a small antelope. Moreover,it is bleeding from the nose. As we have seen, nasal haemor-rhage is an indication of entry into trance; it also signifies death.These are in fact related concepts, for the San speak of people‘dying’ when they enter trance and thus cross from one realminto another. When a large antelope dies, it is believed to releaseits potency. The San therefore like to dance next to a freshlykilled carcass, especially an eland, so that they can harness itsreleased potency. Numerous paintings seem to indicate thatthe death of an eland paralleled the ‘death’ of a man in trance(e.g. Pager 1975: 78–79, 81; Vinnicombe 1976: figs 102, 109, 247;Lewis-Williams 1981: 93, fig. 28). The association of bags withtransformation is also evident in a /Xam myth. /Kaggen, thesouthern San trickster-deity, gets into a bag when he wishes totransform himself from an ordinary San person into a “littlegreen thing that flies”, that is, into a praying mantis insect, theliteral meaning of his name (Bleek 1924: 33; Lewis-Williams1996, 1997). Getting into a bag was thus akin to ‘getting into’ anantelope, immersing oneself in its transforming potency and,as the Fig. 4 inset shows, ‘dying’.

While detailed, multi-component dance scenes such as theone shown in Fig. 4 are comparatively rare, many elements,known as ‘fragments of the dance’ (Lewis-Williams & Pearce2004a: 99–100), are often painted scattered through complexpanels of human and animal images. In addition to bags, theyinclude isolated people in the distinctive postures we havedescribed. The isolated arms-back figure in Fig. 2 is thereforenot unusual. As we have pointed out, these images invoke, bysynecdoche, either the whole dance or the more solitary experi-ences of San trancers, though exactly how they relate to adja-cent images is still being researched (e.g. Lewis-Williams 1992;Lewis-Williams & Pearce 2009).

Having outlined the painted and ethnographic contexts ofthe seated man and the bag, and shown that they both derivefrom a single though complex network of beliefs, we concludethat, for the overall context of the panel, researchers shouldlook to the principal San ritual, the one that more than anyother facilitates contact with the spirit realm.

THREADS OF LIGHTIt is in the context of the trance dance that we find an expla-

nation for the line that connects to the top of the humanfigure’s head (Fig. 2). Bleek may not have been far wrong when

she suggested that the panel was concerned with rain-making.It certainly concerns contact with the spirit realm, if not specifi-cally in a rain-making context.

Modern Kalahari San speak frequently of “strings of light,the most important ones [of which] go to the sky” (Keeney2003: 42). They describe them in idiosyncratic ways. A 1920sreport by Viktor Lebzelter records such an experience: a San“magician … sees a thin cord being let down from the sky. Heclimbs a certain way up this, but the great captain comes downto meet him half-way” (quoted in Schapera 1930: 198). Morerecently, San shamans have said that these ‘cords’ are bright,iridescent lines along which they glide or walk on their way tothe spirit realm. Others speak of ‘ropes’ up which they climb togod’s realm in the sky (Biesele 1979: 56). Richard Katz (1982:113–114) was told: “When you go to [God] … you climb athread. You climb a long thread. First you have entered thesand. Up ahead there you emerge again. When you emerge,you begin to climb the thread.” Others speak of the lines aschains or as connected beads of white ostrich eggshell: “Eachpiece is a step that you can climb to the sky” (Keeney 2003: 42,89).

Whatever their way of speaking of the ‘strings’, peopleexplicitly associate them with the trance dance: they are notpart of everyone’s experience. One San man made this pointvery clearly, “If I want to learn to climb the threads to God’svillage [in the sky], first of all I have to learn to heal people. Afterthat, the healers will teach me how to use that thread” (Katzet al. 1997: 81). Then he will be able to send his “second eyes andears … along one of these lines and go watch a dance at anothervillage.… When I see a rope of light, I walk toward it. As soon asI get to it or near it, I start floating up to the sky” (Keeney 2003:42). During a dance, the lines and their potency are inside thehealers: “When you’re full of that power, you are able to see thestrings. You can even see them if you close your eyes” (Keeney2003: 89).

Taken together, these statements show that the ‘threads’,though apprehended differently by different people, referdirectly to the interaction of the supernatural realm with thematerial realm. Katz found that people were clear about thislink: “In his commentaries the shaman explained that theseglowing threads constitute a communication between thebeholder (in this case the initiate) and the ecstatic dimension heis about to enter” (Katz et al. 1997: 26; original brackets).

Painted lines, now commonly called ‘threads of light’,strongly recall these ethnographic reports (Lewis-Williamset al. 2000; Lewis-Williams & Pearce 2004a). In the southeasternmountains and adjacent areas they are usually red and fringedwith small white dots, but, in some instances, the line is paintedin alternating red and white angular sections (Lewis-Williams1983: fig. 28). In other instances, the line is white with a redzigzag painted on it (Lewis-Williams & Dowson 1999: fig. 87a),or there are simply parallel lines of white dots with no centralred line (Lewis-Williams & Pearce 2009: fig. 3; Lewis-Williams2011: fig. 2). Sometimes, even within a single panel, the line iswhite with red dashes across it, red with white ‘hairs’, and redwith a single line of white dots set on it (Lewis-Williams &Pearce 2009: fig. 3; Lewis-Williams & Challis 2011: fig. 36). Insome paintings the lines connect depictions of animals, ofteneland (e.g. Lewis-Williams & Pearce 2004a: fig. 6.11; Lewis-Williams 2011: fig. 2). In addition, people are sometimesdepicted dancing or walking along the lines (e.g. Lewis-Williams et al. 2000: fig. 1c) or holding them as if they were ropes(Yates et al. 1985: fig. 10b; Lewis-Williams & Dowson 1990:fig. 2; Lewis-Williams et al. 2000: fig. 2b; ). Often, the lines enterand leave cracks and steps in the rock face. They thus visually

connected the material realm with the spirit realm that wasbelieved to lie behind the walls of rock shelters (Lewis-Williams & Dowson 1990; Lewis-Williams et al. 2000: fig. 4).

In other regions, such as the one where the ‘falling buck’ arepainted, the lines are less common and are seldom paintedwith accompanying dots. Because the paintings in this regionare generally less well preserved than elsewhere, it may be thatin some instances the white dots have not been preserved. Inthe Cederberg, farther to the west, there are a few lines fringedwith white dots, but also many without dots (Rudner & Rudner1970: pl. 39; Yates et al. 1985; Yates et al. 1990: fig. 19; Parkington2003: figs 2, 11, 25, 58–61). Like the arms-back, bending-forwardand clapping postures and also nasal bleeding, the ‘threads’ arepart of a suite of significant elements that are found acrosssouthern Africa and that point to the widespread importanceof interaction of realms in San rock art.

There can be little doubt that the various forms of thepainted lines reflect the range of different apprehensions of the‘threads’ that San shamans report seeing. Together, the ethnog-raphy and the varied paintings are evidence for a widespread,fundamental concept that was idiosyncratically apprehendedand painted. Biesele sums up the situation: “The hallucinationsof actual n/omkxaosi become, by a process at once highly indi-vidual and highly social, conventionalised vehicles facilitatingtrance for the uninitiated” (Biesele 1993: 76). Clearly, we mustattend to studies of hallucinations to find out more about thefundamental entity that the San were ‘seeing’ and painting.

‘DISUNITY’ EVIDENCEWe therefore move to a brief overview of neuropsychol-

ogy, a discipline that studies, amongst other topics, trancestates. Because we know that the San enter trance, the rele-vance of neuropsychology as an evidential strand in Sanrock art research is indisputable. Biesele writes: “[T]he centralreligious experiences of Ju/’hoan life are consciously and, as amatter of course, approached through the avenue of trance”(Biesele 1993: 70). Moreover, as Wylie would presumably note,neuropsychology is founded on different principles anddifferent methods from ethnographic exegesis (Wylie 2002:200–210; cf. Lewis-Williams 1991). These different principlesand methods lend support to our two-way ethnography-imagery inferences.

Some writers on rock art who do not fully appreciate thecentrality of trance experiences for the San fear that this kindof work will reduce the human and social elements in researchto neurological universals. They are mistaken. Religion cannotbe reduced to neurology. Human beings are not neuronalautomatons, and there is always a complex interactionbetween the neurology of the brain and people’s culturalmilieu, as indeed the San’s varied descriptions and depictionsof ‘threads of light’ show. All religions have an ecstatic compo-nent and entail shifting consciousness, whether markedly, asin seeing visions, or slightly, as in the induction of euphoria(Lewis-Williams 2010b). In this respect, San religion was, andstill is, in essence (if not in particulars) no different fromother religions. At a trance dance, the shamans themselves seevisions, while the onlookers “experience an uplifting energy”(Biesele 1993: 74). Those who seek to present San religion as aprincipally intellectual activity (e.g. Solomon 1997) do ourunderstanding of it, and consequently of San rock art, a disser-vice. To deny the insights that neuropsychology can provide isto deny the full humanity of the San.

Amongst other valuable insights, neuropsychologicalresearch has shown that certain visual percepts are ‘wired into’the human brain and that all people, no matter what their

cultural background have the potential to experience them inthe sort of altered states that the San experience in the trancedance (Knoll 1958; Knoll et al. 1963; Klüver 1966; Eichmeier &Höfer 1974; Siegel & West 1975; Siegel 1977; Reichel-Dolmatoff1978a; ffytche et al. 1998). We are, of course, aware that thisproposition has divided archaeological opinion. But, encour-aged by recent neuropsychological research (Bressloff et al.2000; Santhouse et al. 2000; Burke 2002; ffytche 2002; ffytcheet al. 1998; ffytche & Howard 1999), we believe that the moreserious objections have been answered (e.g. Lewis-Williams2004, 2006b; Lewis-Williams & Pearce, in press). Today thephenomenology of visual hallucinations is not in dispute;researchers, however, continue to study the neurology thatgives rise to those hallucinations. Those who have argued thatthe spectrum of human consciousness, as we have described it(e.g., Lewis-Williams 2002c, 2010b; Lewis-Williams & Pearce2004a: 30–36), is invalid are, quite simply, wrong: humanconsciousness does grade through a series of stages and certaingeometric percepts are ‘wired into’ the human brain. Thesepoints are now indisputable.

The worldwide commonality of experience in altered statesis true, though to different degrees, whether the state is in-duced by ingestion of psychotropic drugs, intense meditation,sensory deprivation, pain, certain pathological conditions, or,as in the case of the San, audio and rhythmic driving andhyperventilation. In a light or early stage of trance, all peoplehave the potential to see luminous, fleeting, geometric visualpercepts, the forms of which derive from the neuronal struc-ture of the human brain. These entoptic phenomena(‘phosphenes’ or ‘form constants’) include flickering zigzags,iridescent dots, the arc-shaped, scintillating scotoma experi-enced by migraine sufferers, grids, and – most significantlyfrom the point of view of this enquiry – luminous filigrees thathave been described as “endless chains of brilliant white dots”(Reichel-Dolmatoff 1978b: 291–292; cf. Knoll et al. 1963). Theseentoptic forms may persist into later, more visionary, stages ofaltered consciousness.

Nowhere do advocates of the explanation of San rock artthat emphasises the importance of the trance dance claim thatneurology “determined – [the] pan-San cognitive system”, orthat “the forms of rock art are hard-wired”, as Solomon (2011:53) has mistakenly claimed. Whether people pay any attentionto the filigrees that may appear in their altered vision is entirelya personal and cultural issue. But once a socially acceptedsignificance of an entoptic phenomenon is established (such as‘threads’ leading to another realm) people tend to watch for, orto seek out, that form. Engaging with specific, meaningfulvisual forms induces feelings of inclusion in a group of peoplewho claim access to a supernatural realm.

This neuropsychological evidence supplements what weknow from the ethnography. Because we know that the Sanenter an altered state of consciousness at trance dancesand that, like all people, they have the potential to experi-ence visual filigrees when in that state, we can infer that thevisions of luminous ‘threads’ that they report seeing andformerly painted across southern Africa derive – ultimately –from the functioning of their neurology, not exclusively from‘imagination’.

THE PAINTED LINEThe ways in which San shamans relate to the ‘threads of

light’ take us first, and clearly, to the painted vertical line andthen, by extension, to the enigmatic ‘falling buck’ (Fig. 2).

One Kalahari San man said, “The rope goes through the topof my head” (Keeney 2003: 47). Another reported: “The ropes



go to the top of your head and to your stomach. They pull yourbody up and down” (Keeney 2003: 80). Another said: “[Therope] is attached to my head. When you feel the rope it feels likethere is a hole on the very top of your head” (Keeney 2003: 130).These statements explain why the painted line in Fig. 2 goes tothe top of the human figure’s head – as indeed it does innumerous other San rock paintings (e.g. Lewis-Williams 1981:figs 31, 38; 2011: fig. 2C; Lewis-Williams et al. 2000: fig. 4;Lewis-Williams & Challis 2011: fig. 40). The painted line is the‘rope’, or ‘thread of light’, that connects him with the spiritrealm above (Thackeray 1987).

The dots that are painted around his head are explicablein the same terms: as we have mentioned, clouds of bril-liant, moving dots constitute another entoptic phenomenoncommonly experienced in trance (Lewis-Williams & Dowson1988; Dowson 1989; Lewis-Williams & Blundell 1997). TheJu/’hoansi liken supernatural potency to “sparks that break outinto the dark night in all directions when the burning coals in afire are stirred roughly with a stick. The sparks reach into thefar corners of the night, touching all in the area with theirspecial glow” (Katz et al. 1997: 26).

The line leading to the man’s head, the dots around hishead, the arms-back posture of the seated figure and the bagare thus all explicable in terms of San religious experience in the

trance dance, as recorded in the ethnography and describedby neuropsychological research. This section of the panelconcerns a shaman’s experience and probably contributed tohis or her standing in the community (Lewis-Williams & Pearce2004a,b). But what does a combination of ethnography andneuropsychology tell us about a possible relationship betweenthe simple vertical line and the unusual ‘falling buck’? Here wehave a more complex construal.

IDIOSYNCRATIC EXPERIENCEA characteristic of trance states is that subjects try to make

sense of what they experience in the context of their beliefsystem. They construe entoptic phenomena as things knownto them and, often, things that have intense emotional conno-tations (Horowitz 1964: 514, 1975: 177, 178, 181). The signifi-cances of what they see are thus not neurologically controlled.In this instance, the line of ‘falling buck’ is explicable jointly interms of a neurologically generated characteristic of entopticfiligrees, a San belief about hunting and a convention of therock art itself.

Painted construals of another entoptic phenomenon, theso-called ‘fortification illusion’, have been studied (Lewis-Williams 1995a). Also known as the migraine scotoma, it is acurved line with a flickering, zigzag edge (Fig. 5A). Within the

FIG. 5. (A) ‘Fortification illusion’ (after Siegel 1977); the dot indicates the area of invisibility. (B) San rock painting from the Western Cape Province. Colour: red(after Maggs & Sealy 1983: fig. 7). (C) San rock paintings from the eastern Free State. Colours: red and white. (D) San rock paintings of small antelope from theeastern Free State. Colours: red and white.

curve, an area of invisibility, a ‘black hole’, blots out veridicalperception. There are San rock paintings that are fairly literaldepictions of the fortification illusion (Fig. 5B). Others showantelope apparently entering the ‘black hole’ and thus, it hasbeen argued, passing through the rock face into the spirit realmbeyond (Fig. 5C; Lewis-Williams 1995a; Lewis-Williams &Dowson 1990). For our present purposes the most relevantfeature of these ‘fortification’ paintings is that, in some examples,the flickering edge is replaced by multiple antelope legs(Fig. 5C).

This replacement (or construal) of the flickering, zigzagfringe with antelope legs may have been suggested by whatmust have been a common sight for San hunters; it is depictedin Fig. 5D. To the left, five buck run and leap, while to the rightsix buck are massed one behind the other; all 24 legs of the sixbuck are shown. For those shamans who were believed to havethe power to guide antelope herds towards a hunters’ ambushthe flickering arc of the ‘fortification illusion’ may have recalledthe emotionally charged experience of witnessing the flashinglegs of galloping antelope at close quarters, hearing the drum-ming of their hoofs and seeing the dust rise (Lewis-Williams2002b: 52–77). As shamans of the game, this was the very expe-rience they sought in the spirit world where they attempted tocontrol the movements of antelope herds (Lewis-Williams1995a). We therefore suggest that the iridescent flickering of a‘thread of light’ may, in the (unknown) circumstances that gaverise to these exceptional paintings, have been construed as theflashing legs of galloping buck, as was the edge of the ‘fortifica-tion illusion’.

The fact that long lines of buck in two panels (Figs 2 and 3)are apparently coming down from above is consonant with thisview. God was believed to have vast herds of antelope andother creatures in his home in the sky. When a nineteenth-century San man who lived in what is now Lesotho was asked

where the Mantis was he replied: “Where he is, eland are indroves like cattle” (Orpen 1874: 3). Similarly, Old K”xao, aJu/’hoan shaman, told Biesele that in God’s house

there are leopards there. People say there are zebras. They saylocusts. They say lions.… Elands are there. Giraffes are there.Gemsboks are there. Kudu are there.… They are God’s posses-sions.… Friend, that’s how it is with this [potency] that I do! Itspossessions! They’re many! Gemsboks, leopards, lions, thingslike that. When people sing [songs of potency], his possessionscome, the great, great God’s possessions! Friend, now that youhave come to me here, God’s animals will come to us (Biesele1979: 59, 61).

The explicitly flickering nature of Old K”xau’s vision of hisjourney to God’s house is significant: “And the metal piece thatsits there begins to wiggle back and forth. It shimmies, myfriend. It shimmies like this. God’s piece of metal. Friend, itshimmies like this” (Biesele 1979: 57). Old K”xau’s experiencewas thus in accord with neuropsychological accounts ofscintillating trance visions.

Two variations in ‘threads of light’ paintings have rele-vance to the two paintings of ‘falling buck’. First, a painting thatincludes a line comprising an angular series of alternating redand white segments shows a rain-animal surrounded by fivehuman figures, all of whom bleed from the nose, and twodepictions of fish that indicate the ‘underwater’ locale of thecomposition – the subaquatic spirit realm (Fig. 6; Lewis-Williams 1983: fig. 18; Lewis-Williams & Pearce 2004a: 51–55,122–124). One of the white segments of the line has a pair ofhuman legs protruding at right angles from it; the segmentbecomes the body in the same bending forward posture as thatwhich three of the associated human figures adopt. Otherpaintings show ‘threads of light’ bleeding, as are adjacenthuman figures and eland (e.g. Pager 1975: 78–79; Lewis-Williams & Pearce 2009: fig. 3). The importance of these paint-


FIG. 6. San rock painting of a rain-animal with an angular, segmented ‘thread of light’.


ings is that they show that creatures (human beings in Fig. 6)can be in the ‘thread of light’, even become a ‘thread of light’,though in ways that we do not fully understand. Once thatprinciple is established, as it indeed is by the emerging legs inFig. 6, we can allow that buck may also have been perceived tobe in, or part of, the shimmering ‘thread’, or the perceivedsegments thereof. Building on that possibility, we point toanother relevant feature of the imagery of altered states.Neuropsychological research has shown that mental imagesare sometimes infinitely duplicated in a line like a row of tinsoldiers, the phenomenon known as polyopia (Klüver 1966: 44;Reichel-Dolmatoff 1972: 92; Siegel & Jarvik 1975: 104, 109, 144;Siegel 1977: 134). Given the hallucinatory origin of ‘threads oflight’, we can postulate that the idiosyncratic reduplication of‘falling buck’ was, for a San shaman, part of the apprehensionof the shimmering filigree.

What was for many San shamans simply a ‘thread of light’leading to the realm above (like the line to the left of Fig. 2A)became a shimmering cascade of antelope for a particular (orthe same) shaman of the game as he envisaged bringing buckwithin shooting distance. The complex construals that led tothe depiction of ‘falling buck’ show this supernatural securingof animals actually happening as the antelope tumble from thevast herds that God was believed to keep in the sky (on smallbuck in San rock art see Challis 2005).

PERSONAL AND COMMUNAL INSIGHTSBy combining exegetical ‘tacking’ with a ‘disunity’ argu-

ment from neuropsychology we can conclude that the ‘fallingbuck’ represent interaction with the spirit realm. The painter’strance experience, unusual if the paucity of such paintings isanything to go by, was not unbridled: rather, it was framed by,and comprehensible in terms of, the more general experiencesof San hunter-shamans. This does not, of course, mean that theimages were painted by a person actually in trance. Rather,hallucinations were construed by a person in trance and thenlater recalled and no doubt formalised as they were painted.The act of making an image, too, was often if not always acomplex, ritualised process involving more than one person –an individual within a community (Lewis-Williams 1995b;Lewis-Williams & Pearce 2004a: 100–106).

In the case of the ‘falling buck’ paintings, the painter (orpainters) construed the flickering ‘thread of light’ in an idio-syncratic way, but, at the same time, in a way that was informedby beliefs about the kind of interaction between realms thatcould bring success in hunting. Indeed, Biesele found: “Trance .. . is a male context closely connected with animals and huntingbeliefs” (Biesele 1993: 93). But the ways in which communallyheld beliefs are personally experienced and operationalisedvary. We thus have here a personal intervention: someone wasadding to the store of people’s knowledge by depicting a line of‘falling buck’, something about which other shamans may havespoken but never painted.

How would that knowledge, and the painting of it, bereceived by the community? Biesele writes:

Though individual accounts may be heeded with great atten-tion, there is also a sense in which oral tradition ‘swallows up’(in Jack Goody’s words) the achievements of individuals intocultural anonymity. This observation is true of both trancers’accounts among the Ju/’hoansi and contributions to the folk-tale tradition (Biesele 1993: 76; and see Goody 1977).

Some people, then, may have accepted this novel construalof the flickering ‘thread of light’ as a cascade of buck fallingdown from God’s house in the sky as a demonstration of a

particular shaman of the game’s powers, but they may notnecessarily have made it central to their beliefs. The insightwas, as Biesele points out, probably valued, but it did notbecome the source of many more paintings.

This article deals principally with method and iconography– the significance of the images for their makers. As with Euro-pean stained glass windows, other aspects of San rock art can,and should, be studied. But it will be impossible to addressmany of those aspects without an iconographic baseline and anidea of the social context of the imagery. In each interpretativeinstance, the adducing of ethnographic, lexical, painted,neuropsychological and other evidence must take the place ofmere theoretical assertion. Indeed, evidence and a clear theo-retical and methodological framework constitute the onlyfoundation for discriminating between competing explana-tions of San rock art.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSWe thank Susan Ward and Sam Challis who read drafts of

this article and offered useful comments. Two anonymousreferees also provided valuable comments. Figure 4 was tracedby Jeremy Hollmann and redrawn by Wendy Voorvelt.Figures 4 inset, 5 and 6 come from the archives of the Rock ArtResearch Institute, University of the Witwatersrand. KevinCrause generously permitted publication of his enhancedphotograph of the images in Fig. 2 and drew our attention toGeoff Tribe’s article. The overall research was funded by thefirst author’s National Research Foundation A1 rating incen-tive grant.

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Framed idiosyncrasy: method and evidence in the interpretation of San rock art

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