A Regional Approach to Rock Art Interpretation

Abstract

Research on southern African rock art interpretation has been heavily steered to geographically ‘rich’ areas. As a result, such areas have over time become significant locations for academic research and touristic popularity (Ndlovu 2013). These areas tend to be rich in rock art, with the imagery mainly dominated by depictions of eland. The main contribution of the research presented in this dissertation is that it focused primarily on a least studied area; Phuthaditjchaba in the Free State province; and with the principal interest being on therianthrope animal motifs to assist in defining and interpreting southern Africa’s regional variation of the rock art. The use and validity of rock art interpretive studies on a regional scale have not been emphasized or even studied extensively in South Africa (Rossouw 2018). In the eastern Free State, regionality or regionalism has not been applied in the analysis of therianthropes. My research thus focused on aspects, such as the need to establish which antelopes have been incorporated in the therianthropes of this region as well as the quantitative extent to which eland depictions are represented in the art. A regionality is an applicable tool for the exploration of the correlations between the quantitative distribution of motifs alongside the four-cell matrix model and the natural distribution of corroborating animal species. This research thus attempted to highlight the significance of transformative approaches in rock art variation studies. The results and ideas presented herein, relate to the stylistic characteristics as well as the frequency distribution of varying therianthropes and animal motifs across this region. Although research in southern Africa has alluded to the applicability of regionality in variation studies, little has been done to explain the different meanings or deciphering the art (Ndlovu 2009; Hampson 2010, 2016; Nhamo 2014; Laue 2019). I argue that by utilising new methodological approaches coupled with historical theoretical approaches, the current homogenisation of San communities using ‘blanket’ interpretive approaches to rock art studies in southern Africa can be challenged (Ndlovu 2013).