Rock art and emergent identity: the creolization process in nineteenth-century South African borderlands

Summary

Statements of authorship of rock art necessarily involve statements of identity. What happens, then, when identity is assumed or implied? This paper examines a well-known historical rock art panel in South Africa, supposed to portray a narrative of the demise of the San from their own perspective. To the contrary it finds that in fact the 'colonists' sporting wide-brimmed hats and toting guns are, more likely, members of an emergent identity of creolized raiding bands drawn from markedly different pre-colonial indigenous groups, as well as 'runaway slaves' and Europeans.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Rock Art, Embodiment, and Identity

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 15990