An Animist Shamanism: The World behind San Rock Art

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Painting the Past: Interpretive Approaches in Global Rock Art Research" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Hunter-gatherer cosmology in southern Africa is very clearly multinatural; persons human and nonhuman working to behave intelligibly to each other so that relations are brokered and maintained. Until recently, however, rock art interpretations have implied a physical division between realms animal and human, spiritual and mundane. Ironically, the dominant paradigm was founded on the principle that the images did not represent everyday life. The New Animisms have offered up a palette of colors with which to paint a new picture of San rock art, one which emphasizes negotiation-as-navigation, social topographies and the ontological consequences of place, position, and perspective. Instead of showcasing shamans’ power, it transpires that images were rather made to broker “proper” relations between entities on a shared landscape.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)   •
• Painting the Past: Interpretive Approaches in Global Rock Art Research

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Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 41545.0