Frogs or people: Dorothea Bleek and a genealogy of ideas in rock art research

Witelson, David M.

doi:10.1080/0067270x.2018.1442047

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 45 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The English traveller and artist Thomas Baines noted (correctly) that San images of two-horned animals invariably have two horns (Kennedy 1961, 167; 1964, 20). Baines thus recognized that San images faithfully represent whatever the image-makers wanted to depict (Witelson 2018, 197). Whatever perspectival ‘errors’ may be perceived, the painters ‘ never fail to give each animal its proper complement of members ’ (Baines 1864, 171, emphasis in original; see also Wallis 1946, 719–20).…”

Section: Searching For Unicornsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Whether Stow added them in or they are simply no longer visible, the informant seems to have associated the leopard-spotted figure in the top row with the ‘black rain’ in the bottom row, and, consequently, identified it as a frog. While frogs are common in ǀXam rain myths (see Thorp 2015 for a summary), images of frogs are exceedingly rare in South African rock paintings (Lewis-Williams & Challis 2011, 161; see also Thorp 2013, 251; Witelson 2018).…”

Section: Revisiting the South African Unicornmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Revisiting the South African Unicorn: Rock Art, Natural History and Colonial Misunderstandings of Indigenous Realities

Witelson

2023

CAJ

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

European ideas about unicorns spread across the world in the colonial era. In South Africa, hunts for that creature, and indigenous rock paintings of it, were commonplace. The aim was proof from ‘terra incognita’, often with the possibility of claiming a reward. There has, however, been little consideration of the independent, local creature onto which the unicorn was transposed. During cross-cultural engagements, foreign beliefs in the mythical unicorn and a desire for evidence of its natural history intermixed to an extraordinary degree with local beliefs in a one-horned animal. For over two centuries, colonists and researchers alike failed to realize that the local creature, by chance, resembled the European unicorn. A new synthesis of southern African ethnography, history and the writings of early travellers, missionaries and colonial politicians provides unambiguous evidence that one-horned creatures obtained in local beliefs before the arrival of colonists. Moreover, it shows that these creatures are depicted in South African rock art, and that they are a manifestation of San (Bushman) rain-animals. By ignoring relevant beliefs and images, previous scholars have failed to acknowledge that the South African unicorn was, apart from its four legs and single horn, a creature wholly different from the European one.

show abstract

Section: Searching For Unicornsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Revisiting the South African Unicornmentioning

confidence: 99%

Revisiting the South African Unicorn: Rock Art, Natural History and Colonial Misunderstandings of Indigenous Realities

Witelson

2023

CAJ

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Rock art field recording and interpretation in the first half of the twentieth century hinged on the visual literacy of its fieldworkers. Copyists (including women like Joyce and Mollie van der Riet and Helen Tongue) were valued for their abilities to make accurate replicas of paintings as observed in the field, which in turn entailed the skill to discern, trace, and colour nuances of complex scenes (Weintroub 2009;Wintjes 2017;Witelson 2018). Breuil's interpretations were lauded as authoritative based on his eye for detail, derived in part from the breadth and diversity of paintings he had seen (Dubow 2019).…”

Section: 'The Next Best Thing To a Real Bushman Painting'mentioning

confidence: 99%

‘They are all dead that I could ask’: Indigenous Innovation and the Micropolitics of the Field in Twentieth-century Southern Africa

King¹,

Bonneau²,

Pearce³

2021

CAJ

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Recovering the agency, skill and innovation of archaeological field assistants from historical encounters is essential to interrogating processes of knowledge production, but is often hampered by access to appropriate archival sources and methods. We detail a field project from early twentieth-century Basutoland (modern-day Lesotho) that is unique both for its aim to salvage details of rock-art production as a dying craft and for its archive chronicling the project's intellectual journey from experiment to draft manuscripts to published work over more than three decades. We argue that critical historiographic attention to this archive offers a guide for examining the intimate dynamics of fieldwork and the effects of these micropolitics on the archaeological canon. We demonstrate how sustained attention to long processes of knowledge production can pinpoint multiple instances in which the usability of field assistants’ scientific knowledge is qualified, validated, or rejected, and in this case how an African assistant is transformed into an ethnographic interlocutor. For rock-art studies especially, this represents a need for interrogating the epistemic cultures—not just the content—of foundational historical data.

show abstract

Conclusion

King¹

2019

Outlaws, Anxiety, and Disorder in Southern Africa

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Frogs or people: Dorothea Bleek and a genealogy of ideas in rock art research

Cited by 5 publications

References 45 publications

Revisiting the South African Unicorn: Rock Art, Natural History and Colonial Misunderstandings of Indigenous Realities

Revisiting the South African Unicorn: Rock Art, Natural History and Colonial Misunderstandings of Indigenous Realities

‘They are all dead that I could ask’: Indigenous Innovation and the Micropolitics of the Field in Twentieth-century Southern Africa

Conclusion

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About