Narrating Biesje Poort: negotiating absence of storyline, vagueness and multivocality in the representation of Southern Kalahari rock engravings

Abstract

Rock engraving sites at Biesje Poort near Kakamas have been the focus of work by researchers and participants from the Kalahari. Narratives arising from this joint encounter with rock art and spatially associated artefacts, Later Stone Age and colonial in context, within this landscape and the contemporary socio-political setting, have highlighted issues of interpretive ambiguity and vagueness. There are marked gaps in the storyline, the different emerging accounts are often incommensurate, challenging efforts at constructing any single synthesis or representation. The material traces of the past in this landscape throw up the provocations of multivocality, but can be resources for engaging alternative narratives and the ways in which places, peoples and histories are constructed, inter alia by the heritage sector, in the present.

Spirituality, shifting identities and social change: Cases from the Kalahari landscape

“…The geometrics included in the reception study were based on geometrics interpreted as first stage trance entoptic signs by David LewisWilliams (1990) in his Shamanistic rock art interpretation, as well as geometrics found in rock art and ostrich eggshell decoration. The engraved geometrics are also linked to both Water Snake oral narratives and sites in the landscape where female puberty rites were held (Lange 2011a;Morris 2012Morris , 2014. Geometric images bridge the cosmic, the natural and the domestic; the communal and the personal.…”

“…The first is based on the taped and videoed recordings of Water Stories in 1998 by a group of women of mixed descent who live in Upington, situated in the Green Kalahari, Northern Cape (Lange 2011a(Lange , 2014. The second is a rock engraving recording project based on the farm Biesje Poort near Kakamas, also situated in the Green Kalahari, Northern Cape (Lange et al 2013;Morris 2014;Tomaselli & Dyll-Myklebust [in press]). The latter case study included academics and local people, specifically from the Kruiper and Org families 4 who are made up of indigenous San ≠Khomani and mixed descent.…”

“…Kalahari identities are not fixed, but fluid (Dyll-Myklebust 2014;Ellis 2014;Simões 2001). This article explores this idea via two Kalahari case studies: Water Stories, that focus on the Water Snake, recorded in the Upington, Kakamas area (Hoff 1993(Hoff , 1997Lange 2011aLange , 2014, as well as research on a specific rock engraving site at Biesje Poort near Kakamas (Lange et al 2013;Morris 2014). This engraving site is situated in a landscape of hills that divide the Orange (Gariep) River Basin near Kakamas, in the Northern Cape, from the plains of the southern Kalahari fringe near Lutzputz.…”

Rethinking the researcher-researched relationship

“…As these terms remain problematic, different conventions and spellings exist. Khoisan refers to speakers of click languages in southern Africa, historically known as 'Bushmen' (San) and 'Hottentots' (Khoi/ Khoe/Khoekhoe) (seeBarnard, 1992;Morris, 2014).Dyll & Tomaselli: Rethinking the researcher-researched relationship: Research participants as prodsumers…”

“…Or in archeological discourse; "postprocessual" or "postcolonial" (seeMorris, 2014). A term used to describe our analysis of ancient rock engravings 'dug up' via the interpretations of contemporary Bushmen in discussion with an interdisciplinary team, rather than via theories developed by academics alone.…”