Cave Paintings

Good afternoon,everyone!

This is the first serninar in preparation for our

archaeological fieldwork in Namibia;we are fantastically

lucky to have received partial research funding for this trip

from our Institute,so I shall expect 200% attention and

participation from you in this seminar,I'm going to

give a brief introduction to contemporary research on rock

art,and in the second part I'm going to give you some do's and

don'ts for our fieldwork trip in April - so please listen very

carefully.

I'm first going to focus on the interpretation of rock are in

are very fortunate tobe going to an area where you

can find some of the most important sites in the entire

I hope to show you how easy it is for everyone to

make mistakes in looking at cultures which are different from

our own - the first and most important lesson we have to learn.

In Namibia there are both paintings and engravings - that's

where the surface of the rock is of the engravings

show footprints of animals and most scholars used to think that

the purpose of these was simple and obvious:this rock art was

like a school book with pictures to teach children about

tracks:which track belonged to which animal - giraffe,lion and

so on.

But there were some mysteries. First, when you look at a typical

Namibian painting or engraving, you see the tracks are repeated,

there are dozens of tracks for the same animal. You'd expect

just one clear illustration if the reason, the aim, was to teach

tracking. Now there were two more problems. Why are some of

the engravings of animals very accurate as you'd expect, all

clearly identifiable, and others quite unrealistic? And

another mystery, some of these unrealistic animals, that's in

the engravings, seem to be half human. Some, for example, have

got human faces. Many researchers now think that these were

pictures the wise men engraved of themselves. They believed

they could use magic to control the animals they had drawn,

so the hunters could then catch them for food.

This shows you some of the dangers of coming from one culture

to another,as we'll be doing,without understanding it

rs imagined that children looked at rock art

pictures to learn to track - just because they themselves had

learned skills from pictures;many researchers now believe that

rock art had a much more complex we'll talk more

about it next week!

Now before I invite you to join in a discussion in this second

part of the seminar,I'd like to make some very important points

about our fieldwork - and in fact any field trip to look at

rock art.

We're going to a number of sites,and we won't always be

single largest problem faced by people who manage

the sites is - yes,I'm sure you've guessed - damage caused by

visitors,even though it's usually unintentional.

Whenever you do go to a site,don't forget you can learn many

things from observing at a distance instead of walking all over

can really help to reduce visitor

often say,'Well,there's only two of us and just this one

time',but maybe thousands of people are saying the same thing.

And then some basic rules to guide you - we'll have our own

camp near a village,but remember never to camp on a site if

you go on your may be disrespectful to the people of

that culture,and certainly don't make fires,however romantic

it may 's really dangerous in dry areas,and you can

easily burn priceless undiscovered material by doing so.

So,how are we going to enjoy the rock art on our field trip?By

looking at it ,drawing it and photographing it - NEVER by

touching it or even tracing art is fragile and

precious.

Remember that climbing on rocks and in caves can destroy in

a moment what has lasted for no heroics in

Namibia,please!Try to be extra careful and help others to be

too.

And lastly please don't even move rocks or branches to take

photographs - you should leave the site intact - I'm sure I

can rely on you to do that.

Well,that's about all I want to say before today's first

discussion,but if you have any questions please ask them now

- and don't forget you'll find some fascinating information

about world-wide sites on the ,first question

then?