African Prehistory Books

[trehinp]

Last November I was in Cape Town to attend a conference on Autism research and advocacy, which is my main activity.

Unfortunately I didn't have the time nor the resources to explore some of the beautiful rock art sites of that area. So I took the occasion of being there to stop in a bookshop, looking for documents on South African prehistoric art which I guessed would be very specific to South Africa and that I wouldn't find in European bookstores... (That's something I do when I travel). I've found a few books that are worth mentionning.

-- J.D. Lewis-Williams, "Discovering Southern African Rock Art", David Philip Publishers , Cape Town 2000

A small rather technical book with detailed analysis of various rock art styles from shouthern Africa. Denis Lewis- Williams applies here his analysis of entoptic visions as a source of inspiration for rock art. Unfortunately the pictures are in black ans white and there are rather few photographic pictures . Lots of pictures are hand made reproductions, which alsways entail some intrepretation from the artist (reseracher) who made them.

-- G. Anderson, "Bushman Rock Art, South Africa", Art Publishers Ltd, Durban, Johanesburg, Cape Town 

Another small book, less technical but full of beautiful colour photographic pictures of fantastic South African Rock Art. A must have for African art amateurs.

-- D.W. Phillipson, "African Archaeology", Cambridge Africa Collection, Cambridge University Pres, 2005 (first published 1985)

This is a typical university book with excellent presentation of the topic. Eventhought the first publishing took place in 1985, the book has been highly updated and takes into account all recent discoveries. The book extends beyond prehistorical archaeology and explores more recent African archaeological research.

I kept this book last because it is in my view the most interesting one:
-- G. Blundell, “Origins. The Story of the Emergence of Humans and Humanity in Africa”, Double Story Books, Cape Town 2006

G Blundel is the book editor. The book contains several chapters covering human origins in a chronological order. Each chapter is written by several major palaeoanthropologists. It is very up to date with most recent discoveries and presents some very leadin edge hypothesis on the evolution of mankind. It is at times a bit difficult to follow as the articles are often presented like in modern magazines or shals we say now, like on a web psge, with several blocks of texts on the same page. It is an interesting concept as the main subject is developped on its own and specifics are presented in frames. But that makes the reading rather cumbersome.
Neverthless, i've found that book extremely informative and worth reading.

That' all Folks ;-)

Paul Trehin

[Mikey Brass]

Lots of pictures are hand made reproductions, which alsways entail some intrepretation from the artist (reseracher) who made them.

-- G. Anderson, "Bushman Rock Art, South Africa", Art Publishers Ltd, Durban, Johanesburg, Cape Town

The person is Dr Gavin Anderson, a colleague I have corresponded with before and who I caught up with at the June 2006 SAfA conference. His speciality is Iron Age southern Africa.

[trehinp]

Lots of pictures are hand made reproductions, which alsways entail some intrepretation from the artist (reseracher) who made them.

-- G. Anderson, "Bushman Rock Art, South Africa", Art Publishers Ltd, Durban, Johanesburg, Cape Town

The person is Dr Gavin Anderson, a colleague I have corresponded with before and who I caught up with at the June 2006 SAfA conference. His speciality is Iron Age southern Africa.

Thanks Mikey,

In fact my comment was in regard of the book quoted above... Sorry, it is my post that was misleadingly presented.  The book by Denis Lewis Williams was the one on which I was commenting. I observed that too many of the illustrations in his book were hand made reproductions, not photographic pictures and as such biased by the observer's interpretation.

This is a comment that can be generalized... For example, I had seen several pictures of the Sorcerer in the "Grotte Trois Frères" and I had read the comments about that hybrid creature representation. I was quite surprised when I came accross the same picture but as a photographic reproduction rather than a hand made drawing. It was quite different from the original. Here is a drawing of the "sorcerer" and here is a photographic picture of the "sorcerer"

In fact, even photographic pictures can be misleading. Last summer I visites the préhistoric park "Le Thot" near Montignac where Lascaux II is installed. There is a beautiful three D reprduction of the "Well Scene" from Lascaux which isn't in Lascaux II. I had seen hand made pictures, photographic images, but none could convey the sense of depth and the use of the cave walls shapes in that representation.

With regard to the book on the San's Art, it is indeed beutiful. Since you are in contact with Dr Gavin Anderson, do you know if he had published some other books on he art of the Sans? The small book that I presented is beautiful but not very detailed nor giving much information on the dates and styles.

Thanks.

Paul

[Mikey Brass]

Hi Paul,

You have my apologies for my poor editing to attribute your sentence to the wrong book.

Pedantic: David and not Denis Lewis-Williams.

With regards to the drawing, when was the tracing reproduction done?

Gavin is more involved in researching the agro-pastoral settlements of southern Africa (KwaZulu-Nalta in particular). He does not publish often on the region's rock art, despite being extremely knowledgeable on it.