‘Rain snakes’ from the Senqu River: new light on Qing's commentary on San rock art from Sehonghong, Lesotho

Challis, Sam; Hollmann, Jeremy C.; McGranaghan, Mark

doi:10.1080/0067270x.2013.797135

Cited by 36 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…Whichever way cultural influences ran, there was at least a convergence of belief around the cosmological cognate of snakes as potent rain creatures (Challis et al . 2013; Snow 2011: 50–1; cf. Hoff 1997), particularly within the dynamic cultural frontier of the Maloti-Drakensberg within the last few centuries (Mitchell 2009; King and Challis forthcoming).…”

Section: Beasts and Beingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cattle, raiding and disorder in Southern African history

King¹

2017

Africa

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Cattle raiding is iconic of the colonial frontier in Southern African history and historiography. Incorporating settlers and Africans as aggressors and victims alike, archives and ethnohistories depict raiding as thieving, subverting authority, and inciting conflict. Despite the in-depth anthropological attention given to ‘Bushman raiding’ and frontier commandos, comparatively little work has focused on the social and cultural function of cattle raiding within chiefdoms: that is, examining cattle raiding as socially embedded rather than simply transgressing authority and property ownership. This article explores how these narratives of ‘disorder’ have been constructed, and some alternative perspectives on nineteenth-century cattle raiding as a social institution. Through vignettes drawing on archival, archaeological, ethnographic and folkloric evidence, this article offers glimpses of what narratives of the recent past could look like if views of raiding-as-disorder were revisited and revised. I draw attention to where raids were illegal versus illicit, the role of cattle as social agents, and the logic underpinning designations of raiding as resistance. Developing a view of raiding as social practice permits us to interrogate archival perceptions of raiders as outlaws and raids as analogues for warfare, thus enabling more nuanced investigations of conflict in Southern Africa's past.

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Section: Beasts and Beingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cattle, raiding and disorder in Southern African history

King¹

2017

Africa

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“…Since then, the stories that Qing related to Orpen have received great attention by rock art scholars and KhoeSan ethnographers alike (for recent treatments see [1,4,9,12,13], and references therein). Challis et al ([4], p-12) claim that Orpen's text of these stories has "become the single most important source for the decipherment of rock art in the sub-continent", precisely because the stories expressed therein, and the images with which they were accompanied, were coherent to contemporary /Xam informants in the Cape (cf.…”

Section: Figurementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Indeed, some analysts have suggested that the low incidence in southern African rupestrian motifs of felines, snakes and birds of prey, i.e., images associated widely with hallucinatory states of consciousness, suggests a less "shamanic" orientation in this art than is proposed elsewhere (see Bednarik in [15]). 4 Pager ([16], p. 81), however, observes that "rarity does not always signal a lack of importance". Although the numbers of snakes may be low in the art, this does not mean they were unimportant either "shamanistically" (cf.…”

Section: Figurementioning

confidence: 99%

“…They are shown therianthropically, with features such as antelope heads or tusks that embed them as iconic and potent and thus for some analysts are associated with the altered states of consciousness associated with trance-journeying (cf. [4,11]). They are painted so as to appear to run into and out of rock crevices or rain water stains on the rocks, a feature interpreted as metaphorically signalling movements between everyday and spirit worlds (cf.…”

Section: Figurementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Before publishing his findings, Orpen dispatched Qing's comments and a copy of the paintings (see Figure 1) to the philologist Wilhelm Bleek in Cape Town, who in turn showed them to the /Xam Bushmen whose language and knowledge he was documenting with his sister-in-law, Lucy Lloyd. Despite considerable geographical distance from the Maluti mountains, Bleek's /Xam Bushmen informants appeared familiar with the content depicted in the paintings and the descriptions by Qing ( [2], [4], p. 6). This was the first indication that there are and have been, considerable similarities in ideas and practices across a spectrum of San peoples in southern Africa despite different historical and geographical contexts, a view since elaborated for KhoeSan more broadly by various researchers ( [5][6][7][8]).…”

Section: Introduction: On the Presence Of Snakes In Southern African mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Shades of the Rainbow Serpent? A KhoeSan Animal between Myth and Landscape in Southern Africa—Ethnographic Contextualisations of Rock Art Representations

Sullivan

Low²

2014

Arts

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The snake is a potent entity in many cultures across the world, and is a noticeable global theme in rock art and inscribed landscapes. We mobilise our long-term ethnographic research with southern African KhoeSan peoples to situate and interpret the presence of snake motifs in the region's rock art. We contextualise the snake as a transformative ontological mediator between everyday and "entranced" KhoeSan worlds (those associated with "altered states of consciousness"), to weave together both mythological and shamanistic interpretations of southern African rock art. Ethnographic explorations of experiences of snakes as both an aspect of natural history and the physical environment, and as embodiments of multiplicitous and mythical meaning by which to live and understand life, shed light on the presence of snakes and associated snake-themes in southern African rock art. By drawing on ethnographic material, and in conjunction with review of literature, we highlight a dynamic assemblage of extant associations between snakes, rain, water, fertility, blood, fat, transformation, dance and healing. We suggest that these extant associations have explanatory potential for understanding the meaning of these themes in the rock art created by the ancestors of contemporary KhoeSan peoples. Our paper contributes to a live debate regarding the interpretive relevance of ethnography for understanding rock art representations from the past.

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‘Appetite comes with eating’: Of Raiding and Wrong-Doing

King

2019

Outlaws, Anxiety, and Disorder in Southern Africa

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‘Rain snakes’ from the Senqu River: new light on Qing's commentary on San rock art from Sehonghong, Lesotho

Cited by 36 publications

References 26 publications

Cattle, raiding and disorder in Southern African history

Cattle, raiding and disorder in Southern African history

Shades of the Rainbow Serpent? A KhoeSan Animal between Myth and Landscape in Southern Africa—Ethnographic Contextualisations of Rock Art Representations

‘Appetite comes with eating’: Of Raiding and Wrong-Doing

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