2014
DOI: 10.3390/arts3020215
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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

Abstract: 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… Show more

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Cited by 21 publications
(13 citation statements)
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“…Belief that ritual potency is signaled by particular animals and plants is widespread in the worldviews, rituals, and religious beliefs of many cultural groups. Best known are the belief systems and symbolism linked to apex predators (lions, eagles, crocodiles), large mammals (elephants, rhinos, hippopotami), and large snakes (pythons, anacondas;Douglas 1957, 1970, Reichel-Dolmatoff 1996, Sullivan and Low 2014.…”
Section: Cultural Symbolismmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Belief that ritual potency is signaled by particular animals and plants is widespread in the worldviews, rituals, and religious beliefs of many cultural groups. Best known are the belief systems and symbolism linked to apex predators (lions, eagles, crocodiles), large mammals (elephants, rhinos, hippopotami), and large snakes (pythons, anacondas;Douglas 1957, 1970, Reichel-Dolmatoff 1996, Sullivan and Low 2014.…”
Section: Cultural Symbolismmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Kohn 2013), and the personified, supernatural force behind the phenomenon of rain -known as |nanus -that asserts agency in selecting those humans who become healers (Low 2008;. Indeed, the affirmation of agency and intentionality in multiple entities and selves beyond-the-human might be considered as key to KhoeSan and other 'animist' perspectives on 'reality', through which agency, shaped by the diverse form, materiality and perceptual capacities of actors, is considered to be present everywhere, requiring constant attention and attunement in choices made by humans (Brightman et al 2013;Descola 2013;Harvey 2005;Kohn 2013;Sullivan 2010Sullivan , 2013aSullivan and Low 2014). This perspective on differentiated agency and intentionality distinguishes 'animism' from the vital materialism privileged in the 'machinic assemblages' of Deleuze andGuattari (1987(1980)), later reformulated as actor network theory (Latour 2007), and latterly expressed as an invigorated awareness of the organisational and ethical imperatives asserted by specific materialities (Bennett 2010;Hecht 2012;Jackson 2013).…”
Section: Journal Of Political Ecologymentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Interestingly, this understanding contains relatively weak connections to humans and their behavior . Unlike in other communities of the region (Sullivan and Low ), humans have only limited ability to influence the rain, and the rain is not an immediate reaction to human good deeds or wrongdoing. While Damara people relate the longer term changes in precipitation to transformations in the social and political world (Sullivan ), the particular rainfall patterns are explained with much less reference to human conduct.…”
Section: Being‐in‐the‐rainmentioning
confidence: 93%