An animist shamanism: the world behind San Rock Art

Sam Challis (University of Witwatersrand) & Andrew Skinner (University of South Africa) Hunter-gatherer cosmology in southern Africa is very clearly multinatural; persons human and non-human working to behave intelligibly to each other so that relations are brokered and maintained. Until recently, however, rock art interpretations have implied a physical division between realms animal and human, spiritual and mundane. Ironically, the dominant paradigm was founded on the principle that the images did not represent everyday life. The New Animisms have offered up a palette of colours with which to paint a new picture of San rock art, one which emphasises negotiation-as-navigation, social topographies and the ontological consequences of place, position, and perspective. Instead of showcasing shamans’ power, it transpires that images were rather made to broker ‘proper’ relations between entities on a shared landscape.