The Centre for Extra-Mural Studies has organised a unique weekend excursion with Emeritus Professor John Parkington to the Cederberg for an immersive experience looking at rock art in situ which will allow participants to gain a unique insight into the lives of the San by tracing their footsteps and analysing their art and artefacts.
We will visit the rock art of the Vleiplaas and De Pakhuys sites in the upper Brandewyn River, east of the Pakhuis Pass. Less well known than those of the Sevilla trail, these paintings offer intriguing insights into San motives and meanings and add to our understanding of the relationship between painting and landscape in the San mind. We highlight the images of social and life history occasions of the hunter gatherer painters and show how making painted places out of previously undifferentiated rocky locations enabled the artists to remember and celebrate who they were as well as their sense of belonging in their painted landscape. We underline the fact that imagery is neither trivial nor superficial but, as Wilhelm Bleek remarked, ‘what deeply moved the Bushman mind’. A sitting eland, over twenty tiny elephants in a row, a line of bowmen, baboons and a possible leopard await.
The fee includes accommodation and dinner but not breakfast, lunch or drinks. All the cottages are self-catering. There is a restaurant, the Khoisan Kitchen, where you can eat breakfast and lunch should you not wish to cater for yourself.
We will meet at 12:00 at the Khoisan Kitchen at Travellers Rest in the Cederberg after which will have lunch and then go out to look at rock art sites. Wednesday all day and Thursday morning will again be spent looking at various rock art sites. We will have a lunch each evening in the Khoisan Kitchen area where Professor Parkington will talk about the cosmology of the San as well as about the San and their rock art. Departure is after lunch on Thursday.
John Parkington is Emeritus Professor and a Senior Research Scholar in the Archaeology Department at the University of Cape Town. He has been excavating and studying the lives of San hunter-gatherers, along with colleagues and students, for some decades and shares his insights whilst visiting sites across this landscape. He is the author of several books on rock art, rock engravings and archaeology as well as chapters in several books and over 150 scholarly articles.
For further information please contact Bronwyn Geldenhuys at Bronwyn.geldenhuys@uct.ac.za or Medeé Rall at medee.rall@uct.ac.za or on 083 707 6420.
Purchasers of this event also bought tickets for the following…
