<HTML>[Hope this is not straying too far off-topic]
Andrew Smith. 1993. New approaches to Saharan Rock art. L'arte e l'ambiente del Sahara preistorico: dati e interpretazioni. Memorie della Societa Italiana di Scienze Naturali e del Museo civico Storia Naturale di Milano.. Volume XXVI, Fascicolo.
"Abstract: Two quite distinct genres of Saharan rock art can be recognised in the bovidien period: a white-faced style and a balck-faced style, both with associated cattle depictions. Using ideas from Southern African rock art studies, it is suggested here that these two art genres of the Sahara are metaphors for the belief systems of North African people of Mediterranean stock, perhaps pre-Berbers, and black African <<negroid>> herders similar to the Fulani today. It is further suggested that many paintings may be the result of altered states of consciousness reached by young Fulani men who achieve the higher levels of initiation, and by the equivalent of <<saints>> found among North African people of the Maghreb today. If this is true, we must then approach the Saharan rock art not as narrative, but as reflecting deep-meaning of belief structures of the societies involved."
[Introduction:] "The Sahara is one of the world's great parietal art areas, and may be much more complex than its rivals, the rock art of Southern Africa. The ethnographic commentary available for the southern hemisphere paintings has produced some marvellous insights into aboriginal cosmology abd symbolism. What is most striking is that the art has important deep meaning for the artists and the community they served, and any suggestion that it was produced merely for <<art's sake>>, or to amuse the artist has been shown to be irrelevant. At the same time we must recognise that the art is <<functional>> at several levels. It provides a visual commentary on the society which produced the artists, that no doubt satisfied the aesthetics of the social group, as well as performing necessary documentation of fundamental beliefs. In some cases the art may even have been integral in ceremonies, and so had spiritual power, much the same as masks have <<power>> while being used by dancers in some societies, such as Dogon. Dogon are also known to have used rock painting as part of their ceremonies.
The complexity of Saharan rock art is compounded by the probability that it was not a single rock art genre produced by one society. The range of styles and content suggest very strongly that there were a number of societies whi lived at different times and in different parts of the Sahara who produced their own art. Thus trying to make sense or interpret what was being said in Saharan rock arts is fraught by a lack of chronology of the paintings, and identity of the gross cultural group who were the artists. In addition we are faced with a time depth of perhaps greater than 7000 years in an environment whioch fluctuated dramatically, permitting occupation by different economic and political groups over time. If this is indeed the case, then we may be observing in the rock art details of human occupation of the Sahara which have yet to be separated archaeologically. From the art we potentially may be able to set up a series of hypotheses that might be tested by excavation.
While we accept the proviso of Vansina that the time factor is important and should not be taken lightly, we are not so pessimistic that a commentary is unavailable for interpretation, at least at the macro-social level where economic similarities between the paintings and modern ethnography exist.
To this end two separate approaches are made in this paper. The first is to describe a certain genre of paintings, that of the so-called <bovidien>> period, without ethnographic commentary. The second is to use comparable ethnographic, historical and physical anthropological data to provide a commentary. The conclusion will be to see if we can marry the two approaches and come up with a viable set of meanings for this genre."
[Conclusion:] "The complexity of even this one genre of paintings of the "bovidien" period in the Saharan rock art must be obvious by now. This naturalistic art has been divided into two separate styles on the basis of perceived racial distinctions in the human depicted. Attempt has been made to show that even without archaeological, physical anthropological or sociological commentary a significant number of attributes other than racial ones could be identified which equally suggested that there were two quite separate styles. These included the dress and hair styles of the humans, the way the animals were drawn, and even the way the activities on the panels were laid out.
The basic and lowest level of abstraction in the commentary was to relate some of the features identitified on the panels to material excavated from archaeological sites in the Central Sahara showing evidence of pastoralism between 6500 and 4500 B.P. The number of items were minimal, and restricted to ceramics and items of personal decoration, since much of the material culture of these nomadic herders was of perishable material, such as leather and woven fibres.
Some clues to physical difference within the Saharan populations were to be found in the skeletal material of this period. This indicated both black African and "proto-mediterranean" peoples. whether these were contemporary in the same area has yet to be fully explored, as the number of analyzed and dated skeletons is still far too small to make any real statement.
The next level of abstraction was to try to find ethnographic analogues for these different populations, and here the identity of black herding groups with a major pastoral people of West Africa, the Fulani, originally suggested by Hampate Ba & Dieterlen was exmained. In spite of the time distance between modern Fulani and the Saharan paintings the degree of fit is too good to be ignored or discarded out of hand, as it is by Vansina. While the details of Fulani ritual behaviour can only be glimpsed at in outline in the paintings, it is suggested here that spirit possession may have been an important underlying force behind the depictions, and the kotive for the paintings, similar to that of the San in Southern Africa, was a metaphor for the trance experience, and a powerful expression of the trancer's contact with "non-ordinary" reality. Among the Fulani only trained initiates can participate at the deepest level in ritual behaviour. These are people most likely to have been the artists capable of seeing the cattle as metaphorical intermediaries between man and the spirit world, which is shown in the rather special painting in Lhote and Hampate Ba & Dieterlen.
The rich detail in the "white-face" style which was equated with the Berber people of North Africa, suggests a slightly different emphasis to the material depicted, but this still represents a metaphorical expression of ritual values and experience. In this case the social structure of Berber society, although economically similar to the Fulani, is quite different, being a highly structured hierarchical society with families of religious specialists who take care of spiritual needs. The role of women in this society is enhanced so that those with baraka or special mystical power can be of both sexes.
To conclude, I would suggest that major different underlying the two art styles is in the motivation behind the art.The "black-face" style has a stronger suggestion of trance experience and thus would conform to my third objective mentioned above: the paintings were a metaphor for the trance experience. In contrast, the narrative to Hampte Ba & Dieterlen's first objective: an archive of myths preserved for initiates.
The two approaches used to analyze the rock art, with and without commentary, allow us to see sociological information without interpreting it. Thus the paintings contain information that can be used by archaeologists. By adding an ethnographic commentary we approach the deep-meaning of the paintings, but even with the time separation between the present and the period the paintings were done we can get a glimpse at the importance of these depcitions in the beliefs of the people which go far beyond the purely narrative."
Mike.</HTML>
) The "fringe" leads in many directions eh Mikey ?