Rock art and potsherds have become valuable tools in tracing the ancient migration pathways in Africa. The footprints of the Khoi and the early Bantu pastoralists who moved into southern Africa during the last 2,000 years have obviously vanished in time, but they left behind them a distinct cultural record that has enabled archaeologists to understand something of their cosmology and where they came from.

Dr Ben Smith of the Rock Art Research Institute presented new evidence to the Genes and Prehistory Session showing a tradition of Khoi rock art that is distinctly different from the naturalistic realism of the San and the robust primitivism of the early Bantu speakers. Khoi rock art is predominantly made up of strong geometric shapes and the the areas where it has been discovered correlate closely with the Khoi migration patterns into southern Africa from northern Botswana or southern Angola. These migration pathways have been identified by the remains of Khoi-style pottery.

Dr Smith said where the Khoi and the San occupied the same landscape they appeared to have respected the sanctity of each other’s rock art sites. Citing an example of rock art from the Limpopo Valley, of the 316 rock art sites discovered do far, only 79 had components of both San naturalism and Khoi geometrism. “It would seem the two groups intentionally avoided each other’s shelters” said Smith.

Professor Tom Huffman of the University of the Witwatersrand, presented a “family tree” of southern Africa ceramics from which it can be deduced that the early Iron Age Bantu speakers moved southwards from their west African “homeland” in three distinct streams.

The scarred incisions on a Shona woman’s stomach symbolized the furrows in a field, which in turn were incised on the furnaces in which hoe-heads were smelted. The furnaces themselves were crafted in the shape of a woman’s body so that the symbolism of fertility was looped through various aspects of material culture.

This “motif pool” had a thread of consistency and changes and additions to it indicated influences over time.