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Sevilla, Clanwilliam: This site at Sevilla in the Clanwilliam area has particular significance in the ongoing debate about the meaning of Southern African rock art. While the dominant understanding of rock art has been the shamanistic/trance hypothesis, voices from the Western Cape have articulated a model of rock art based on gender and gender roles in San/Bushman society. Professor John Parkington of the University of Cape Town has argued in a series of papers that a central concern of San culture was the designation of gender roles. Recent ethnography from researchers of the San have shown how embedded in the culture and folklore is the conflation at the level of metaphor of hunting and sex. Parkington therefore argues that the symbol of the eland, so prevalent in rock art is not just, as the trance proponents would have it, a symbol of energy and power which enhances trance experience, but a symbol of the feminine and a statement about female and male initiation. Equally it was only through the killing of a large game animal like an eland that the male could take up his position as an adult male, eligible for marriage. Gender role positions are taken up through male and female initiation rites and Parkington has argued that a number of paintings in the Western Cape signify these important initiation rites. This tracing by kind permission of the UCT Spatial Archaeology Research Unit [click for larger image] This is one of the paintings that Parkington has argued reflects male initiation. In his understanding the clothed (karossed) figures represent those already initiated while the naked represent those still to undergo the initiation rites of seclusion, instruction and dance. The clothed figures carry bows and quivers, symbols of the strictly masculine role in San society while the naked figures are without bows. The eland within the panel represent both game that the boy is required to kill to become initiated, as well as the prey/feminine that becomes available to him as an initiated man. The absence of any feminine figure confirms this understanding. ©Copyright Prime Origins 2001 CONTACT BRETT HILTON-BARBER primeorigins.co.za is an iafrica.com Private Label site