Rock art of the Later Stone Age foragers of the Matobo Hills (Zimbabwe): A study of symbolic landscapes through time

Abstract

Rock art is one of the various expressions of the cultural landscapes of the past hunter-gatherers’ societies. Indeed the distribution of the rock art sites and their potential relations is one aspect of the settlement patterns and mobility strategies. In Southern Africa, previous studies explored the relationship between rock art and landscapes (T. Lenssen-Erz in the Brandberg for instance), and demonstrated useful insights into forager settlement pattern and social organisation. Based on this theoretical and methodological ground, our research explores the rock art landscapes of the LSA populations in Matobo (Zimbabwe), and their dynamics in the longue durée, from the final Pleistocene to the late Holocene. It questions 1) rock art site function(s), 2) rock art role(s) in organising space, 3) the dynamics of settlement patterns through time and their potential agents in regard to climatic conditions. Based on archives completed with fieldwork data, we propose a method using a four-scale approach: the iconography (composition, theme, technique, style), the painted panel (rock aspect, location, visibility), the site (archaeological context, morphology, habitability and acoustics), and the location in the landscape (site and resource accessibility, site view and sound dispersion) which investigation includes GIS analysis of the local DEM. Our research extends and complements the model of socio-economic organization and settlement pattern proposed by N. Walker from the unearthed archaeological materials. In the end our ambition is to provide a multi-proxi vision of the social geography of these populations.