Dressed in Stone. Interpreting hunter-gatherer rock art of South Africa through the bodily practice of dress.

Den innfødte jeger- og sankerbefolkningen i Sør-Afrika er kjent for den fantastiske bergkunsten som finnes i store deler av landets fjellområder. Likevel har San-befolkningen selv ofte blitt beskrevet som 'primitive', og nakne mennesker. 'Kledd i stein' søker å forene to ulike felt innenfor arkeologisk forskning - den symbolske bergkunsten og kroppens materielle kultur. En studie av historisk klesdrakt og muntlige fortellinger har vist at praksis rundt klær og klesdrakt var svært kompleks og meningsbærende blant den historiske San-befolkningen i det sørlige Afrika. Det å kle kroppen var forbundet med å skape og opprettholde viktige sosiale relasjoner, ikke bare mellom mennesker, men mellom mennesker og dyr, og mennesker og andre levende vesener. Dette var sosiale relasjoner som var avgjørende for overlevelse. For eksempel kunne Vannet forsvinne dersom jentene som gikk for å hente det ikke pudret både seg selv og kilden med godlukt. For at byttedyret skulle gi seg hen til jegeren måtte jegeren opptre respektfullt; identifisere seg med dyret gjennom tatoveringer og kutt i armen, og ved å kle familien sin i skinn fra tidligere jaktbytte. 'Kledd i stein' har lagt til grunn denne forståelsen av klesdrakt, som en sosial og relasjonell praksis, som utgangspunkt for å forsøke å svare på nye spørsmål knyttet til bergkunsten: Hvordan, og i hvilke ulike sammenhenger blir klær og personlig utsmykning avbildet i kunsten? Og hvorfor? Ved å kombinere kunnskap fra tidligere arkeologisk og antropologisk forskning, nye arkiv- og samlingsstudier, og lokal kunnskap fra etterkommere etter tidligere jeger-og sankersamfunn, har prosjektet underbygget og eksemplifisert sammenhenger mellom klespraksis, produksjon av bergkunst og overgangsritualer for unge menn og kvinner.

The results and outcome of the research efforts have, in different ways and in various levels of details, answered to the broader aims and objectives of the project and contributed to the academic as well as public discourse in ways that should alter future research objectives. They have already challenged popular stereotypes of the San of Southern Africa by means of a first-of-its-kind museum exhibition and will continue to do so through an accompanying activity book made available for all learners visiting the popular Origins Centre in Johannesburg. In exploring various aspects of dress practices, through material, corporal, symbolic and ontological perspectives, the resulting publications will contribute to inform and expand on a part of San cultural heritage and knowledge that has been largely untapped, but that proves to have been of major importance in many facets of past San life. By explicitly linking these insights to different facets of south African rock art, the research exemplifies how a focus on dress can contribute to interpretations of the art. It also indicates that some of these practices have long traditions in the past, as well as resilience in the present, even in communities thought to have been ‘acculturated’ decades ago.

The indigenous hunter-gatherers of South Africa, the San (Bushmen), are well known as makers of the beautiful rock art that is still found in the mountain regions of the country. Although sophisticated artists, the San themselves have more often than not been portrayed as poor and, for some reason, naked people. "Dressed in stone" pose the question; what happens with our understanding of the San rock art if we open up the field of interpretations to include a perspective of the bodily practice of dress? The project will reunite two domains of archaeological research that for a long time have been separate - the symbolic images of rock art, with the material culture of the body. The aim of the study is twofold: to show how the painted representations of dress and dressed bodies might contribute to enlighten our understanding of dress as a significant cultural practice among past San communities and; to point out how keeping a perspective of dress and bodily practices in focus of rock art analyses might change or increase our understanding of the complex and often ambiguous images. An apparent opposition in the rock art between dressed bodies, and clothing in the absence of bodies, will be investigated through representations of cloaks, bags, and head and body ornaments. The empirical analysis will serve as the point of departure for ethnographically, and theoretically informed questions related to the negotiations of personhood and ontological flux that are associated with the dressing of the body. Issues around the production and manifestation of identity, rites of passage, and subsistence strategies are all expected to contribute to a revision and alternative interpretation of the rock art that for the last decades have been considered 'essentially shamanistic'. Consequently, the study will have transferable values to the larger archaeological discourse of rock art studies across the world.