Rock Art Research

In recent legislation, South Africa seeks to legally recognize its First Nations—collectively known as the Khoisan. The process to achieve recognition is onerous and perhaps even impossible for some Khoisan-descendant communities. While rock art, most closely associated with San peoples, is a claim to country, the dearth of evidence directly linking identifiable San communities and individuals to painted places makes it unlikely that most Khoisan communities could use the images in such claims. The biographical thus becomes vital to any claims for Khoisan recognition and their claim to country. Fortunately, there is archival evidence for some communities in some parts of South Africa that allow us to link people to places and to pictures in those places. Although incomplete, the archival evidence still allows some individual and communal San biographies to be linked to the land and its rock art.