Heritage Cases

The rock art of the San of South Africa is among the richest and best documented in the world. Most importantly, various ethnographic data were collected (Bleek and Lloyd, 1911; Marshall, 1959, 1962, 1969; Silberbauer, 1981; Shostak, 1983; Barnard, 2007), particularly with regard to the realization of the paintings (How, Walton, 1962). However, these writings raise some heuristic and epistemological questions, as some San groups - although they have provided a wealth of cosmogonic, mythological and traditional information - have never practiced rock art. Small conceptual and symbolic disparities have also been highlighted across regions, and it is difficult to measure the implications of these differences for the interpretation of figurations. In addition, over the decades, many researchers have developed disparate hypotheses and theories (Pager, 1971, Vinnicombe, 1976; Lewis-Williams, 2005; McCall, 2010; Mazel, 2011; Le Quellec, 2016). And while any analogy has its limits, the interpretative porosity between Western European cave art and South African rock art remains evident: attempts to understand it either conceived it as a hobby or continue to understand it as a reflection of the spiritual and religious conceptions of the societies that produced it. Since the discovery of the Palaeolithic decorated caves, mainly in France and Spain, interpretations issued to try to explain the meanings of these parietal arts have continued to inspire the theoretical framework of South African research. However, many of these theories are nomothetic and are part of a religious register. In other words, they lead to a general explanation that aims to clarify all these images and they are expressed in terms of "beliefs", which are commonly thought to fall within the religious sphere. Moreover, these first readings all have in common that they emphasize the importance of ritual practices. As early as 1964, however, A. Leroi-Gourhan questioned the foundations of these ritual interpretations. In his book “Les religions de la Préhistoire”, he systematically tackles the abusive use of ethnographic analogies that illustrate abundantly, that exemplify more than they demonstrate. Any equivocal evidence that might indicate ritual or religious practices is questioned. Since this episode of redesigning the theoretical foundations, French parietalists have been reluctant to produce demonstrations of the artists' intentions. This interpretative aspect is therefore an almost taboo subject in the discipline. Some of the parietalists and rock art students solve this problem by arguing that, in many cases, the motivations of artists will never be known. Yet the term "sanctuary" continues to describe ornate sites, and the implicit consensual premise that dominates the scientific community remains the following: artists who have sunk into the depths of caves to inscribe figurations and signs, or who have carved and painted outdoor rocks, cannot have had intentions other than devotional, religious, religious and sacred intentions. There are of course exceptions, particularly among Spanish researchers, but this axiom remains largely present, although it is never explained. There remains a grey area around the conceptual foundations of the discipline. In this context, in South Africa, while research stumbles on fundamental iconographic identification issues, and the diversity of themes and styles remains poorly understood, there are still problems with the function of figurations and the motivations of artists. In particular, the relationship between ethnographic narratives, ritual practices and rock art remains problematic. Finally, few studies, even the most recent, take sufficient account of the individual character of the compositions and regional differences in the traditions of elaboration of these figurations (Solomon, 2016). It now seems necessary to look at our categories of analysis and to historiograph our own modes of interpretation. My research is part of a process of questioning terms that are the subject of self-suggestion and which lead to evasive conclusions, even circular reasoning (rock art sites are linked to systems of "beliefs", these "sanctuaries" are the scene of ritual practices, etc.). To do this, I use the definition criteria used as conceptual tools and examine the South African data that have served as a basis for ritual explanations since the 19th century. The aim is to formalize scientifically the understanding of these practices in the study of rock art. How are the remains, figurations, clues attributed to ritual practices? According to which aspects is it possible to categorize the different ritual interpretations of South African rock sites? The aim is to analyse all these practices, subsumed under the name of ritual practices, in order to try to overcome certain conceptual and interpretative aporias. My objective is thus to test both the reality of these practices in the field and the coherence of the interpretations issued in this sense. For it is indeed from this category that a significant part of the theories of the discipline is built. My research work has two counterparts - one discursive and bibliographic, the other more field-oriented - that I compare at different scales. The first part of my work establishes a critical inventory of the definitions of ritual and its implicit corollaries (sanctuaries, religion, the sacred, symbolism, etc.) developed in sociology, anthropology, philosophy and the history of religions. It is a question of clarifying what we are talking about when we talk about the ritual component in these disciplines, by going beyond the use of the elusive terms commonly associated with it. It is then a question of listing, classifying and breaking down in an ad hoc database the demonstrations that integrate at least one ritual element for rock art sites in southern Africa (mainly South Africa, and mainly Drakensberg, but also to a lesser extent, for multi-scale comparison: Namibia, Lesotho, Zimbabwe and Malawi) since the 19th century to the present day. The second part of my work aims to examine, in the field, the validity of the criteria that make it possible to assign a ritual character to these different sites. For example, from an iconographic point of view, nosebleeds, dance scenes, "mythical women", winged creatures (bedridden), and therianthropes (among others) are considered rituals in interpretations. So I developed a study protocol that allows me to establish: -a complete digital data acquisition for the establishment of 3D models (as well as for the next phase: systematic prospecting via Dstretch©). This then makes it possible to virtually "return" to the figurations. -a systematic prospecting of images and details invisible to the naked eye (via Dstretch©, a plugin designed to improve digital images, under the ImageJ software). -a study of the positioning and relations between figurations, homotheties, superpositions. The objective is to detect if figurations have been isolated during the production of hypotheses (whether they are invisible to the naked eye or whether they have been isolated, by intentional or unintentional selection). -the recording of all topographical (dimensions and volumes of the site), geographical (location of the decorated site, relationship and positioning with other nearby sites) and useful scenographic data. Third, I apply one of the methods used in ethnoarchaeology (Gallay, 2011), which is inspired by the logicist program (Gardin, 1997): by putting the two inventories (the definitions and the interpretative database) in perspective, I highlight the rules for transferring and transposing an observed scenario (which is anthropological) to archaeological contexts (whose scenario is by definition impossible to observe). By contextualizing the operations of deduction and inference, in order to shed light on implicit factors (established knowledge, common sense, socio-cultural context, etc.), I identify both the underlying paradigms and the drivers of our interpretive categories. The method summarized above should make it possible to determine how the ritual component is articulated within the interpretations formulated by testing various approaches that concern comparable contexts. My objective is thus to test the consistency of the interpretations issued in this sense and, possibly, to propose alternative approaches. The innovative nature of this research project therefore lies in the development of a protocol of analysis and reflection that tends towards a critical and synoptic discussion of ritualistic approaches in South African rock art. Through the development of this innovative analytical and reflexive protocol, which is the cornerstone of this research project, the definition of ritual in rock art - a notion that is often at the heart of the interpretations formulated - can only be clarified. The theoretical bases of these, and thus our own categories of analysis, will be reviewed in the light of the logicist program and ethnoarchaeological methods. Such an approach suggests a discussion whose heuristic and epistemological scope would be of great interest to the discipline. In addition, please take into consideration that I just received a south african research visa for 4 months and that this project received a field grant from the Paris 1 Fondation and another from the French Institute od South Africa.