This paper outlines a new role for rock art in the writing of southern African history. The old view of the art as a pictorial record of Stone Age life needs to be discarded. What has been learned about southern African rock art has raised the status of its images from objects in need of explanation to evidence for historically situated social processes. These processes implicated not only the makers of the art but also neighbouring peoples with whom they interacted. The art became a site of struggle as ‘egalitarian’ values were eroded and shamans assumed political roles that included control of resources.
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