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a* and J.D. Lewis-Williams b The paintings We consider images from a site in the Motheo District, Free State province (Fig. 1). To safeguard its location, we refer to it here as Site 30. In many ways the imagery here is typical of sites in the eastern Free State and, indeed, of South Africa’s southeastern mountains. Two of the most commonly encountered painted elements — depictions of eland and other antelope, and ‘fragments of the dance’ — occur here. ‘Fragments of the dance’ are references to the Great Dance, the central religious ritual of today’s San people and their ancestors. 6 There is, however, a painting that affords us a rare opportunity to understand how individuals manipulated beliefs about the supernatural potency of particular animal species to create unconventional imagery. Embodiments of animal potency Images that combine human and antelope features are a widespread feature of southern African hunter-gatherer paintings and engravings. Researchers believe that such conflations, known as therianthropes, depict supernaturally potent beings. 4,7–11 Those that incorporate antelope and human characteristics are the most commonly recorded examples of this category of image, but, as we shall see, therianthropes can incorporate elements associated with other animal species. We examine three therianthropic paintings at Site 30. Images A and B (Figs 2 and 3) have heads each with a pair of pointed ears and an elongated muzzle, details reminiscent of equids (e.g. zebra) and bovids, especially antelopes. Additional features narrow the range of possible referents — image B has two parallel lines on either side of the pointed ears, features that probably depict horns. Similar horns are also associated with image A. In addition, both images have short curved lines associated with their buttocks, a detail that may depict an antelope (but probably not an eland) tail. We conclude therefore that images A and B have antelope-like heads and tails and thus combine human and antelope characteristics. Equally significant for our interpretation of images A and B is the posture in which both have been rendered. They bend forward from the waist, an attitude that contemporary San dancers often adopt when the supernatural potency in their stomachs is activated and causes stomach cramps.
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