Exploring personhood and identity marking: paintings of lions and felines in San rock art sites from the southern Maloti-Drakensberg and northeastern Stormberg, South Africa.

Abstract

With the influence of the ‘new’ ontologies of animisms and performative materialisms, research has shown that people, animals and things are relational and have agency. In southern San ethnography, behaving with understanding was essential for maintaining reciprocal, beneficial relationships between human and animal persons for the good of these communities. People identified with certain animals to facilitate these negotiations. This paper also considers how certain people may have identified through specific animals. San rock paintings of lion and other felines and their painted contexts provide an opportunity to investigate these multiplex relationships and identities. Felines are relatively commonly depicted in sites from the southern Maloti-Drakensberg and adjacent northeastern Stormberg Mountains. Predominantly, lions and felines are depicted walking or standing and are painted with male and female eland, female rhebok and hartebeest. Felines are also depicted with men and women in clothing, postures and equipment that have been associated with ritual specialists and their use of potency. These painted contexts of felines bring focus to their roles as efficient hunters and protectors and the establishment of reciprocal relations with antelope. The similar roles and skillsets of ritual specialists and their leonine transformations are highlighted with both their dividual and individual selves. In addition, the paper considers the affective range of wild and tame behaviours and notions of ǃko᷉ɑ-se and related ǃnɑnnɑ sse practices. Depictions of felines may be exemplars of powerful ritual specialists accentuating their skill and status, an interpretation that has important implications for realising a multiplex understanding of San personhood and identity marking.

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