SYMBIOTIC INTERACTION BETWEEN BLACK FARMERS AND SOUTH-EASTERN SAN - IMPLICATIONS FOR SOUTHERN AFRICAN ROCK ART STUDIES, ETHNOGRAPHIC ANALOGY, AND HUNTER-GATHERER CULTURAL-IDENTITY

Studies of San rock art have generally assumed the existence of a stru cturally uniform ''pan-San'' cognitive system from at least 2,000 year s B.P. to the present all over southern Africa. It is suggested here t hat the assumption of continuities in San religious ideology and ritua l practice has resulted in insufficient attention to the possible infl uence of the ideologies and ritual practices of encapsulating black fa rming communities on the cosmologies and ritual life of their San neig hbours and the expression of this influence in the rock art. In the li ght of recent studies demonstrating the profound effects of contact on hunter-gatherers in southern Africa and elsewhere, the possible expre ssion of southern Nguni and Sotho religious concepts and ritual practi ces in the rock art of the south-eastern mountains of southern Africa, as a result of symbiotic interaction between south-eastern San and bl ack farmers, is investigated here. Some of the implications of such sy mbiotic interaction for the use of ethnographic analogy to interpret r ock art and other iconography, as well as some of the implications for debates surrounding the cultural identity of hunter-gatherers in Afri ca and elsewhere, are discussed.