Image-makers: The Social Context of a Hunter-gatherer Ritual BY J David Lewis-Williams

ISBN: 9781108815451

Publisher    Cambridge University Press, 2020

Paperback, 204 pages

Worldwide, rock art images are often opaque to modern viewers. This book is based on authentic 1870s verbatim records of southern San beliefs, rituals and daily life, as well as on records of the lives and beliefs of the San who still live in the Kalahari Desert. Readers will be able to see how the practice of image-making fitted into southern San life. They will learn that San imagery is not simply about recording hunts and the animals they saw around them. Rather, the images helped to sustain the social status of those who made them. San beliefs and rituals, combined with specific features of what is painted on the rocks, show that the images were poised between the world of daily life and a sphere of highly important spiritual activity. Those who made the images and moved between these realms were respected, even feared, members of society. This book will be of interest to a wide readership as it provides insight into an image-making process that became extinct at the end of the nineteenth century. It shows that, far from being trivial, San rock art was embedded in San religion