ROCK ART OF THE WATERBERG, rites and transformation

353pp., map, b/w & colour illus., paperback, Wits University Press, Johannesburg, 2025

ISBN: 9781776149575   

In this comprehensive, richly illustrated, archaeological study of rock art in the Waterberg region of Limpopo Province, Lyn Wadley and Ghilraen Laue decode the visual languages of 130 sites – many photographed for the first time – to show how Bushman hunter-gatherers, Iron Age farmers and Khoekhoe herders coexisted and influenced one another’s cultural practices over two thousand years.

"Rock Art of the Waterberg offers a confident and informal analysis of the rock art of the Waterberg and explores approaches that currently engage rock art research: the identification of images and themes, the relationship between ethnographic observations and rock painting practices and intentions, the ontology of painters and a phenomenological understanding of the painted landscape." John Parkington, Emeritus Professor, Department of Archaeology, University of Cape Town

"Not only is this book groundbreaking by taking a comprehensive look at the three main art traditions in northern South Africa - the San hunter-gatherers, Khoekhoe herders and Northern Sotho farmer forms - but it also places them in their proper indigenous contexts, highlighting how they relate to healing, hunting and initiation rituals, seen through the lens of cultural cross-pollination." Siyakha Mguni, Michaelis School of Fine Art and author of Termites of the Gods

Lyn Wadley is Honorary Professor of Archaeology in the Evolutionary Studies Institute, University of the Witwatersrand.

Ghilraen Laue is Curator at the KwaZulu-Natal Museum and Honorary Research Fellow in the Rock Art Research Institute, University of the Witwatersrand.