TANZANIA: rock art and ethnography

Wherever hunter-gatherers lived and there is rock, rock art exists. Rock art research in Tanzania has not been carried out as extensively or as systematically as in South Africa. Some early works were by colonial administrators and officials (e.g. Bagshawe 1923; Culwick 1929, 1931; Aitken 1948; Fosbrooke et al. 1950; Fozzard 1959). Later, the documentation of rock art was an outcome of research in other fields, such as in the doctoral studies of Fidelis Masao (1979) on the Later Stone Age of central Tanzania and that of Eric Ten Raa (1967) on Sandawe oral literature. My own study is one of the few that was conceived and directed at specifically exploring the rock art found among the Sandawe people (Lim 1992). This gives a limited body of data from which to work – both in terms of ethno - graphy and archaeology (rock art studies). This chapter suggests the need to re-evaluate methodologies and theories in the Tanzanian context, given its embryonic stage of study. South African rock art practices are valuabl e as a guide, but interpretations should not be limited only to those noted there; research requires being open to alternative possibilities.

The work of David Lewis-Williams and the University of the Witwatersrand's Rock Art Research Institute has dramatically changed how rock art research is undertaken – in emphasising the use of ethnography, and in its understanding of images as metaphors and symbols. As Lewis-Williams and others developed methodologies and theories over the past three decades (Lewis-Williams 1983; Dowson & Lewis-Williams 1994), extensive areas of southern Africa were investigated, with many paintings discovered and documented. A constantly expanding body of data allowed for the continued testing and refining of interpretations. Since the 1960s, rock art studies have matured and become an established sub-discipline of archaeology – a study accepted and popularised worldwide. South Africa is one of the few countries that is as rich in rock art sites as it is in the number of researchers actively engaged in rock art studies.