Geoffrey Blundell – författare

The purpose of Seeing and Knowing is to demonstrate the depth and wide geographical impact of David Lewis-Williams’ contribution to rock art research by emphasizing theory and methodology drawn from ethnography. Contributors explore what it means to understand and learn from rock art, and a contrast is drawn between those sites where it is possible to provide a modern, ethnographic context, and those sites where it is not. This is the definitive guide to the interplay between ethnography and rock art interpretation, and is an ideal resource for students and researchers alike.

The purpose of Seeing and Knowing is to demonstrate the depth and wide geographical impact of David Lewis-Williams’ contribution to rock art research by emphasizing theory and methodology drawn from ethnography. Contributors explore what it means to understand and learn from rock art, and a contrast is drawn between those sites where it is possible to provide a modern, ethnographic context, and those sites where it is not. This is the definitive guide to the interplay between ethnography and rock art interpretation, and is an ideal resource for students and researchers alike.

The purpose of Seeing and Knowing is to demonstrate the depth and wide geographical impact of David Lewis-Williams’ contribution to rock art research by emphasizing theory and methodology drawn from ethnography. Contributors explore what it means to understand and learn from rock art, and a contrast is drawn between those sites where it is possible to provide a modern, ethnographic context, and those sites where it is not. This is the definitive guide to the interplay between ethnography and rock art interpretation, and is an ideal resource for students and researchers alike.

This volume critically examines sources of evidence and material from the archive that historically have been used to tell southern Africa's pre-colonial story.

This volume critically examines sources of evidence and material from the archive that historically have been used to tell southern Africa's pre-colonial story.

Archives of Times Past: Conversations about South Africa’s Deep History explores particular sources of evidence on southern Africa’s time before the colonial era. It gathers recent ideas about archives and archiving from scholars in southern Africa and elsewhere, focusing on the question: ‘How do we know, or think we know, what happened in the times before European colonialism?’ Historians who specialise in researching early history have learnt to use a wide range of materials from the past as source materials. What are these materials? Where can we find them? Who made them? When? Why? What are the problems with using them? The essays by well-known historians, archaeologists and researchers engage these questions from a range of perspectives and in illuminating ways. Written from personal experience, they capture how these experts encountered their archives of knowledge beyond the textbook. The book aims to make us think critically about where ideas about the time before the colonial era originate. It encourages us to think about why people in South Africa often refer to this ‘deep history’ when arguing about public affairs in the present. The essays are written at a time when public discussion about the history of southern Africa before the colonial era is taking place more openly than at any other time in the last hundred years. They will appeal to students, academics, educationists, teachers, archivists, and heritage, museum practitioners and the general public.

Archives of Times Past: Conversations about South Africa’s Deep History explores particular sources of evidence on southern Africa’s time before the colonial era. It gathers recent ideas about archives and archiving from scholars in southern Africa and elsewhere, focusing on the question: ‘How do we know, or think we know, what happened in the times before European colonialism?’ Historians who specialise in researching early history have learnt to use a wide range of materials from the past as source materials. What are these materials? Where can we find them? Who made them? When? Why? What are the problems with using them? The essays by well-known historians, archaeologists and researchers engage these questions from a range of perspectives and in illuminating ways. Written from personal experience, they capture how these experts encountered their archives of knowledge beyond the textbook. The book aims to make us think critically about where ideas about the time before the colonial era originate. It encourages us to think about why people in South Africa often refer to this ‘deep history’ when arguing about public affairs in the present. The essays are written at a time when public discussion about the history of southern Africa before the colonial era is taking place more openly than at any other time in the last hundred years. They will appeal to students, academics, educationists, teachers, archivists, and heritage, museum practitioners and the general public.

It is largely through the work of David Lewis-Williams that San rock art has come to be understood so well, as a complex symbolic and metaphoric representation of San religious beliefs and practices. The purpose of this volume is to demonstrate the depth and wide geographical impact of Lewis-Williams’ contribution, with particular emphasis on the use of theory and methodology drawn from ethno­graphy that he has used with inspirational effect in understanding the meaning and context of rock art in various parts of the world. Seeing and Knowing explores how to understand and learn from rock art with and without ethnography. Because many of the chapters are based on solid fieldwork and ethnographic research, they offer a new body of work that provides the evidence for differentiation between knowing and simply seeing. This volume is unique in that it focuses exclusively on rock art and ethnography, and covers such a wide geographic range of examples on this topic, from southern Africa, to Scandinavia, to the United States. Many of the chapters explore studies in rock art regions of the world where variation and constancy can be observed and explored across distances both in space and in time. The editors have entitled the book Seeing and Knowing to echo Lewis-Williams’ Believing and Seeing published almost thirty years ago; they say ‘seeing’ again because looking at rock art is and will always be central, and then what is seen when human eyes and minds look; they say ‘knowing’ in recognition that, by his work and by his example, archaeologists now know a little more than they knew before. Even so, as Lewis-Williams will be the first to say, we still know only a fraction.

It is largely through the work of David Lewis-Williams that San rock art has come to be understood so well, as a complex symbolic and metaphoric representation of San religious beliefs and practices. The purpose of this volume is to demonstrate the depth and wide geographical impact of Lewis-Williams’ contribution, with particular emphasis on the use of theory and methodology drawn from ethno­graphy that he has used with inspirational effect in understanding the meaning and context of rock art in various parts of the world. Seeing and Knowing explores how to understand and learn from rock art with and without ethnography. Because many of the chapters are based on solid fieldwork and ethnographic research, they offer a new body of work that provides the evidence for differentiation between knowing and simply seeing. This volume is unique in that it focuses exclusively on rock art and ethnography, and covers such a wide geographic range of examples on this topic, from southern Africa, to Scandinavia, to the United States. Many of the chapters explore studies in rock art regions of the world where variation and constancy can be observed and explored across distances both in space and in time. The editors have entitled the book Seeing and Knowing to echo Lewis-Williams’ Believing and Seeing published almost thirty years ago; they say ‘seeing’ again because looking at rock art is and will always be central, and then what is seen when human eyes and minds look; they say ‘knowing’ in recognition that, by his work and by his example, archaeologists now know a little more than they knew before. Even so, as Lewis-Williams will be the first to say, we still know only a fraction.