RASSA (Rock Art Scotland and South Africa): Working with Local Communities to Record and Preserve Rock Art in South Africa
Venue
MS Teams (please e-mail African.Studies@ed.ac.uk for the link)Description
People in rural communities, especially in post-apartheid South Africa, are seldom able to contribute to the archaeological project that is the investigation of their own past. There are hundreds of rock paintings and engravings in the subcontinent, many of them on traditional, communally owned land and in difficult, high mountain terrain. They are often overlooked as unimportant because they are not sufficiently valorized in the public eye. The Rock Art Scotland and South Africa (RASSA) pilot project was implemented to redress this problem. The approach taken was to stimulate effective change in the way that local community groups view and value their own heritage, how they present rock art sites to visitors and how this activity can create economic and social opportunities with a focus on how rock art sites can be safeguarded for future generations. The project set out to achieve 1) the archaeological research goal of locating rock art sites, and 2) the heritage management goal of valorising rock art, partly through income generation. Both challenges were addressed by putting together a team of local Field Technicians, equipped with low-cost rock art enhancement software, and remunerating them for their time. This is what happened.
Dr. Sam Challis is Head and Senior Researcher at the Rock Art Research Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. He is also a current IASH Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, conducting a project entitled Digital innovation in decoloniality: enhancing the images of ‘Bushman’ resistance.
Key speakers
- Dr. Sam Challis is Head and Senior Researcher at the Rock Art Research Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa