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Writing San Histories: The /Xam and ‘Shamanism’ Revisited

2011; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 37; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/03057070.2011.552548

1465-3893

Anne Solomon,

Australian Indigenous Culture and History

Abstract The oral narratives and personal accounts given by the /Xam of the northern Cape, and recorded by Wilhelm Bleek and Lucy Lloyd, have played a key role in interpretations of rock art and of southern San culture, recent and ancient, generally. However, the validity of the account that relates the /Xam texts to supposed shamanic practices is an issue requiring attention. The texts are open to other readings that do not support the notion that ‘altered states’ are central in the thought of diverse San groups. Insofar as its methods and ‘neuropsychological’ foundations produce an account of a unified and largely uniform San cultural identity, the shamanistic reading sacrifices historicity and a more nuanced understanding of San pasts and lived experiences. As an alternative to positivist and structuralist accounts, phenomenology is an approach that is of relevance to under-explored issues regarding the writing of San (cultural) histories by archaeologists, anthropologists and other scholars. Notes 1 See J.D. Lewis-Williams, ‘Ethnography and Iconography: Aspects of Southern San Thought and Art’, Man (n.s.), 15, 3 (September 1980), pp. 467–82; J.D. Lewis-Williams, Believing and Seeing: Symbolic Meanings in Southern San Rock Paintings (London, Academic Press, 1981); P. Vinnicombe, People of the Eland: Rock Paintings of the Drakensberg Bushmen as a Reflection of their Life and Thought (Pietermaritzburg, University of Natal Press, 1976). 2 Lewis-Williams, Believing and Seeing. 3 M.G. Guenther, ‘The Trance Dancer as an Agent of Social Change Among the Farm Bushmen of the Ghanzi District’, Botswana Notes and Records, 7 (1975), pp. 161–6; M.G. Guenther, Tricksters and Trancers: Bushman Religion and Society (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1999); R. Katz, Boiling Energy: Community Healing Among the Kalahari Kung (Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press, 1982); L. Marshall, ‘The Medicine Dance of the !Kung Bushmen’, Africa, 39, 4 (October 1969), pp. 347–81; L.J. Marshall, Nyae Nyae !Kung Beliefs and Rites (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press and Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology Monographs, 1999). 4 J.D. Lewis-Williams and T. Dowson, ‘The Signs of All Times: Entoptic Phenomena in Upper Palaeolithic Art’, Current Anthropology, 29, 2 (April 1988), pp. 201–45; J.D. Lewis-Williams, The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origins of Art (London, Thames and Hudson, 2002); J.D. Lewis-Williams and D.G. Pearce, San Spirituality: Roots, Expression, and Social Consciousness (Walnut Creek, AltaMira Press, 2004); T. Dowson, ‘Rain in Bushman Belief, Politics and History: The Rock-Art of Rain-Making in the South-Eastern Mountains, Southern Africa’, in C. Chippindale and P.S.C. Taçon (eds), The Archaeology of Rock Art (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 73–89. 5 For a critique, see A. Solomon, ‘San “Spirituality” and Evolution: Eight Questions for Lewis-Williams and Pearce’, South African Archaeological Bulletin [SAAB], 61, 184 (December 2006), pp. 209–12; A. Solomon, ‘Book Review’, SAAB, 61, 183 (June 2006), pp. 117–18. 6 See D. Brown, Voicing the Text: South African Oral Poetry and Performance (Cape Town, Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 33–74; A. James, The First Bushman's Path: Stories, Songs and Testimonies of the /Xam of the Northern Cape (Pietermaritzburg, University of Natal Press, 2001); S. Watson, Return of the Moon: Versions from the /Xam (Cape Town, Carrefour Press, 1991). 7 See A. Mazel, ‘People Making History: The Last Ten Thousand Years of Hunter-Gatherer Communities in the Thukela Basin’, Natal Museum Journal of Humanities [NMJH], 1 (July 1989), pp. 1–168; R. Yates, A. Manhire and J. Parkington, ‘Rock Painting and History in the South-Western Cape’, in T.A. Dowson and D. Lewis-Williams (eds), Contested Images: Diversity in Southern African Rock Art Research (Johannesburg, Witwatersrand University Press, 1994), pp. 29–60; J. Sealy, ‘Diet, Mobility, and Settlement Pattern Among Holocene Hunter-Gatherers in Southernmost Africa’, Current Anthropology, 47, 4 (August 2006), pp. 569–95. 8 See A. Solomon, ‘Meanings, Models and Minds: A Reply to Lewis-Williams’, SAAB, 54, 169 (June 1999), pp. 51–60; A. Solomon, ‘Myths, Making, and Consciousness: Differences and Dynamics in San Rock Arts’, Current Anthropology, 49, 1 (February 2008), pp. 59–86. 9 See E.N. Wilmsen, Land Filled with Flies: A Political Economy of the Kalahari (Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1989); E.N. Wilmsen and J.R. Denbow, ‘Paradigmatic History of San-Speaking Peoples and Current Attempts at Revision’, Current Anthropology, 31, 5 (December 1990), pp. 489–524; A. Barnard, ‘Kalahari Revisionism, Vienna and the “Indigenous Peoples” Debate’, Social Anthropology, 14, 1 (February 2006), pp. 1–16; R.B. Lee and M.G. Guenther, ‘Problems in Kalahari Historical Revisionism and the Tolerance of Error’, History in Africa, 20 (1993), pp. 185–235; J.S. Solway and R.B. Lee, ‘Foragers, Genuine or Spurious?’, Current Anthropology, 31, 2 (April 1990), pp. 109–46. 10 A. Barnard, Hunters and Herders of Southern Africa: A Comparative Ethnography of the Khoisan Peoples (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992). 11 A. Barnard, Anthropology and the Bushman (Oxford, New York, Berg, 2007), p. 111. 12 A. Barnard, Anthropology and the Bushman (Oxford, Berg, 2007), p. 111. 13 T.R. Pauketat, ‘Practice and History in Archaeology: An Emerging Paradigm’, Anthropological Theory, 1, 1 (March 2001), p. 73. 14 See Brown, Voicing the Text; M. Wessels, ‘The /Xam Narratives: Whose Myths?’, African Studies, 67, 3 (December 2008), pp. 339–64; M. Wessels, ‘Religion and the Interpretation of the /Xam Narratives’, Current Writing, 20, 2 (July 2008), pp. 44–58. 15 A. Solomon, ‘The Myth of Ritual Origins? Ethnography, Mythology and Interpretation of San Rock Art’, SAAB, 52, 165 (June 1997), pp. 3–13; Solomon, ‘Myths, Making, and Consciousness’; A. Solomon, ‘Broken Strings: Interdisciplinarity and /Xam Oral Literature’, Critical Arts, 23, 1 (March 2009), pp. 26–41. 16 Cited by P. Mitchell, ‘Rediscovering Africa’, in G. Blundell (ed.), Origins: The Story of the Emergence of Humans and Humanity in Africa (Cape Town, Double Storey, 2006), p. 152. 17 Lewis-Williams, Believing and Seeing, p. 77. 18 L.VIII–25: 8,197 rev. – 8,202 [BC_151_A2_1_100] The story tells of /gwai, who was ‘formerly’ a' beast of prey', and later a ‘man of the early race’ (p. 8,198), and who had killed his sister-in-law. The story is not yet fully translated; it begins by relating how /gwai's brother-in-law secretly watched him at the water hole, apparently before killing him in revenge. The killer /gwai is also described (p. 8,202) as a ‘sorcerer’ (!gi:xa). The Bleek and Lloyd notebooks (held at the University of Cape Town Libraries and published online) are numbered according to recorder (e.g. L = Lloyd), notebook series (e.g. VIII is the eighth set of recordings by Lloyd), then by notebook number and page (here notebook 25, pp. 8,197 rev. – 8,202). The addition of ‘rev.’ indicates text on the reverse of that page. The UCT cataloguing system used for the Bleek and Lloyd Collection numbers the notebooks differently, with most beginning ‘BC 151’ and concluding with a notebook number. The above notebook (L.VIII–25) is BC_151_A2_1_100, To facilitate viewing online, this reference is given in parentheses. A list of the notebooks can be accessed at http://lloydbleekcollection.cs.uct.ac.za/data/books.html. Selecting the relevant notebook leads to thumbnails of its contents, from where it is easy to access the appropriate page number(s). 19 D.F. Bleek, ‘Beliefs and Customs of the /Xam Bushmen, Part VII: Sorcerers’, Bantu Studies, 9 (1935), pp. 36, 40. 20 D.F. Bleek, ‘Beliefs and Customs of the /Xam Bushmen, Part V: The Rain’, Bantu Studies, 7 (1933), pp. 302–4. 21 L.V–14: 5,073 rev. [BC_151_A2_1_063]; D.F. Bleek, ‘Beliefs and Customs of the /Xam Bushmen, Part VI: Rain-Making’, Bantu Studies, 7, (1933), p. 383. 22 J.D. Lewis-Williams, ‘Ethnographic Evidence Relating to “Trance” and “Shamans” Among Northern and Southern Bushmen’, SAAB, 47, 155 (June 1992), p. 58. 23 Lewis-Williams, ‘Ethnography and Iconography’, p. 471. 24 Solomon, ‘Myths, Making, and Consciousness’, pp. 63–4. 25 Bleek, ‘Sorcerers’, p. 29. 26 Bleek, ‘Sorcerers’., p. 46. 27 Solomon, ‘Myth of Ritual Origins?’; Solomon, ‘Myths, Making, and Consciousness’; Solomon, ‘Broken Strings’. 28 Bleek, ‘Sorcerers’, pp. 1–8, 19–22, 32–5. 29 L.V–19: 5,487 rev.; L.II–28: 2,565 rev. [BC_151_A2_1_068]. 30 L.V–9: 4,651 rev.; and cf. L.II–28:2,565 rev. [BC_151_A2_1_058; BC_151_A2_1_068]. For one example of the sneezing out of illness, here conceived of as little sticks, see http://lloydbleekcollection.cs.uct.ac.za/data/books/BC_151_A2_1_053/A2_1_53_04189.html (including the comments on 4,188 rev.). 31 Bleek, ‘Sorcerers’; L.V–21: 5,698–5,707 [BC_151_A2_1_070]. 32 Bleek, ‘Sorcerers’, pp. 1–3. 33 Bleek, ‘Sorcerers’., p. 33. 34 Bleek, ‘Sorcerers’., p. 12. 35 Bleek, ‘Sorcerers’., p. 22. 36 Bleek, ‘Sorcerers’., p. 13. 39 L.V–20: 5,543–46. [BC_151_A2_1_069]. 40 L.V–20: 5,550–56 [BC_151_A2_1_069]. 37 J.D. Lewis-Williams (ed.), Stories That Float From Afar: Ancestral Folklore of the San of Southern Africa (Cape Town, David Philip, 2000), p. 260, notes 1 and 5. 38 L.V–20: 5,537–56 [BC_151_A2_1_069]. 41 Lewis-Williams (ed.), Stories, p. 260. 42 D.F. Bleek, A Bushman Dictionary (New Haven, CT, American Oriental Society, 1956), p. 350. 43 Bleek, ‘Sorcerers’, p. 36. 44 L.II–6: 669 rev.–670 rev.[BC_151_A2_1_012]. 45 Solomon, ‘Myths, Making, and Consciousness’. 46 See M. Wessels, ‘The Discursive Character of the /Xam Texts: A Consideration of the /Xam “Story of the Girl of the Early Race, Who Made Stars”’, Folklore, 118, 3 (December 2007), pp. 307–24. 47 Bleek, ‘Sorcerers’, pp. 3–4. 48 Bleek, ‘Sorcerers’., pp. 19–20. 49 L.V–4: 4,220–30 [BC_151_A2_1_053]. 50 L.V–9: 4,651 rev., 4,652 [BC_151_A2_1_058]. 51 L.II–28: 2,565 rev. [BC_151_A2_1_034]. 52 L.V–25: 5,998–6,005 [BC_151_A2_1_074]; L.VIII.–26: 8,335–50 [BC_151_A2_1_101]; L.VIII–27: 8,414 rev. BC_151_A2_1_102]. 53 A. Bank, Bushmen in a Victorian World: The Remarkable Story of the Bleek–Lloyd Collection of Bushman Folklore (Cape Town, Double Storey, 2006), pp. 314–15, figs. 12.6 and 12.7. 54 L.V–10: 4,744 rev. [BC_151_A2_1_059]. 55 J.D. Lewis-Williams, ‘A Dream of Eland: An Unexplored Component of San Shamanism and Rock Art’, World Archaeology, 19, 2 (October 1987), p. 168. 56 L.V–19: 5,485 [BC_151_A2_1_068]. 57 Bank, Bushmen in a Victorian World, pp. 314–17, 320–1. 58 L.V–10: 4,744 rev. [BC_151_A2_1_059]. 59 L.V–10: 4,747–8 [BC_151_A2_1_059]. 60 Bank, Bushmen in a Victorian World, p. 314. 61 Bleek, ‘Sorcerers’, p. 11; Bank, Bushmen in a Victorian World, p. 320, Fig. 12.10. 62 Bleek, ‘Sorcerers’, p. 12. 63 Bleek, ‘Sorcerers’., p. 14. 64 See Lewis-Williams, ‘Ethnography and Iconography’, pp. 470–5; Lewis-Williams, Believing and Seeing, p. 81. 65 Marshall, Nyae Nyae !Kung, p. 87; P.A. Helvenston and P. Bahn, ‘Archaeology or Mythology? The “Three Stages of Trance” Model and South African Rock Art’, Cahiers de l'AARS, 10, (2006), pp. 111–26. Marshall noted that she never saw nasal bleeding during the trance dances she observed; Helvenston and Bahn note that it is also unmentioned by other ethnographers, such as Lee and Katz. 66 Solomon, ‘Myths, Making, and Consciousness’. 67 J.M. Orpen, ‘A Glimpse into the Mythology of the Maluti Bushmen’, Cape Monthly Magazine, 9, 49 (July 1874), pp. 1–13. 68 J.D. Lewis-Williams, ‘Introductory Essay: Science and Rock Art’, South African Archaeological Society Goodwin Series, 4 (June 1983), p. 7. 69 Bank, Bushmen in a Victorian World, p. 315; Bleek, ‘Sorcerers’, pp. 45–6. 70 L.VIII–22: 7,974 rev. [BC_151_A2_1_097]. 71 L.VIII–25: 8,211–12 [BC_151_A2_1_100]. 72 L.XI & XII–4: 9,259–60 [BC_151_A2_1_112]. 73 Bleek, ‘Sorcerers’, pp. 1–2. 74 Solomon, ‘Myths, Making, and Consciousness’, p. 65. 75 Bleek, ‘Sorcerers’, pp. 2–5. 76 Bleek, ‘Sorcerers’., p. 22. 77 Guenther, Tricksters and Trancers, p. 187. 78 See also Solomon, ‘Myths, Making, and Consciousness’, for an account of how supposed ‘trance metaphors’ work to conflate different accounts from different San-speakers. 79 Bleek, ‘Sorcerers’, pp. 13–14. 80 Bleek, ‘Sorcerers’., pp. 30–1. 81 Bleek, ‘Sorcerers’., pp. 22–4. Buchu is a pungent, aromatic herb indigenous to southern Africa. 82 Lewis-Williams, ‘Dream of Eland’. 83 Lewis-Williams, ‘Dream of Eland’., pp. 166–7. 84 Lewis-Williams, ‘Dream of Eland’., p. 168. Emphasis in original. 85 Lewis-Williams, ‘Dream of Eland’., p. 167. 86 L.VIII–20: 7,767 rev. [BC_151_A2_1_095]. 87 Solomon, ‘Myths, Making, and Consciousness’, and see above. 88 Bleek, ‘Sorcerers’, pp. 12–13. 89 L.II–6: 624 rev.–628 [BC_151_A2_1_012]. 90 L.V–15: 5,110–46 [BC_151_A2_1_064]. 91 Solomon, ‘Myth of Ritual Origins?’; Solomon, ‘San “Spirituality”’; Solomon, ‘Myths, Making, and Consciousness’. 92 Barnard, Hunters and Herders, p. 302. 93 A. Barnard, ‘Comments’, appended to Solomon, ‘Myths, Making, and Consciousness’, p. 76. 94 Barnard, Anthropology and the Bushman, p. 111. 95 K. Knibbe and P. Versteeg, ‘Assessing Phenomenology in Anthropology: Lessons from the Study of Religion and Experience’, Critique of Anthropology, 28, 1 (March 2008), p. 48. 100 Throop and Murphy, ‘Bourdieu and Phenomenology’, p. 201. 96 K. Knibbe and P. Versteeg, ‘Assessing Phenomenology in Anthropology: Lessons from the Study of Religion and Experience’, Critique of Anthropology, 28, 1 (March 2008)., p. 49. Emphasis original. 97 For example, in relation to rock art, I have employed phenomenological thinking to argue that the immanent and relevant context of rock artists' production of images is the process of making, including engagement with place, ‘ground’ and materials. Solomon, ‘Myths, Making, and Consciousness’. 98 C. Throop and K. Murphy, ‘Bourdieu and Phenomenology: A Critical Assessment’, Anthropological Theory, 2, 2 (June 2002), p. 201. 99 J.E. Faulconer and R.N. Williams, ‘Temporality in Human Action: An Alternative to Positivism and Historicism’, American Psychologist, 40, 11 (November 1985), p. 1,179. 101 A recent contributor to this tradition is T.A. Dowson, ‘Debating Shamanism in Southern African Rock Art: Time to Move On …’, SAAB, 62, 185 (June 2007), pp. 49–61, who has abandoned his former allegiance to shamanistic explanations in favour of analysis of San art and religion in terms of ‘animism’; however, this is merely the substitution of one blanket explanation for another. 102 Barnard, ‘Comments’, p. 76. 103 See Wilmsen, Land Filled With Flies; Wilmsen and Denbow, ‘Paradigmatic History’. 104 Barnard, Hunters and Herders, p. 297. 105 B. Smith, ‘Reading Rock Art and Writing Genetic History: Regionalism, Ethnicity and the Rock Art of Southern Africa’, in H. Soodyall (ed.), The Prehistory of Africa: Tracing the Lineage of Modern Man (Cape Town, Jonathan Ball, 2006), pp. 85–7. 106 Smith, ‘Reading Rock Art and Writing Genetic History’, p. 85, citing Lewis-Williams. 107 Guenther, Tricksters and Trancers, 240–41. 108 Notably in Lewis-Williams and Pearce, San Spirituality. 109 See Solomon, Book Review; and Solomon, ‘San “Spirituality”’. 110 A.B. Kehoe, ‘Eliade and Hultkrantz: The European Primitivism Tradition’, American Indian Quarterly, 20, 3, (Summer 1996), pp. 377–92; A.B. Kehoe, Shamans and Religion: An Anthropological Exploration in Critical Thinking (Prospect Heights, IL, Waveland Press, 2000). 111 See M. Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1964). 112 Kehoe, Shamans and Religion, p. 39. 113 Dowson, ‘Rain in Bushman Belief’; P. Jolly, ‘Nguni Diviners and the South-Eastern San: Some Issues Relating to Their Mutual Cultural Influence’, NMJH, 12 (December 2000), pp. 79–95. Jolly presents a more complex picture of mutual cultural exchange, but still foregrounds the shaman; only F.E. Prins, ‘Dissecting Diviners: On Positivism, Trance-Formations and the Unreliable Informant’, NMJH, 11 (December 1999), pp. 43–62, has considered more thoroughgoing difference and change in eastern San religious thought and practice. 114 Mitchell, ‘Rediscovering Africa’, pp. 160–2. 115 B. Smith, ‘Envisioning San History: Problems in the Reading of History in the Rock Art of the Maloti – Drakensberg Mountains, South Africa’, African Studies (August 2010), pp. 345–59. 116 Lewis-Williams and Pearce, San Spirituality. 117 Marshall, Nyae Nyae !Kung, p. 61; see also Katz, Boiling Energy. 118 P. Skotnes, ‘The Visual as a Site of Meaning: San Parietal Painting and the Experience of Modern Art’, in Dowson and Lewis-Williams (eds), Contested Images, pp. 315–29. 119 Smith, ‘Envisioning San History’; B. Smith and S. Ouzman, ‘Taking Stock: Identifying Khoen Khoen Herder Rock Art in Southern Africa’, Current Anthropology, 45, 4 (Aug/Oct 2004). 120 A. Gell, Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 221. 121 Smith, ‘Reading Rock Art’, p. 85. 122 An anonymous reviewer validly urged me to attend further to how colonial-era change ‘influenced /Xam ideas and practices and how… the /Xam might have responded differently than other Bushmen’ – a tough question. I should clarify that I am not suggesting that it was the colonial era as such that induced the differences in healing practices that I describe, but that already existing regional traditions, perhaps developed over millennia, would shape responses to specific challenges (hence there should be no expectation that all San would necessarily respond similarly). This returns me to the point that, even within a broadly shared cosmology, there remains room for diverse practices and shifting ‘cultural meanings’ in diversified traditions, and that this has clear implications for the analogical method, and the shaman-centred interpretation, in rock art research. A. Solomon, ‘Towards Visual Histories: Style Interdisciplinarity and Southern African Rock Art Research’, South African Archaelogical Bulletin [SAAB], in press [forthcoming 2011]. 123 J. Deacon, ‘The Archaeology of the Flat and Grass Bushmen’, in J. Deacon and T.A. Dowson (eds), Voices from the Past: /Xam Bushmen and the Bleek and Lloyd Collection (Johannesburg, Witwatersrand University Press, 1996), pp. 245–70; N. Penn, The Forgotten Frontier: Colonist and Khoisan on the Cape's Northern Frontier in the 18th Century (Cape Town, Double Storey, 2005); Bank, Bushmen in a Victorian World; A. Hoff, Medicine Experts of the /Xam San: The !kwa !ka !gi:ten Who Controlled the Rain and Water (Cologne, Rüdiger Köppe Verlag, 2007, ‘Quellen zur Khoisan Forschung’, p. 19). Although Hoff describes her informants as ‘/Xam descendants’, the extent to which they are indeed the heirs of /Xam traditions seems worthy of further examination. 124 W.H.I. Bleek and L.C. Lloyd, Specimens of Bushman Folklore (London, George Allen, 1911), p. 144; Penn, Forgotten Frontier, p. 156. 125 Orpen, ‘Mythology of the Maluti Bushmen’.