LASER SCANNED SITES AS PORTALS INTO ROCKART

John Parkington, Archaeology Department, University ofCape Town.

Heinz Ruther and colleagues, ALUKA Project

Building an archive for use in research, site managementand job creation. Generating educational facilities with

digital technology. Creating responsible rock art tourismopportunities.

Zanzibar July 2007

Foot searchessince 1978 havegenerated anarchive of over2500 sites, manyof them rock artsites, others stonetool scatters orshell middens.Ages range fromEarly to LaterStone Age. This isdifficult to police,even with goodlegislation.

A rock art portal

A palm top with attachedGPS is used to enter the

site details. This isquicker and more efficientthan the old paper recordand is much more useful in

that it can be searchedand queried by a varietyof methods and can be

viewed in a GISframework such asMapInfo or Global

Mapper. Icons mean that‘non-experts’ can also

record.

Many sites have now been transferred from the paper archiveto a digital archive, which can be viewed against a range of

background contexts such as farm boundaries, topographic orgeological maps, air photographs and satellite imagery.

What would you like to do with elephants?

Read some literature on them?

Look at photographs and videos of them?

Look at rock paintings of elephants from nearby?

Look at a distribution of local elephant paintings?

Make a table of elephant painting details?

Read Bleek and Lloyd references to elephants?

LineColAssocBabyFaceNoSITE

LineMNoneNoR2KB 37

NARNoneNoL1KB 36

ClustRHumansYesR L12SF 22

LineBNoneYesR8SF 01

ClustRMaleYesR6BK 45

LineRHumansYesR2BK 22

Elephant sites

What would you like to do with squatting figures?

Read some literature on the depiction of human figures?

Look at photographs and videos of Kalahari people?

Look at rock paintings of similar figures from nearby?

Look at a distribution of paintings of squatting figures?

Make a table of squatting figure painting details?

Read Bleek and Lloyd references to /Xam birthing?

AG 8

KB 112

Site

Squatting figures

Why are we doing these things?

To allow the viewer to interrogate the rock art archive.

To ask questions about the depiction of different animals and themeanings given to them by the painters.

For example, why are elephants almost always depicted in somekind of social relationship (mother and young, defensive laager,linked tails and trunks)?

Why are squatting figures always female and always facingforward?

Why are female humans and elephants nearly always close to oneanother?