Forthcoming publications, conferences and research
Papers:
Birds and KhoeSan: linking spirit and healing with day-to-day life
Abstract
The paper assesses what birds mean to the KhoeSan in recent and prehistoric contexts by linking
ethnographic, anthropological and archaeological material with my research on the shifting role of
animals in KhoeSan life. Despite the low visibility of birds in KhoeSan research they are amongst the
most ‘meaningful’ of animals. Drawing on ideas of exceptional hunter-gatherer sensitivity to their
sensual environment, I trace how attuned knowledge of birds has fed into KhoeSan creation myths,
healing practices, and day-to-day life. Echoing how birds feature in many cultures, amongst the
KhoeSan they hold the quality of messengers between divine and earthly realms. I link this way of
knowing birds to their characteristics and further indicate how particular bird characteristics feed into
distinctive KhoeSan ways of knowing the world. The paper highlights a particularly important role for the
ostrich in KhoeSan medicine and suggests how ostrich based medicine might relate to the deep
archaeological record.
What is potency?
Abstract
In recent decades analysis of southern African rock art has highlighted the profound significance of
ideas of ‘potency’, or ‘supernatural power’, to understanding ancient and recent Bushman cosmology
and hunting and healing strategies. Furthermore, Lewis-Williams, amongst others, has proposed that
similar potency ideas might be applicable to interpretation of ancient rock art from across the world. In
these contexts potency is increasingly being espoused as the clue to both early religious ideas and
many of the obscure rituals, beliefs and practices represented in rock art and still practiced by recent
hunter-gatherers. Despite the profound potential significance of potency to understanding ancient and
recent human beliefs and practices, and the considerable and growing quantity of work that hinges off
ideas of Bushman potency, there has been markedly little reflection on what we actually mean by
‘potency’. The aim of this paper is to push current understanding of this important concept. The paper
begins by locating potency within the history of KhoeSan research and the wider Western ideational
context that underlies recent usage of the term. It then explores the meaning and references
surrounding potency to attempt to better contextualize and represent the phenomenon from KhoeSan
perspectives. An underlying theme of the paper concerns the tantalizing notion that ideas of potency
may hold the African roots of ‘witchcraft’.
Conferences / Seminars
Seminar: Oct 20th 2009, London. The Radical Anthropology Group
For details contact Chris Knight 077 69 69 53 59
Shades of the Rainbow Serpent: a KhoeSaan Animal Between Myth and
Landscape in Southern Africa
Chris Low (African Studies, Oxford University) and Sian Sullivan (Birkbeck College, London University)
It is remarkable how the snake serves as a potent spirit, symbol, message and metaphor in so many
cultures across the world. This presentation finds and contextualizes the snake amongst KhoeSaan
hunter-gatherers and pastoralists of southern Africa and explores its role as transformative mediator
between the day-to-day and the unseeable or shamanic KhoeSaan world. As elsewhere, the KhoeSaan
rainbow snake is linked particularly with the moving medium of water, and frequently is present in places
in the landscape where water concentrates, as well as manifest in the transient presence of rainbows
and their links with life-giving rain. Associated with fertility, shape-shifting and transformation, the
rainbow snake is an archetypal 'truth' for thinking through and explaining the unpredictable and
dangerous aspects of life and death.
Our presentation will use a combination of text and images to explore this polysemic quality of the
KhoeSaan rainbow serpent as an animal connecting myth and landscape in southern Africa. We open
with descriptions of snakes as they appear in KhoeSaan encounters: as a mamba rising from a trail to
stare them in the face, to a coiled serpent the size of a cartwheel hidden in the long grass, whose smell
causes sickness. From these more obviously familiar or 'real' snakes, we move further towards snakes
of the spirit world: from lantern headed snakes whose movement can be seen far off in the veld at night,
to a massive man eating river snake who makes “a noise like the wind blowing into the open mouth of a
calabash”, and an ox-like creature that is left on the banks of receding rivers that changes into a snake
and slithers into the water as people approach.
We pursue these rich stories of sensual encounter into an elaboration of KhoeSaan epistemology and
ontology, bringing into our discussion complex appearances of snakes in KhoeSaan rock art, some of
which are thousands of years old. The rock artists worked with the snake as a strong force intimately
related to falling rain, the flow of blood and fertile milk. Combined with longterm ethnographic fieldwork
exploring KhoeSan folklore and healing worlds, we demonstrate some of the conceptual movements and
motifs that permit the snake to be both an aspect of natural history and the physical environment, and a
multiplicitous spirited presence, whose potency both explains otherwise inexplicable events and requires
appropriate practices of respect.
Reflections from the edge: work amongst Bushmen with a special focus
on the ≠Khomani San
Abstract
In 1999 the ≠Khomani were granted extensive land rights to land within the Kgalagadi Transfrontier
Park and to a number of farms near and adjacent to the park. My work on animals in Bushmen medicine,
commenced in 2005, has inadvertently taken me to the heart of land claim issues and what I have seen,
heard and experienced amongst ≠Khomani San is challenging at many levels. In 2005 a report on the
continued abuse of human rights within the Khomani community drew attention to the problems that the
land claim had not solved and indeed further social problems actually generated by the process and
outcomes of the claim. In this paper I present a personal perspective of what it is like working within the
Khomani community and how it compares to work amongst other KhoeSan. I present my experiences of
social chaos, alcohol abuse, violence and of the absolute disillusionment that sits so heavily on the
hearts of most of the ≠Khomani that I have encountered. I present a human story that throws up
poignant questions regarding Bushman identity and the roles and responsibilities of those who set out to
‘help the Bushmen’ and of the responsibilities of the Bushmen themselves.