Rock art, dance and ritual: what we learned from paintings in Zimbabwe

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Joshua Kumbani, Postdoctoral fellow, University of Tübingen

Rock paintings are found throughout Zimbabwe. They were made during the last 10,000 years by hunter gatherer groups and later by farming communities.

These came to the attention of the ERC Artsoundscapes project, based in Spain, in 2021. The project brings together experts in archaeology, ethnography, psychology and acoustic engineering to explore how humans understood sound in prehistoric times. Our team has studied some of the rock art of South Africa in which dance scenes are depicted, and we have begun work on documenting and analysing similar rock art in Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe’s rock paintings are concentrated in the country’s eastern provinces, which is where we’ve focused so far. More can be found in the Matobo World Heritage Cultural Landscape in Matabeleland South, which will be the focus of future study.

We have published an article describing dance scenes in this rock art and comparing them with information from ethnographic sources to understand what kinds of dances they depict. The ethnographic research was done by anthropologists and focused on hunter gatherer groups in the broader southern African region (Botswana and Namibia).

We found that all the kinds of dances that have been described in living cultures – dances for ritual, entertainment or special circumstances – are depicted in Zimbabwe’s rock art. But ritual is a central theme.

This points to the need to refine our classification of rock art scenes. We’ve been using features like the body posture of depicted figures to classify a scene as a dance. But ritual dances often involve going into a trance state – and this alters a person’s ability to control their body, move in synchrony with other people and follow “rules” of a dance. Therefore, it may be necessary to reconsider whether some rock art scenes in Zimbabwe, and in the whole of southern Africa, depict dances or not.

Here we will discuss some examples of the rock art in Zimbabwe and explain how we categorised them.

Analytical method

We reviewed published works by archaeology researchers such as the late Peter Garlake and university professor Ancila Nhamo. We also used online resources, including the British Museum online collection by rock art photographer and author David Coulson, which features rock art from Zimbabwe and other southern African countries.

Our inquiry aimed to determine whether all dances that have been recognised ethnographically, in living people, in Zimbabwe as well as in other countries of southern Africa, are also represented in Zimbabwe’s rock art.

We analysed the scenes by applying six attributes that have proved useful in studies in other parts of the world, such as the Middle East and the western Mediterranean. The attributes are divided into those related to the dancers themselves and those related to the type of dance. They are:

dancers’ body posture (including bent figures, outstretched arms and flexed legs)
items they hold, such as sticks, rattles, or headgear
interaction between dancers
evidence of synchrony
direction of movement
gender of the figures represented.

Dance scenes in Zimbabwe rock art

Using these attributes, we can say that a scene such as this one found at Lake Chivero is a dance because it has several men all wearing aprons, displaying the same body posture, and positioned in synchrony with outstretched arms.

Yet, in other scenes we encountered unexpected problems with the second group of attributes (type of dance). Those were designed to analyse dance scenes in other parts of the world with different belief systems. But they are not always valid when dancers engage in trance dances.

One example of this type of scene that does not follow the norm is found at a site called Chivhu. A series of therianthropes (figures with both human and animal features) were painted associated with a large snake bearing two animal heads. In the scene we analysed there, the interaction between dancers is irregular, their movements are not synchronised, and the direction of the dance is not homogeneous, as would be expected in a regular dance. But regular interaction, synchronisation and uniform direction are simply not possible when dancers are in an altered state of consciousness. So, this scene might not look like a dance but it probably is one, based on what we know from studies of living people in cultures associated with the makers of the rock art.

Other dances recognised ethnographically as being of ritual character are initiation dances. An example of a dancing scene which may indicate a boys’ initiation dance can be found at a rocky outcrop in Glen Norah, Harare. American anthropologist Lorna Marshall, who undertook fieldwork among the !Kung people of the Kalahari Desert in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, described how the !Kung boys from Nyae Nyae in Namibia in the 1950s sometimes bent their upper bodies into an almost right-angle posture while dancing. The dancers in the painted scene are accompanied by other men who are not participating in the dance. These kinds of initiation dances are not documented or practised in Zimbabwe, however. So although the painted scene looks like an initiation dance, it probably isn’t one.

Rock art may also depict eland dances, the girls’ initiation dance. For example, dancing scenes depicting only women that may be interpreted as eland dances are found in Chipinge and Mudadi in Zimbabwe’s Chivi district.

The Makonde dance from Mashonaland West, which features more than 30 performers, is not easy to interpret. It is not clear whether this represents a large dance scene or if the dancers can be divided into different groups. Some individuals are clapping, while others are dancing, which may indicate the presence of trance dancers (group labelled b). Additionally, there are female dancers with tufts on their legs and wearing back aprons (group labelled a). These could be dancing for entertainment, because in reality for an eland dance (a ritual) they would probably remove the aprons.

Categorising certain dances can be challenging, and some may have been performed purely for entertainment purposes. For example, there is a dancing scene at Charewa that depicts women, men, and possibly children participating. We propose that this could represent an entertainment dance or a dance in some particular circumstance where everyone joined in.

Charewa site, Dance Scene 1.
Garlake 1987a, Fig. 10, Fourni par l’auteur

Other elements emerging from the analysis of the dance scenes found in Zimbabwean rock art include the presence of musical instruments and a variety of artefacts associated with the dancers. Hand rattles frequently appear in dancing scenes and have been recognised as the most depicted musical instruments in Zimbabwean rock art, as we’ve discussed in an article about musical instrument representations.

Dancers are sometimes depicted with dancing sticks or other accessories, not only rattles. For instance, some figures appear to be holding round discs that are difficult to identify at Chikupu.

Moreover, dancers may be adorned with beads, as observed at Charewa Panel 2, and often wear distinctive headgear, typically resembling antennae, which may symbolise feathers as described in ethnographic accounts.

It’s important to accurately identify and describe these scenes. Our analysis highlights the valuable information that can be gleaned from close examination of the depictions, as well as from the use of ethnohistorical sources related to dance.

Margarita Díaz-Andreu received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme for the ERC Artsoundscapes project (Grant Agreement No. 787842) . Margarita Díaz-Andreu is affiliated with ICREA and the University of Barcelona.

Joshua Kumbani does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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