Good afternoon,everyone!
This is the first serninar in preparation for ourarchaeological fieldwork in Namibia;we arefantastically lucky to have received partial researchfunding for this trip from our Institute,so I shallexpect 200% attention and participation from youall.First in this seminar,I'm going to give a briefintroduction to contemporary research on rockart,and in the second part I'm going to give yousome do's and don'ts for our fieldwork trip in April -so please listen very carefully.
I'm first going to focus on the interpretation of rock are in Namibia.We are very fortunate tobe going to an area where you can find some of the most important sites in the entireworld.And I hope to show you how easy it is for everyone to make mistakes in looking atcultures which are different from our own - the first and most important lesson we have tolearn.
In Namibia there are both paintings and engravings - that's where the surface of the rock is cutout.Many of the engravings show footprints of animals and most scholars used to think thatthe purpose of these was simple and obvious:this rock art was like a school book with picturesto teach children about tracks:which track belonged to which animal - giraffe,lion and so on.