 Contents
Introduction
North African rock art has a wide distribution throughout the Sahara, and includes both paintings and engravings.
There are a number of fundamental difficulties in the use of rock art to supplement other data, and these are discussed on the Rock Art Analysis page, but a number of researchers have persevered to attempt to extract as much information as possible from these depictions. As Smith puts it (1967) “Regardless of the interpretations of certain scenes, there is a hard core of precise information on such matters as clothing, ornaments, certain implements and tasks, and even on group interactions, which are unlikely to be preserved in any other way” (p.21). Smith (1967) is the main reference for the rest of the text on this page. I realize that a considerable amount of work has been completed since, but I have not had the chance to read and aggregate it. This page is intended to provide only a basic insight.
Occupation of the Sahara
The Sahara was not always as arid as it is today, and was used extensively during the Early and Mid Holocene by groups taking advantage of relatively humid post-glacial conditions, which attracted both plant and animal life into the area. Environmental conditions fluctuated, and micro environments existed, meaning that there are some very localized types of settlement patters. Highland and lowland regions were used at different times of year as part of a year-long seasonal round of movement. Blanc (1964) was the first to refer to the desert as a giant pump which attracted people into the area and then forced them out as the climate fluctuated, an analogy that has been used by other writers describing Saharan occupation.
Distribution
Rock art is found throughout northern Africa, from the Maghreb, throughout the Sahara as far as the Red Sea: “Within this area of about ten million square kilometres nearly 30,000 individual engravings of all periods and about the same number of paintings are known” (Smith 1967, p.2). They are found wherever highland areas, caves and outcrops provide an available canvas. Smith (1967, p.4) points out that the Egyptian rock art tends to be considered in isolation from the rest of North African examples, and comments that “it is doubtful whether this distinction can be justified on any grounds but geographical convenience”.
Smith suggests that the preference for painting or engraving was influenced by a number of factors including local tradition and environmental factors. Engravings were the preferred method in the southern Oran of Algeria, in the Nile Valley and in the Egyptian Eastern Desert (only one painting is so far known from amongst the thousands of depictions in the Eastern Desert). Paintings are common in the highland massifs of the central Sahara, where engravings also appear.
Attempts to define regional traditions based on archaeological data have consistently run into difficulties.
Themes
Smith (1967) highlights the importance in some of the north African rock art of human representation, which is relatively unusual in Old World rock art.
The reasons for variety of topics represented by rock art during specific time periods have been the matter of some debate ever since a dating framework was first established. Explanations for similarities and differences could be based on social connections (or lack of them), religious beliefs, economic activities and environmental factors. However, so far most of these are highly speculative.
Possible dating schemes
The earliest generally agreed upon scheme was the combination of suggestions made by different writers (in particular Lhote 1959, p.191-204) and is usefully summarised by Smith (1965, p.5-7) and by MacDonald (1998). This scheme, terms from which are still in use, was as follows (with variations introduced by different writers):
Bubalus period / style
- Earliest art in the Sahara
- Epipalaeolithic and Early Neolithic hunters
- Named after the Bubalus form of buffalo (extinct, with wide horns)
- Found particularly in the Southern Oran and the Tassili-Fezzan area
- Large naturalistic engravings of animals, and some humans. Engraved lines may be polished, and images may be polished or pecked.
- Possibly the work of hunting groups
Hunter Period
- Central Sahara
- Engravings
- Absence of Bubalus style
- Perhaps contemporary with Bubalus style
Round-Head Period
- Names by Henri Breuil
- Found in Tassili, Fezzan and Ennedi
- Paintings
- Characteristic feature is the presence of white humans with round and usually featureless heads, sometimes with horns and masks
- Other images include wild animals
- Considered to be older than 6000BC
Bovidian style
- Succeeding or overlapping with Round-Head period
- Paintings, with much less frequently represented engravings
- Characteristic feature is the painted representation of cattle, some in herds, and cattle-related activities like milking
- Wild animals indicate a Neolithic Wet Period
- Hunting scenes rare, and these images are thought to have been created by Neolithic pastoralists
- Human figures have faces depicted with realism
- Considered to date from c.5500 to 3rd millennium BC in the Acacus, but with a decline in the quality and realism of depictions in later periods
Caballin/Horse period
- From c.1500BC til a few centuries BC
- Paintings and engravings
- Main features are first horse drawn carts/chariots and later cavalry. Latest depiction associated with Libyco-Berber script.
Camilin/Camel period
- Beginning c.300AD and continuing into modern times
Smith (1967) concludes of this scheme that it is highly simplified and “glides over some very basic problems and no doubt incorporate certain assumptions and errors”. He also says that whilst it is representative of the central Sahara, it is much less appropriate for peripheral zones.
Muzzolini (1992, 1993) has challenged this traditional chronology on methodological and stylistic grounds. He considers it to place excessive emphasis on the concept of diffusionism. Instead, he has suggested a more geographically coherent approach to analysis, with three distinct areas tied into three separate chronologies (the Adas, Fezzan and Tassili highland areas). His sequence starts at c.6000BC and does not include a phase that pre-dates the pastoral. He also believes that the naturalistic Bubaline and round Head phases are contemporary.
A recent Saharan chronological scheme has been offered by Di Lernia (1999), based mainly on archaeological and climatic evidence, but relates only to the period between 7400 and 3500BP, as follows:
- Early Pastoral period 7400 - 6410 BP
- Continuity from hunter gatherers of the Late Acacus (Terminal Palaeolithic) and first herders
- Ceramics and lithics different from hunter-gatherer types
- Environmental conditions were wetter, with high lake levels, savanna environment
- Sheep/goat were present
- Mid Pastoral period 6080 - 5100 BP
- Follows a 400 year old crime spell
- Reliable rainfall
- Large semi-permanent settlements are found with cattle present
- Dry season mountain shelters with sheep/goat and cattle are found
- Rock art and funerary monuments are found, all very diverse, perhaps indicating multi-cultural or multi-racial use.
- Late Pastoral period 5100 - 3500
- A period of climatic instability
- Congregation of pastoralists around increasingly scarce natural resources
- Sheep and goat and wild plant use appear to have been the dominant components in the subsistence economy. Sheep and goat were apparently penned in highland caves. this may indicate that cattle were more difficult to keep as the climate changed, and that small cattle (sheep and goat) became more important for subsistence purposes.
- Lowlands were apparently used on an ephemeral basis
- Large numbers of funerary sites were at El Ajal
- Di Lernia suggests that the art dating to this time was Bovidian
A useful tabulated comparative summary of some of the most useful schemes is to be found on the Association des Amis de l’Art Repustre Saharien (AARS) website and it is replicated here:
Interpretation
Smith (2005, p.47) suggests that rock art depictions in the north-eastern Sahara “were mnemonics for a cognitive system where they were linked by paths, each xxxx being connected to another to form a larger accumulative whole”.
Origins of African Rock Art
The subject of where rock art originated, like the discussion of how agriculture spread, has been subject to considerable debate and disagreement. It is entirely possible, if not probable, that rock art had indigenous origins, but this has not prevented speculation that it was introduced from other areas. Some Saharan rock art has been used in an attempt to identify ethnic groups. Anthropomorphic depictions are used to identify atrributes based on physical features, brand-type markings on cattle, and ritual activities(MacDonald 1998).
In the past the question has centred on whether or not the idea of rock art spread from southwestern Europe, particularly Spain and Italy, where an Upper Palaeolithic tradition of rock art is well documented, but of a very different type to African examples.
Smith raised the question of Egypt’s connection with the production of Saharan rock art: “In earlier days, when the art of the regions west of the Nile was coming to light, it was often assumed that Dynastic Egypt was in some way responsible for part of it. Much of this assumption was based on analogies such as the occurrence of zoomorphic humans in the art of both regions. With the increasing knowledge of the Predynastic phases in Egypt and of the ‘Neolithic’ in the Sahara and Maghreb in the present century, various writers attempted to see archaeological links beginning on this horizon” (p.16). Smith (1967) cites Vaufrey (no reference available) as one of those who supported the idea of the Egyptian Predynastic having an influence on the Neolithic of Capsian tradiiton, for example. Other writers took an alternative view, seeing a west to east influence (Smith 1967, p.16). Blanc (1964) considered Dynastic Egypt to be influenced by the Saharan life, and Mori (19xx) saw the possibility of Nile Valley developments being produced by the migration of Saharan peoples into Egypt. Yayotte, quoted in in Smith (1967, p.18) “suggests that the resemblances between the two areas are not due to influences of one on the other but to common ancestral stocks with similar religious rites and cultures which led in one case to the Saharan Bovidian Pastoralists and in other to the Egyptians”.
Smith also raised the question of a southwest Asian linkage (1967, p.15), pointing out that there is much better data indicating movements into northern Africa from the Levant than from the western Mediterranean, and that both artistic crafts and rock art are represented in the Natufian of Palestine, and the PPNB – although he acknowledges that the artistic traditions that he considers are very different between the two areas.
Rhotert in 1952, suggested that rock art traditions were transferred from southern Arabia to Eritrea and were then transmitted via the Nile Valley and then beyond into the Sahara.
More recently questions have centred on the relationship between different regions of Africa where rock art is represented. Vaufrey (quoted in Smith 1967) believed that the Neolithic of Capsian tradition had been influenced by Egyptian Predynastic and Dynastic ideas, but this is no longer widely accepted. Blanc, writing in 1964, suggested that Egyptian art and culture had been heavily influenced by Saharan traditions, as desert inhabitants came and went with the fluctuating environmental conditions. Mori (1964) came to much the same conclusion, believing that Saharan pastoral groups may have migrated to the Nile Valley at around 3500BC, but he also sees examples in the Acacus where art may have been influenced by exposure to Dynastic art work. A different view (Yayotte, quoted in Smith 1967, no reference available) ruled out influences between the two areas and, instead, suggested that both people came from the same ancestral roots, but went their separate geographical ways, taking with them the same traditions but evolving in different ways. At the moment there has been little recent research to help clarify this issue in terms of the rock art and its influences, but a great deal of work is being carried out using archaeological data to attempt to determine movements of people through the Sahara, and this might eventually assist.
Again, one of the problems in establishing relationships between these different areas is chronology, and synchronising different sequences in a way which meets general consensus.
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