Dr Justine Wintjes and Dr Ghilraen Laue had the enriching opportunity to participate in the Raranga Putiputi flower weaving workshop as part of the cultural programme at the 10th World Archaeological Congress (WAC-10) in Australia. Led by Jasmine Te Hokinga Mai and Delise Tui Kerehona from New Zealand, the workshop offered hands-on guidance in the traditional Māori art of weaving floral designs using native materials. This immersive experience not only celebrated creativity and storytelling but also fostered a deeper connection with Indigenous knowledge systems through the beauty of handcrafted work rooted in cultural heritage.

Jasmine Te Hokinga Mai

Delise Tui Kerehona

KZN Museum Researchers Present at Prestigious Global Archaeology Conference

Dr Justine Wintjes and Dr Ghilraen Laue, together with Anton Coetzee from the Origins Centre, recently presented at the World Archaeological Congress (WAC) in Australia, the world’s leading archaeology conference, held every four years.

Their paper, “The Hand of Masitise: Exploring the Life of a Painter through Two Rock Art Sites in Southeastern Lesotho”, examines the life and work of Masitise, a Phuthi man who created remarkable rock art in the 1920s and 30s. Through digital analysis, the team explores how Masitise blended Bushman traditions with personal expression, offering a rare biographical lens into rock art and the artist behind it.

The paper was part of a session focused on rock art and biographical perspectives, exploring how individual lives can be traced and understood through rock art traditions across the world.

Dr Ghilraen Laue pictured delivery her paper 

PAPER TITLE: The hand of Masitise: exploring the life of a painter through two rock art sites in southeastern Lesotho

Justine Wintjes, KwaZulu-Natal Museum, South Africa
Ghilraen Laue, KwaZulu-Natal Museum, South Africa; Rock Art Research Institute, School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa
Anton Coetzee Origins Centre, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa

ABSTRACT:

By the early twentieth century in the mountain highlands of what is now Lesotho, few if any Bushmen (San) lived as hunter-gatherers in independent communities. Most had come to live under the protection of Sotho or Phuthi chiefs. In 1932, Masitise, a Phuthi man, created some ‘Bushman paintings’ on the veranda walls of the Quthing Residence at the request of Marion How, wife of the District Commissioner. The majority of the imagery refers to a battle scene between two Bushman chiefs, Soai and Mphaki. Other imagery includes eland, a snake and an imaginary figure Masitise described as a mythical beast. Similar imagery occurs in a rock shelter half a km from the residence, reportedly painted in 1929. We use digital enhancement and visual analysis to reveal stylistic and iconographical similarities, and to argue that the two sets of figures may have been products of the same hand. This small body of work provides a glimpse into the life of Masitise. Taking inspiration from the Bushman tradition and finding his way in a new world order, Masitise combined realism and ambiguity in a distinctive expression, establishing a unique position for himself as an artist crossing boundaries and working ‘in-between’.

Abstract of the session they presented in:

T05/Session 06: Rock Art and Biographical Perspectives
FORMAT: PAPER PRESENTATIONS WITH DISCUSSION
Chairs: Assoc. Prof. Sally K. May, University of Adelaide, Australia
Joakim Goldhahn, University of Adelaide, Australia; adjunct Linnaeus University, Sweden

Biographical perspectives on rock art can be found interwoven within rock art studies globally. By offering an alternative approach to  interpreting rock art, a biographical perspective invites us to analyse the details of an individual’s life and background to understand how these experiences may have shaped their artistic expression and vice versa – how creating rock art may have impacted their life. In rare and remarkable instances, we know the names of individual rock art artists and can piece together historical accounts to explore their legacies. In other cases, we can identify individuals as creators of rock art across varying time depths, though their names remain unknown to us. Similarly, some burial monuments adorned with rock art have been argued to reflect the deceased’s life. In this session, we challenge presenters to reflect on how rock art can also be biographical – offering insights into the lives of specific artists and others, and/or offering a biographical perspective on rock art places and motifs.

WAC is a uniquely representative non-profit organization of worldwide archaeology that recognizes the historical and social role, and the political context, of archaeology, and the need to make archaeological studies relevant to the wider community (https://worldarchaeologicalcongress.com/). WAC, the world’s most prestigious archaeology conference, is held every 4 years. WAC 4 was held in Cape Town in 1999 with Mr Nelson Mandela as its Patron. 

SA Archaeological Society Talk at the KZN Museum

'Two objects he had made himself': |han≠kass’o’s bullroarer and gora in Paris

by Dr Justine Wintjes & Dr Vibeke Viestad

KwaZulu-Natal Museum/Wits University & Wits University

to be held at 10.30 am on Saturday 14th June 2025, at the KZN Museum, 237 Jabu Ndlovu Street

The Bleek and Lloyd Collection is a world-famous source of hunter-gatherer memory. The core of this collection is a set of notebooks compiled by Wilhelm Bleek and Lucy Lloyd from conversations with |xam and !xun people living with them at their house outside Cape Town in the 1870s and 1880s. Other materials from the same context have become dispersed somewhat haphazardly across different institutions, including hand-made objects that also participated in the conversations. We have refound some of these objects including spoons, head ornaments, firesticks, playthings, arrows and musical instruments in the collections of Wits Art Museum and the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris. They shed light on the creativity of the |xam and !xun in the making of the archive, and are exceptional also as rare instances of things that can be related to the lives of named Khoesan individuals in the 19th century. The story of a bullroarer and a gora – musical instrum ents used to invoke rain – is astonishingly personal. In about 1877,|han≠kass’o gifted these two items to Paul de Jouvencel, a member of the Société d’Anthropologie de Paris, thereby also participating in international anthropological discourse in the very early years of the scientific field.