Documenting rock art in the Waterberg
A panel of antelope in a small but densely painted shelter (Waterberg, photograph: G. Laue).
The rock art of the Waterberg, Limpopo Province, is relatively unexplored. Over the last two years Dr Ghilraen Laue, Human Sciences Department, KwaZulu-Natal Museum has been working with Professor Lyn Wadley of the Evolutionary Studies Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, surveying for and recording rock art sites as well as undertaking excavations in the Waterberg. A recent publication in the journal Southern African Humanities gives the results of Later Stone Age archaeological excavations and discusses the rock at one of the sites, Kaingo Sheep Rock Shelter, which is situated in the western Waterberg. A PDF of the paper can be downloaded from ResearchGate by clicking here.
In mid-January Professor Wadley and Dr Laue spent a little over a week in the Waterberg documenting rock art. So far the pair have recorded over 70 rock art sites on the Waterberg Plateau. This work included revisiting sites first recorded by Dr Laue in 1999 as well as visiting and recording new sites.
Giraffe with an extremely elongated neck (Waterberg, photograph: G. Laue)
A row of ‘Waterberg Posture’ figures. These stylized figures are found at a number of sites in the Waterberg and were the subject of Dr Laue’s Masters Dissertation (Waterberg, photograph: L. Wadley).
When the images were first recorded we did not have Dstretch enhancement technology and many images, such as those above, were missed. Top: original image. Bottom: enhanced image (Waterberg, photographs: G. Laue)
