Further fieldwork in the Groot Winterhoek Mountains, Eastern Cape

In April 2023, Dr Vibeke Viestad from the University of Oslo joined Drs Ghilraen Laue and Justine Wintjes, Human Sciences Department, KwaZulu-Natal Museum for a second field trip in the Groot Winterhoek Mountains northwest of Gqeberha. We recorded four new rock art sites on our last trip in 2022.

At one of these sites, L Cave, the art is painted across a particularly curvy rock wall. Artists often used natural features of the rock surface in their painting, and we wanted to find creative ways to record this three-dimensionality.

L Cave is below the arched rock formation middle right (Photograph: G. Laue).

 

Part of the main panel at L Cave (Photograph: J. Wintjes).

 

We embarked on an experimental recording project, combining traditional tracing on paper with digital enhancement and 3D modelling, with the help of Adrian Meyer, a Remote Sensing scientist from the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland.

 

Analysing the imagery using a 3D model (Screen capture: A. Meyer).

 

Adobe Illustrator file layering DStretched photograph and vector tracing (J. Wintjes).

 

Unedited photograph and DStretch enhancement showing faint cross-hatched lines nearly invisible to the naked eye (Photographs: G. Laue).

 

Recording the art using different techniques involves a great deal of close looking. These rock paintings are highly detailed but also fragmentary, so it is truly a case of the more you look the more you see.

We kept discovering new elements up to the last day!