How to Search
The African Rock Art Digital Archive is designed to enable a number of different searches, whether basic or advanced or public, or to do with the specific site, image, collection, document or object.
Basic Search: allows searches by country, province, district and keywords. Basic geographical searches will return a list of all recorded sites in that region. Once the list of sites has been displayed, select a site ID, and then select all images to display images.
A keyword search can be done using terms such as therianthrope, eland, digging stick, snake, feline and so on. A list of sites containing the keyword will be displayed, and individual sites and images can then be selected.
Common keywords used in the archive include:
Aardvarks, anthropomorphic figures, aprons, aromatic herbs, arrows, attenuation, baboons, bags, bees, birds, bleeding from nose, bows, camels, cats, cattle, crabs, cranes, dancing postures, digging sticks, dogs, eels, elephants, fat-tailed sheep, felines, female figures, finger dots, fish, flying creatures, flywhisks, frogs, geometrics, giraffes, goats, graffiti, grooves, handprints, herder art, hippos, horses, impalas, infibulated figures, karosses, knobkerries, kudu, ladders, late whites, leopards, locusts, musical instruments, nested U-shapes, ostriches, pigs, oval designs, polymelia, quivers, rain animal, recumbent figures, red hartebeest, red line with white dots, rhebuck, rhinos, roan antelopes, shields, snakes, spears, spoor, steatopygia, sticks, swallows, tails, therianthropes, trains, trance buck, trance dance, turtles, views, wagons, warthogs, weird whites, zebras, zigzags, zoomorphic figures.
Site Search: allows searches across a number of site-specific fields. Several fields, such as who has been to the site, location and technique can be combined. After matching sites have been displayed, select one to view the images.
Image Search: allows searches across a number of image-specific fields. Fields such as ID, collection and medium can be combined.
Collection Search: Select the collection ID and name from the drop-down menus to view related image IDs.
Document Search: Select document type or correspondence, with optional date filtering. Document ID list will be shown.
Search Cheat Sheet (RARI)
| Search Query | Description |
|---|---|
| CODESA AND constitution | Finds records mentioning both CODESA and constitution. |
| Interim OR Draft | Finds records with either "Interim" or "Draft". |
| Negotiation NOT CODESA | Finds results about Negotiation that exclude CODESA. |
| "Multi-Party Negotiation Process" | Exact phrase search. |
| symbol* | Wildcard for symbol, symbols, symbolic, etc. |
| ZA CHT COD | Records with Reference Code ZA CHT COD (Convention for a Democratic South Africa). |
| ZA CHT MPN | Records with Reference Code ZA CHT MPN (Multi-Party Negotiation Process). |
| "Commission on National Symbols" | Phrase search for National Symbols records. |
| snake OR eland | Keyword search for common rock art symbols. |
| Negative AND "Benjamin Smith" | Finds negatives related to Benjamin Smith. |
| "Phuthiatsana River III" | Site entity search (Lesotho example). |
| "Rock Art Research Institute" | Finds documents and records by the Rock Art Research Institute. |
| zebra* | Wildcard for zebra, zebras, zebra-like, etc. |
| frog AND trance | Finds images related to frogs and trance together. |
| quiver NOT arrows | Finds records about quivers but not arrows. |
Tip: Use capital letters for Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) in RARI's global search bar.