Item RARI-RSA-FRH1-43.jpg - RARI RSA FRH1 43

Brief description of site: The site is located on the 1440 m contour in a narrow side tributary facing NW. This large 26 m long site has two lobes and two tiers. The upper tier has a rock bottom and is ocular in shape. The lower tier follows the high krantz line with numerous areas of rock tumble and with more and less-protected areas of overhang. The shelter's floor is a combination of loose and consolidated earth, rock tumble, mudstone blocs and sandstone granules. The floor is mostly dry and the archaeological deposit is deepest in sheltered pockets up to 50 cm thick.

The site is covered in lithics (stone tools). These are made from crypto-crystalline silicates (also known as opalines) that are volcanic in origin and which are brought to the lowlands by mountain streams and rivers. There are also many hornfels (also known as lydianite or indurated shale) lithics that are made from river cobbles. The types of lithics encountered range from chips and chunks struck from stone cores that are the residue of the stone tool manufacturing process to finished products such as flakes, scrapers and adzes. The flakes were used for a variety of cutting purposes while scrapers were primarily used to removed hair from hide and to soften the hide before making it into clothing, thongs, shoes, bags and so forth. Adzes were used for woodwork. There is also good bone preservation and several rare fragments of ostrich eggshell were noted. Charcoal is abundant. There are lower grinding hollows on some of the rock tumbles. This shelter was clearly a major focus for the San in times past. Its favourable location, the many other habitable shelters nearby, proximity to the river and a major route of travel combined with spiritual imperatives to make this a nodal point on the San physical and spiritual landscape.
Brief description of art: There are in excess of 500 individual rock paintings in the shelter. These paintings are discontinuously placed the length of the shelter, in both lobes and also on the upper tier's wall. Too numerous to deal with individually, there are a number of image clusters worthy of comment:

Circle of figures: At the eastern lobe, to the left and below the upper tier is a remarkable panel of at least 30 human figures arranged in a circle - a remarkable use of perspective continued in the western lobe with the depiction of two eland from the rear. This circle of seated and karos-clad figures with two red and white cattle and three white fat-tailed sheep painted partially on top of them in a more recent painting episode. Such circles of people - not apparently dancing - are suggestive of corporate, group activity. The depiction of domestic animals shows an awareness of new, non-San arrivals on the landscape with whom relations were initially positive.

Upper tier: The rock-paintings in the upper tier are extremely strange. The main panel is executed in an almost unknown pink paint; a patch of which can be observed on the rock floor. The figure with the bulbous and grossly exaggerated head is extremely atypical, as are the human figures around it. The rhebuck painted in orange and white on the shelter's inner ceiling has been painted with very thick, locally-derived pigment. I am, frankly, stumped by these paintings and do not know who did them or what they mean.

Animals and human figures: The slenderly built and long-tailed feline is of interest as it is not identifiable to species. There are dozens of eland and many Mountain rhebuck depicted. Human figures are found in many shapes and sizes including a bizarre white human figure that may represent an instance of Apocalyptic art. There is also a thin red line fringed with white dots that covers over 5 m of rock face. Many of the human figures are very animated - running, dancing and so forth.