1978/04/01 by J. D. Lewis‐Williams, Megan Biesele · 3 citations
Social Sciences · #Archaeology and Rock Art Studies #African history and culture studies #South African History and Culture #Mythology #Rock art #Ethnology #Ethnography #Paragraph #Anthropology #Explication #Painting #Geography #Archaeology #History #Ecology #Sociology #Linguistics #Philosophy #Art history #Biology #Political science #Classics
paper · doi:10.2307/1158603
openalex publication_date 1978/04/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/18
Opening Paragraph The prominence of the eland in San thought is suggested by the frequency with which this antelope was depicted in rock paintings and also by the myths and rituals in which it features. In this paper we describe and compare certain eland beliefs and hunting rituals drawn from two San groups, the !Kung of Botswana and the now extinct \Xam of the Cape Province. The relevance of material obtained from the northern !Kung to the explication of the limited southern \Xam ethnographic record and rock paintings has been regarded as questionable in view of the ecological and linguistic differences between the two societies. Using the results of recent field work among the !Kung, we attempt to show that, in spite of the linguistic and ecological differences, there is evidence for a conceptual framework common to both groups.