Images of Power Understanding San Rock Art

Author - David Lewis-Williams; Thomas Dowson

Publisher - Southern Book Publishers (Pty) Ltd: 1989

A very good quarto hardback book with a very good dustjacket.

Slight rubbing to board edges.

Illustrated ends.

Unpaginated prelims: acknowledgements and preface, + 196 pages including index.

Dustjacket has been overlaid with a clear adhesive laminate.

Light offset to the end-papers and light foxing to the prelims.

For many years it was thought that the true meaning of San rock art was irretrievably lost. However the authors have drawn on comprehensive and largely unpublished records of San (Bushmen) beliefs which were recorded verbatim during the 1870s, as well as on modern research done with the living Kalahari San. Hence much of the guesswork that has characterised, other approaches to the art has been eliminated. Essentially the work of medicine people, or shamans, these striking pieces of art depict trance visions and symbols of supernatural potency. The records of San beliefs - coupled with neuropsychological research on these trance states - has enabled us to understand many hitherto baffling issues, such as the strange relationships between human beings and animals, and puzzling geometrical patterns. the explantations, often given in the San's own words, are set alongside detailed and accurate copies of rock paintings and engravings. These advances have placed southern African work in the forefront of world rock art research. 

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