Jeremy Hollmann: Rock Art Specialist

07/07/2024

Documenting rock art

23/06/2024

World Giraffe Day was two days ago (21st June). This is an uncommon set of engravings close to Keimoes, Northern Cape. The artists depicted what I think are two male giraffe engaging in sparring and mounting behaviour. The giraffe on the left is lifting its front legs as it prepares to mount the giraffe on the right

19/06/2024

Game Pass rock art site on fire? No! Yesterday everybody in the Kamberg area of KZN was burning fire breaks. The paintings were far away from the smoke. No threat to the rock art

12/06/2024

This painting shows a being with the body of a swift and the head of a human. This painting persuaded me that these are bird (Swift) people

12/06/2024

One of the Swift People. See the looong arms, held back like wings. The figure is a ghostly white and its body is elaborately painted

12/06/2024

Paintings made by the ancestors of the San, of 'Swift People'. These have the wings of swifts, they fly like swifts, but they have human heads and some carry sticks. All but one of the photographs have been enhanced to make it easier to see the Swift People

12/06/2024

I missed World Swift Day (7 June). Jane Goodall's description of swifts and their amazing abilities in this video supports my suggestion that some rock art in the Cape Fold mountains (Eastern and Western Cape Mountains) depict what I call 'Swift People' beings that combine the characteristics of people and swifts and/or swallows. I will share some photographs of these in another post

Happy World Swift Day! 🐦 Today we’re celebrating the birds that fly 200,000 miles a year, sleep on the wing (meaning they can enter a state of rest or sleep...

06/12/2023

28/10/2023

A new book by Jean-Loïc Le Quellec

Professor Le Quellec's work on southern African rock art is strongly contested by some researchers, so it is a bit of a joke for me to be holding this book. Academic quarrels can be very bitter!!!

The original cave
Art, myths and early humanities

The book blurb:
"Among the many hypotheses proposed to explain "cave art", many have been definitively refuted; others are not to be completely rejected, even if they cannot serve as a global elucidation. Faced with these impasses, some consider it wiser to stop looking. The challenge of this book is rather to look elsewhere and differently.
From the richest database developed to date, listing 452 cavities whose ornamentation is attributable to the Paleolithic, and following a close examination of the analyzes which have followed one another for more than a century, Jean -Loïc Le Quellec here develops an entirely new approach by asking the following question: why enter dark caves, often difficult to access and even dangerous, to create works of which the most realistic fraction strives to represent a very small number of animal species and, much less frequently, animalized or partially figured humans? In other words: what conception of the cave predominated in the Paleolithic, which led to such images being left there?
Traveling paths little taken by prehistorians and using methods unknown to "parietalists", the author demonstrates that a great myth of creation nourished the ontology of Paleolithic artists: that of primordial Emergence, which spread over across the globe as Sapiens discovered new territories outside of Africa. One day, says this myth, chthonian beings stood up to leave the original cave, and this act was recalled and renewed, for several tens of thousands of years, by images ritually traced in countless caves... like they continue to be so today in many places around the world."

28/10/2023

At Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland. Working on a research proposal for South Africa. Thank you Andrzej and Sylwia!

11/10/2023

You wear these overalls because you crawl through wet clay. I'm with Bobosse Pascal, a speleologist

11/10/2023

This is the entrance to another cave. You have to crawl in. Compare the size of the entrance hole with the black bag

11/10/2023

I'm lying on my back looking up at a drawing of a horse. It's from the Gravettian period, between 22 000 and 28 000 years ago. Yes, that's not a typing error! It was very moving

11/10/2023

This is inside the cave. Romain Lahaye is checking some digital tracings against the originals. It is something else being inside the earth

11/10/2023

Entrance to Margot cave. Behind the gate is a natural tunnel that goes about 70 m into the hill. The paintings are near the end of the tunnel

11/10/2023

In Europe for a month. I was a member of the jury for the defence of Romain Lahaye's thesis at University of Paris. The jury sits on the platform at left. The person in the suit is the candidate, Romain Lahaye. He got his doctorate!

21/06/2023

Scratches on the rock from Gestoptefontein rock engraving site

12/04/2023

Discussion of elephant paintings in Mashonaland, Zimbabwe. The paintings embody elephant behaviours. The painters depicted elephant doing things which were meaningful to the artists and their communities. 'You can't paint an animal doing nothing!'

Paintings of Elephants in San/Bushman rock art, Zimbabwe

01/02/2023

Rock paintings of trees from Mashonaland, Zimbabwe. The bright colours are the result of enhancement using DStretch

28/11/2022

Book launch for Customs and Beliefs tonight at Wits Origins Centre

A new exhibition in Johannesburg focuses on the beliefs and paintings of the San people.

22/11/2022

Even if there is loadshedding!

A talk I'm giving tonight in Montagu, Western Cape, on South Africa’s rock art traditions:

When we think about rock art in South Africa, most of us think about the paintings and engravings of Bushman or San hunter-gatherers. But there are other groups and communities who made rock art over the past 2000 years. Bantu-speaking farmer people, and Khoikhoi pastoralists also made rock art. These less well-known rock art traditions also express ideas that are part of the worldviews of these people. In this presentation rock art researcher Jeremy Hollmann will show what these other rock arts look like, where they occur and what they mean.

11/11/2022

I'm pleased to announce that my new book, 'Customs & Beliefs of the /xam' is available in hardcover, PDF and epub formats.

The book contains word-for-word narratives by five 19th century /xam men on topics that include 'sorcery', rain-making, hunting and the significance of eland, lions and springbok in their cosmology.

This is a substantially updated edition of the 2004 book. There will be an official book launch at Wits Origins Centre, Johannesburg, later this month
& Lloyd Collection

21/10/2022

A week of conferences and presentations.

Earlier in the week I gave a presentation on paintings of elephant in Mashonaland, Zimbabwe at IFAS, the French Institute of southern Africa in Johannesburg. It was fantastic to be among people with a deep interest in Zimbawean prehistory. Thank you IFAS for sponsoring my attendance!

Then yesterday I spoke about the rock paintings at Holley Shelter at Fountainhill Estate, here in KwaZulu-Natal. The Zulu name for this place is Hlambamasoka, 'hlamba' meaning 'wash, 'swim', or 'ritually cleanse'. 'Amasoka' are circumcised men. So this was the place where, in the past, men came to cleanse their wounds. These men or their guardians probably made the animal paintings in clay perhaps to instruct them in the ways of being a man

08/10/2022

Paintings of fish alongside a hunter, hindquarters of a kudu and a head and neck of a giraffe. From iNanke Cave, Matobo, Zimbabwe

06/10/2022

Elephant and buffalo, from Chikupu Cave, Chinamora & Masembura Communal Land, Zimbabwe

06/10/2022

I'm excited to be presenting at this one day conference. Anne Stoll and I are presenting on 'Some observations on hunter-gatherer paintings of Elephant in NE Zimbabwe' with photographs by George Stoll. If you want to attend virtually please pre register with [email protected]. Thanks to Léa Joubert, Sophie Dulucq and to IFAS the French Institute in Southern Africa!

03/10/2022

Good to see this initiative. And I'm sorry that I won't be able to make it!

To get an overview of the South African rock art, join the webinar hosted by Nthabeleng Rantso. The speakers are Mduduzi Maseko and Mbongeni Tembe. Register using the zoom link below:

https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_sOBzgZIRQqKKNbfzHEll1A

DATE: 03 October 2022
TIME: 18h00 - 19h00 (SAST)
VENUE: ZOOM

Wits - University of the Witwatersrand Rock Art Research Institute

03/10/2022

Putting together a book on Game Pass with Ghilraen Laue and Justine Wintjes both from the KZN Museum in Pietermaritzburg

14/07/2022

So, I'll be giving a presentation at the end of the month on this amazing part of our southern African history

18/04/2022

Another duo of flying figures, Bo Kouga, Eastern Cape