A study by UMMAA curator Brian Stewart and co-author Sam Challis, director of the Rock Art Research Institute at Wits University and UMMAA affiliate, was recently published in the Oxford Handbook of Mountain Archaeology (OUP). Their chapter, “Mountain Meanings: Hunter-gatherer Socioreligiosity in Southern Africa’s Highest Places," covers recent research into how hunter-gatherer belief systems were influenced by mountain landscapes and ecologies. In southern Africa’s Maloti-Drakensberg Mountains, new approaches are integrating animistic readings of ethnography with novel archaeometric and microstratigraphic data to rethink religiosity among ancient mountain societies. Stewart and Challis show how the Maloti-Drakensberg were a socially and spiritually charged vertical landscape where potency was concentrated at altitude and navigation hinged on negotiation with nonhuman beings.
Read the article on the Oxford University Press website.
