“The distinctive style of book design that Pippa Skotnes has developed to a fine art is a holistic mix of carefully selected old and new text that stimulates the reader to interact with rich seams of visual material in full-page spreads and marginal asides…. More than most books, the outstanding quality of the thoughtful design and beautiful reproduction of the documents creates a palpable sense of drama. When you reach the end you want to page through the pictures again and again.”
Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa
“(T)his book, along with Pippa Skotnes’ Claim to the Country: The Archive of Lucy Lloyd and Wilhelm Bleek (2007) are seminal new works that provide true interdisciplinary insights into how individual artist/scientists can bring alive historical events, rituals, and everyday life of the San who are believed to be the earliest indigenous people of South Africa…. (Skotnes’) reverence for methodical curatorial work and archival scholarship is evident on every page of this beautifully designed book.”
Journal of Archival Organization
George Stow was a Victorian man of many parts—poet, historian, ethnographer, artist, cartographer, and prolific writer. A geologist by profession, he became acquainted, through his work in the field, with the extraordinary wealth of rock paintings in the caves and shelters of the South African interior. Enchanted and absorbed by them, Stow set out to create a record of this creative work of the people who had tracked and marked the South African landscape decades and centuries before him.
Unconquerable Spirit reveals the scope and the beauty of his labors. Stow’s paintings are more than just copies of what he found on the rocks. They are interpretations of the art of the San, informed by his own understanding of a particularly turbulent time in South African history and his sense of the tragic demise of the San way of life. This book celebrates his pioneering achievement and reminds us, too, of the richness of the imaginative universe of the San.
Pippa Skotnes is professor of fine art and director of the Lucy Lloyd Archive, Resource and Exhibition Centre (LLAREC). She has published essays on the rock art of the San and is the author and editor of several books, including Sound from the Thinking Strings, Miscast: Negotiating the Presence of the Bushmen, and Heaven's Things. More info →
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African History · Southern Africa · South Africa · 19th century · Victorian Era · Khoisan · Anthropology · Art · History · African Studies · Africa
Hardcover
978-0-8214-1869-7
Retail price: $60.00,
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Release date: November 2008
216 pages
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Picturing Bushmen
The Denver African Expedition of 1925
By Robert J. Gordon
The Denver African Expedition of 1925 sought “the cradle of Humanity.” The explorers returned claiming to have found the “Missing Link” in the Heikum bushmen of the Kalahari—and they proceeded to market this image. As Robert J. Gordon shows in Picturing Bushmen, the impact of the expedition lay not simply in its slick merchandising of bushmen images but also in the fact that the pictures were exotic and aesthetically pleasing.
Transgressing Boundaries
New Directions in the Study of Culture in Africa
Edited by Brenda Cooper and Andrew Steyn
Transgressing Boundaries includes some of the most interesting debates informing cultural politics in South Africa today. To do so, it brings together renowned contributors from Africa, North America and the United Kingdom. The book questions the boundaries between the academic disciplines by incorporating literary studies with anthropology, history, archaeology, art and gender studies.
Anthropology · Literary Studies · Sociology · African History · African Studies · History
The Anatomy of a South African Genocide
The Extermination of the Cape San Peoples
By Mohamed Adhikari
In 1998 David Kruiper, the leader of the ‡Khomani San who today live in the Kalahari Desert in South Africa, lamented, “We have been made into nothing.” His comment applies equally to the fate of all the hunter-gatherer societies of the Cape Colony who were destroyed by the impact of European colonialism. Until relatively recently, the extermination of the Cape San peoples has been treated as little more than a footnote to South African narratives of colonial conquest.
African History · Violence in Society · Political Science, Genocide · South Africa · Cape San · African Studies
San Rock Art
By J.D. Lewis-Williams
San rock paintings, scattered over the range of southern Africa, are considered by many to be the very earliest examples of representational art. There are as many as 15,000 known rock art sites, created over the course of thousands of years up until the nineteenth century. There are possibly just as many still awaiting discovery.
Art History · Archaeology · African Art · Anthropology · South Africa · Southern Africa · Africa · San
