The materialities of pigments, paints and personhood in San rock paintings: celebrating the inspiration from David Lewis-Williams

Most rock art research has been influenced by David Lewis-Williams. He has shown the material primacy of rock paintings, the cautious use of ethnography for emic understandings, and the importance of theory. In addition, his recognition of the impact of ‘critical, radical thought’ on our practice. This radical thought is encapsulated by posthuman ontologies which study the entanglements of humans and more-than-humans. Rock paintings are material and have material effects. We know that image makers used specific types and colours of pigments and minerals, paint recipes and techniques to mark their identities, but none have considered paint, and its constituents, as ontologically relating persons and their spiritmaterial environments. I do so through an analysis of the coloured pigments recorded in a selection of San rock paintings from South Africa. San ethnography shows how coloured pigments and what they are mixed with – potent substances – materially identify, associate and differentiate persons and their behaviours. I use this evidence to consider paint mixtures and painting as an ontologically relational and material engagement with personhood, behaviour and being. This investigation has important implications for considering the rock face as part of the personhood of image maker/s, specific persons and places.