Women in Palaeoart and the Afterlives of Symbols: An Essay in Worldview Externalisation

Women-centred motifs in African rock art form part of the most persistent symbolic repertoire of early cosmologies. Despite their prominence, these figures have received limited sustained analysis. Examination of their contexts reveals four recurrent logics—care, regeneration, boundary mediation, and the social encoding of voice—that structure social and ritual life. A comparative case from Alice Walker’s The Color Purple shows these logics rearticulated in the narrative of Celie’s self-awakening, demonstrating the afterlives of symbolic forms. This perspective clarifies the role of female imagery as a structuring element of cosmology and offers a heuristic for integrating rock-art studies with broader cross-temporal analysis.