Contested Histories: A Critique of Rock Art in the Drakensberg Mountains

The Drakensberg Mountains which stretch across the eastern part of South Africa offer us a legacy of beautiful rock art. These images are often used to show the disappearance and ultimate destruction of the Southern San. In this article I argue that these images also show a continuity with contemporary Zulu-speaking people of the region, and I challenge the assumed ethnic or cultural boundaries represented in the historical and archaeological record of the ancient peoples of the Drakensberg Mountains. I also criticize the dominant interpretations of rock art as essentially religious and more importantly as essentially “San.”