RVN Webinar Series - The Usandawe Petroglyphs: New Perspectives on Tanzania's Rock Art Archive
Channel: Rift Valley Network
Date: 2023-02-03

-Note: This talk has not gone through a process of peer review, and 
findings should therefore be treated as preliminary and subject to change.
-How to cite: Knisley, Matthew. 2023. The Usandawe Petroglyphs: New Perspectives on Tanzania's Rock Art Archive. Talk Given at Rift Valley Webinar Series 25/01/2023.
-DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7603923
-Abstract: This talk examines six petroglyph (rock engraving) sites in the Sandawe homeland of north-central Tanzania, four of which are newly described here and two of which have been relocated and reassessed. In contrast to its abundant and well documented pictographs (rock paintings), Tanzania’s petroglyphs are characterized as exceedingly rare and understudied. A literature review indicates that Tanzania has more recorded petroglyph sites than its neighbors in eastern Africa (and, indeed, many nations of sub-Saharan Africa). When Tanzania’s petroglyphs are contextualized in relation to both the broader petroglyphic archive of eastern Africa and their immediate material and cultural milieu, a number of patterns emerge that sit uneasily with the regional historiography. As one example, stylistic and contextual evidence suggests links between central Tanzania and the Lake Victoria basin, which have previously been considered to form discrete rock art zones indicative of distinct forager populations. I then consider how the orientation toward authorship in African rock art studies works with and against landscape approaches that seek evidence of the reuse and resignification of meaningful places through time. Although a number of challenges remain concerning the temporal and spatial resolution of eastern Africa’s petroglyphs, they nonetheless offer another route through which to build upon the linguistic work of the Rift Valley Network to investigate landscapes of interaction and exchange.