Editorial.

Editorial. Elandsbaai Western Cape, South Africa warm and sunnyNorth and trending west a little out from Cape Town, through the CapeFlats sprawl and into arid ploughland. Everywhere blossoming on the wirefences is South Africa's welcoming national flower - the fetalplastic bag (a bloom shared even equally by Italy), commonly white,often with polychrome pol��y��chrome?adj.1. Having many or various colors; polychromatic.2. Made or decorated in many or various colors: polychrome tiles.n. details. Into Piketberg for a snack, little townfull of farmers' bakkies come into town to buy stuff for theproperty; the bottle shop opposite, as ANTHONY MANHIRE shows me, is athoroughly modern building where a concrete fedazzle set over the dooris the enduring ghost of the graceful central gable in high Cape Dutchhouses. Above us the mountain of the Piketberg, a high craggy crag��gy?adj. crag��gi��er, crag��gi��est1. Having crags: craggy terrain.2. Rugged and uneven: a craggy face. lump whichlooks promising (at least, fairly promising) for rock-art. Though I amused now to unexplored country in Australia, my English background stillmakes me expect every obvious archaeological acre will have beenexplored to exhaustion; so I am startled when I ask, and Tony says,'Is there rock-art up there? Probably - we haven't had time tolook yet.'Then turning more west, narrowing tarmac then good gravel, we crossthe sandveld and come towards Elandsbaai. Sheep, wheat, cattle,ostriches (ostriches! - this is my first time in southern Africa),vines. A spreading flock of sheep on the stubble with dark-skinnedherders: the sheep not fat-tailed, but otherwise a wandering flock asshepherding people have grazed this land 2000 years. To the east, theridges of the Cederberg, blue knife-edges retreating into far grey. Thena long straight valley, cultivated fields of pure sand on the slope, noteven a streak of humus humus(hy`məs), organic matter that has decayed to a relatively stable, amorphous state. It is an important biological constituent of fertile soil. in the beige. To our left, the Verlorenvlei, along narrow pool of water, sometimes with reeds, pelicans, glossy ibis,though we are still 15 kilo-metres from the sea. In time, opposite,where Diepkloof shelter makes an enticing lump on the sky-line, a clumpof trees. Before it, with its stoop overlooking the vlei The word "Vlei" comes from Dutch and Afrikaans and is the word used to describe certain classes of bodies of inland waters in southern Africa. The pronunciation is "Flay".The word occurs by itself as a noun or as a suffix forming the names of bodies of water (e.g. , a langhuis,neat and low, tiny windows, green door, whitewashed (to save the unfiredmudbrick from running away in the wet) under a thatch from the fynbos.A night in the University of Cape Town's station, field-base forJOHN PARKINGTON'S long-term study of the changing landscape and theQuaternary quaternary/qua��ter��nary/ (kwah��ter-nar?e)1. fourth in order.2. containing four elements or groups.qua��ter��nar��yadj.1. Consisting of four; in fours. sequence around Eland's Bay. It is astonishing to me -and no less astonishing though I know it is commonplace - how much of aHolocene landscape's changing story is plainly visible on theground, if only you have the eyes and experience: the main shelter ofElandsbaai cave; the little gray taluses spilling down below smalleroverhangs that tell each of a little deposit of shell and lithics above;the rock-bar at the mouth of the vlei which separates thebrackish-cum-freshwater from the saltwater systems; the'dinner-time' camps of one-time visits that make tiny depositsof shell and charcoal scattered within the sand of the dunes; furthernorth, the kopjes with open sites at their bases; the shell beaches,cheniers, of 'last Interglacial' age (whatever that means) inthe quarry exposures; and a deep river valley where, they say, handaxesare downstream eroding out of the channel banks.The earth scientists who work on plate tectonics teach us how thinand shallow is the zone of active geology as we see it, on and withinthe plates that float lightly above the deep movements. Wearchaeologists, who work amongst the shallow surficial sur��fi��cial?adj.Of, relating to, or occurring on or near the surface of the earth.[surf(ace) + (superf)icial.]Adj. 1. deposits that lieon those plates, see the same in miniature. So we are given the beachterraces, the moving sand-dunes, the buried soils - the whole materialbody of Holocene landscapes often perfectly on view.Diepkloof Elandsbaai, Western Cape, South Africa warm and sunnyAbove and across from the langhuis, a high crag of rocks on theridge-top, rounded, with a clear overhang on the left side: Diepkloofshelter. A hint of a path up to it from the farm buildings, through thelow scrub and across the scree boulders, a scramble over the roundedblocks for the last yards, and into a lovely enclosed rock-shelter,Diepkloof West. A fortunate fall of little rocks has pulled in and heldback the deposit in a good area, 10 by 5 m, northeast facing: notfortunate, JOHN PARKINGTON thinks, as the rock-fall is too regular, andthey see this in other shelters as some kind of a nearly built wall.Board and plastic sheeting covers the top of his telephone-boxexcavation, left accessible since they stopped before bottom. A greatvista out, across the vlei, on towards the far Cederberg. Distinct roundpatches below, greyer in the patchwork foliage, half a dozen yardsacross: the mark in the modern vegetation of long-gone termite mounds,John tells us.Rock-art - paintings, not so many, but as my first in southern Africathey will do. Painted hands mostly, but how are they done? Not simpleprints, because the palm comes out as U-shapes nested within each other.Not painted either. Are they 'offset' (as a printer would callthem) - with the design painted on the hand, and then the hand rolled onto the rock face and the image transferred there?Animal droppings run down, goo over and ruin some paint. Hyrax hyrax(hī`răks), name for rabbit-sized mammals of Africa and SW Asia comprising the family Procavidae. Although rodentlike in appearance, hyraxes are hoofed mammals, or ungulates (see Chordata), most closely related to elephants and sea cows. droppings, we hear, and we see hyraxes - dassies dassiessee hyrax. - later in the day: toomuch like oversized grey guinea-pigs to be credible as theelephant's closest living relative. Over the years, working inshallow shelters with rock-art, I have accumulated experience of thevaried creatures whose droppings build up there. I am not surprised tohear that dates for the dassie dassie:see hyrax. droppings, built into fantastical dirtyblack stacks, go back thousands of years: the lengthy radiocarbonchronology of habitual and orderly shitters. Dassie poo has its ownfaint stink, which I come not to enjoy; though it is less nasty than therodent mustiness in the ancient nests of Great Basin pack-rats. I preferthe cleaner smell of Arnhem Land rock-wallabies, though their urinemakes even slippier and shiny skins on the rock surfaces to have youslither off. Mediterranean sheep and goats just make scatteredpea-droppings, no buildup, no sense of history there. My favouritecreature of the caves, when it comes to lying on whatever stuff coversthe shelter floor to look at paint on the ceilings, remains the feral feraluntamed; often used in the sense of having escaped from domesticity and run wild. donkeys of north Australia, whose generously loose digestion makes - ifthe plopped turds are old enough and well enough baked clean in the sun- for a soft, dry, grassy, pleasant mass to ease your shoulders on. (Itcould be worse, as BRUNO DAVID David, in the BibleDavid,d. c.970 B.C., king of ancient Israel (c.1010–970 B.C.), successor of Saul. The Book of First Samuel introduces him as the youngest of eight sons who is anointed king by Samuel to replace Saul, who had been deemed a failure. reminds me, telling of the shimmering shim��mer?intr.v. shim��mered, shim��mer��ing, shim��mers1. To shine with a subdued flickering light. See Synonyms at flash.2. patch on the floor of Hearth Cave, which close up was the biggest mob ofhungry ticks, on the march towards his excavation trench.)Round to Diepkloof East nearly at the same level, more open, lessdeposit, less grand view. More pictures, though not much to see at firstglance. Ochre mostly, some with white: there are my first eland eland(ē`lənd), large, spiral-horned African antelope, genus Taurotragus, found in brush country or open forest at the edge of grasslands. Elands live in small herds and are primarily browsers rather than grazers. , thefamed great antelope of Bushman painting and sacred knowledge. Redbodies make strong red rectangles; their white heads are most partsgone. Not as lovely as in the books!We look with special care at paintings that distinctly cover oneanother: is this a site at which sequence can be seen with somereliability, and therefore a place that can contribute to astratigraphic chronology for the Western Cape paintings? SIYAKHA MGUNI,honours student who arrived only last week at Cape Town to develop hisskills from an undergraduate degree in his home Zimbabwe, looks at thefigures with John and myself. Does he have an honours field projecthere? It looks like it.I have some notions, especially the value of a huge line of thenested-U hands, about 110 clear that are spread along 10 metres, out ofperhaps 130-160 originally; if one can treat those as a set of motifs tobe equated together, as reasonably supposed to have been done altogetherand all at the same time, then they will tie the whole panel together. Iremember the long line of water-lily buds, and the great horizontalsnake, that similarly unite the sequence across the Kungurrul panel innorth Australia, on which PAUL TAGON and I built essentials of ourregional chronology there. I realize with a start that I am for oncesome kind of an expert in what we are looking at. Parkington, a cannierman than I, expects me to be able to guide him as to what best they do.That Australian work was, we believe, the first time a complex rock-artsequence was resolved using the Harris matrix method developed forcomplex stratigraphy stratigraphy,branch of geology specifically concerned with the arrangement of layered rocks (see stratification). Stratigraphy is based on the law of superposition, which states that in a normal sequence of rock layers the youngest is on top and the oldest on the in the dirt; JANNIE LOUBSER'S subsequent studyof the El Raton panel in Baja California was the second; Siyakha'sand John's would make the third. I try to work with Siyakha throughessentials of what Paul and I found useful, and where we were cautious;how can I be helpful and courteous, not pushy push��y?adj. push��i��er, push��i��estDisagreeably aggressive or forward.pushi��ly adv. or commanding, with ayoung man who has just come from home to a foreign university, thenstraight into the bush with a visiting bearded Brit - a Brit who is bothin an African painted shelter for the first time and pretends to knowwhat to do with it?Sevilla Cederberg, Western Cape, South Africa hot and stillInland from Elandsbaai to Clanwilliam; its name - remembering somefailed Irish settling of the place - stands out from the Afrikaansplace-names all around. The centre of a little town busy with Saturdaymorning business, bakkies down the main street, the Spa store heavingwith shoppers. Over the high Pakhuis Pass, and down 300 metres into thevalley - part dry-farming, part great circles of irrigated land. Up aside-track by the empty river-channel to a pair of cottages under apepper-tree. A langhuis again, with the caution here to beware ofbaboons; who will squeeze in a window and trash the place at thesmallest opportunity. We see the patriarch of the troupe one afternoon,looking just like a baboon baboon,any of the large, powerful, ground-living monkeys of the genus Papio, also called dog-faced monkeys. Five subspecies live in Africa, with one species extending into the Arabian peninsula. should look by the model of therock-paintings: first in sitting profile on the rock edge, tailoverhanging; then on all fours in strolling profile; then heading backover the crest to join his women and children.The Cederberg landscape strikes me as classic arid rock-art country:broken scrub, with exposures along the river-valleys, and where gulliesmake little canyons. Metamorphosed sandstone, it's more like thebasalt country of the Mojave Desert in central California. Worn andwonderfully detailed red paintings in the little shelters and overhangs;my eyes often struggle as Tony Manhire points to the faint lines,millimetre thin and sometimes in a transparent yellow, which make thebows and bowstrings painted as they were held - either out ready foraction in the hand or stowed away in the hunter's bag. I willstruggle even more with the famous line of elephant-headed men in theOlifantsrivier valley (Olifants! Elephants!), so much fainter than whatwas seen distinct when the old tracings were made, not many years ago.Something grave is happening on the rock, not just in my eyes.There is a lot to spy on the ground too, and I begin to learn what tolook for amongst the lithics. Grey-black shale, an odd worked-stonematerial for me, is a pointer. Close by to the east begins the greatplateau of the Karoo ka��rooalso kar��roo ?n. pl. ka��roosAn arid plateau of southern Africa.[Afrikaans, from Nama !garo-b, desert. , the dry plateau with flat-topped shale kopjes thatamounts to nearly a third of the area of South Africa; so shale in theindustries points to links that way. As at Elandsbaai, it does and itdoes not surprise me that the surface landscape is so littered withthese traces of a Stone Age presence. It does thrill me, as it should.In one of the Traveller's Rest shelters, darn it, an aardvarkhas quarried through the deposits, turning over the grey dry dirt.It's as bad a beast as a wild pig. In the side of the hole it hasrooted up are streaks of white and of beige grass-stems. The beige willbe the sleeping-mats, for the Cederberg shelters are dry enough toconserve organics.Department of Archaeology, Stellenbosch University Western Cape,South Africa hot and clearAcross the Cape Flats from Kaapstad, between the 'informalsettlements' (a.k.a. townships) that line the motorway by the mile,past the thickets of infamous Port Jackson weed; it's an Australianmimosa, imported to stabilize sandy places, and now gone wildly fetal.(Why do the Australian plants, once released, take over the world -whilst the Australian animals cannot even survive at home once rabbitsand cats arrive?) Across to the notch in the hills, up a little amongthe vines and into Stellenbosch, picture-pretty bright-white town,second-oldest in the Cape. Long houses, thatched, with a curlicuedcentrepiece over the central doorway, symmetrical whitewashed ranges toeach side.The archaeology department inhabits the little pavilion appended tothe side of the original university building which once was theuniversity's library: late Cape Dutch, decorated, gleamingwhitewash whitewash,white fluid commonly used as an inexpensive, impermanent coating for walls, fences, stables, and other exterior structures. It varies in composition, being generally a mixture of lime (quicklime), water, flour, salt, glue, and whiting, with other , as lovely a little building as a small archaeology departmentcould hope to occupy. Below, office space, stores, the oneteaching-room; upstairs a single big square plain work-room, goodwindows, good even light. Trestle tables, and on them Klasies RiverMouth in all its cryptic lithic lith��ic?1?adj.Consisting of or relating to stone or rock.Adj. 1. lithic - of or containing lithium2. lithic - relating to or composed of stone; "lithic sandstone" order, on which HILARY DEACON andcolleagues continue their patient work. Klasies, a full 20 m ofstratified stratified/strat��i��fied/ (strat��i-fid) formed or arranged in layers. strat��i��fiedadj.Arranged in the form of layers or strata. sequence on the Tsitsikama coast at the far south tip of theCape (south even of the Cape of Good Hope Noun 1. Cape of Good Hope - a point of land in southwestern South Africa (south of Cape Town)2. Cape of Good Hope - a province of western South AfricaCape of Good Hopen → ), holds the great puzzle ofthe Middle Stone Age in southern Africa: if its Howiesons Poort industryis pukka puk��kaalso puck��a ?adj.1. Genuine; authentic.2. Superior; first-class.[Hindi pakk Middle Stone Age, which stratigraphically it is, then why andhow does it have a recurring and standardized component of small blades,backed pieces and points - alongside what a more textbook MSA shouldhave? Is it in that sense Upper Palaeolithic? And if not, then what? Andhow does blade technology equate and fail to equate with the stonyculture of our own modern Hom. sap. sap. (on which see the Neanderthalquestion and JEAN-PHILIPPE RIGAUD & JAN F. SIMEK'Sreview-article in this number)? What date is it? Clearly beyond 40,000since beyond useful radiocarbon, and at 60-80,000 b.p.? Like so muchmixed up with early modern hominids, it falls into that dating gap,beyond 14C and before the older radiometric measures, where variedapproaches to dating sometimes contrive con��trive?v. con��trived, con��triv��ing, con��trivesv.tr.1. To plan with cleverness or ingenuity; devise: contrive ways to amuse the children.2. to give nearly the same answers.So there the strange stuff is in the old Stellenbosch library, orderedon the work-tables - the decent blades, of a sufficient thin elegance,in between the lumpier stuff, the chunky flakes made of a gritty greystone. As usual - since whatever it is, Howiesons Poort is mostcertainly Palaeolithic - they have at Stellenbosch mostly just thelithics to work with; but CHRISTOPHER HENSHILWOOD, of the Cape Towndepartment, just now has got down into an MSA sequence with a properbone industry - the first ever in the Cape - where elegant bone pointswell match what 'ought' to be in the Later Stone Age. Turningtowards art, my own way into these questions, I think also of ochre andwhat ochre means: full of symbolic meaning in modern cultures, does itsignify some symbolic meaning, and therefore symbolically-meaningfulcreatures, from the start? In an ideal world, perhaps I might joinProfessor DEACON, a soft-speaking man I feel so very much senior tomyself, in a considered dig into those issues. Like other fundamentalsin the archaeology of hunter-gatherers then and now, they could beneatly explored in parallel tandem between southern Africa andAustralia.Game Pass Shelter KwaZulu-Natal Drakensberg, South Africa cool withcloudsBeethoven wrote just nine symphonies, and I have heard each one toomany times; there is not one left for me to come fresh to. I have neverbeen into Lascaux, and perhaps I never would like to (besides not havingsufficient research cause to enter a sacred chamber that should be leftin peace); better that I should anticipate what a place it might be, andnever know.Up from (Pieter)Maritzburg, on the longest hill that takes you intothe high country, and then up again away from the main Durban-Egolihighway into the lower slopes of the Drakensberg, the 'DragonMountain'. Not at all what prejudice made me expect of Africa inthe summer, not hot and not dry, but cool, damp and intensely green likea perfected and larger-scale re-making of the Welsh mountains. Expansivefarms, now disappearing under a dismal dark blanket of solid conifersgrowing for pulp-wood; then on the higher ground - though still in thelower foothills of the great range - through busy settlements where mosthouseholds mix the old round thatched huts with rectangular houses inmodern materials. DAVID LEWIS-WILLIAMS, my guide with colleagues fromthe Rock Art Research Unit at Wits university in Johannesburg, explains:when there were still San Bushmen in the hills, they used to come downto raid for cattle, so the colonial government planted in a buffer zoneof black farmers to stop them causing trouble for big white stations onbetter land below.Into the Natal Park, calling at the ranger station to collect the keyfor Game Pass shelter. A big wide and U-shaped valley (was it glaciated?Goodness, it seems high enough to have been), with a strip of rockycliff proud below the skyline. Can I see a distinct shelter up there?Maybe. A steady walk up the slope, which in a U-shaped valley steepensas you go, on a half-hearted path. Spoor spoor?n.The track or trail of an animal, especially a wild animal.v. spoored, spoor��ing, spoorstr. & intr.v.To track (an animal) by following its spoor or to engage in such tracking. of a big ungulate ungulateAny hoofed, herbivorous, quadruped, placental mammal in three or four orders: Artiodactyla, the even-toed ungulates (including pigs, camels, deer, and bovines); Perissodactyla, the odd-toed ungulates (including horses, tapirs, and rhinoceroses); Proboscidea in the mudwhere a waterfall dribbles down: I ask. It's eland. Across thecreek and more directly up. Out of courtesy for one of us, who has notbeen at his best, we take it gently; which saves me from being the unfitlaggard. Zig-zag up the far slope, nearly needing hand-holds and at lastto the razor-wire fence that protects the shelter. I didn't checkthe time that's passed since we left the truck: 1000 feet up at1000 feet an hour? Not less?Again, rightly nervous in the presence of a senior wizard of the art,I worry if I will be up to scratch. Will I see the darn things? What ifthey are fainter even than in the Cape? There is the shelter, a goodsandstone wall, perhaps 80 m long, with chunky slabs breaking away onthe talus, perhaps 10 m deep, its vertical wall perhaps 6 metres high,and then overhangs stepping out: very like an Arnhem Land shelter, inessentials. Brown-reddish rock face, no paintings: am I too daft to seethem? Up and into the shelter proper: there they are - even I cannotmiss them, but I had been standing where only the upper, unpaintedsurface was in view.I don't have the words to describe the elegance and the beautyof these loveliest of paintings that make up the main frieze frieze,in architecture, the member of an entablature between the architrave and the cornice or any horizontal band used for decorative purposes. In the first type the Doric frieze alternates the metope and the triglyph; that of the other orders is plain or . Red-bodiedeland, fine hump at the shoulder, with cream-white heads, worthy ofworship. Elegant lines of sturdy standing human figures, each body madea strong upright block by the enfolding cloak, the kaross. Where thesestanding figures stand standingly, the moving figures move movingly:ox-blood dark (eland-blood dark), small, they leap on outstretched legswith as enduring a dynamism as ever tracked down a wounded eland andspread sacred blood on the greenest veld veldor veldt(both: vĕlt, Du. fĕlt)[Du.,=field], term applied to the grassy undulating plateaus of the Republic of South Africa and of Zimbabwe. . This is the hunter'svision.In the presence of masterpieces of painting, I am in the presence ofthe master of their study. DAVID LEWIS-WILLIAMS talks me through acentral panel, a Rosetta Stone for the Drakensberg in his reading of theSan art as ruled by the metaphors of trance and shamanism shamanism/sha��man��ism/ (shah��-) (sha��mah-nizm?) a traditional system, occurring in tribal societies, in which certain individuals (shamans) are believed to be gifted with access to an invisible spiritual : an eland,head low, front knees breaking, in the posture of death; tail, a humanfigure with animal head and hooves.Round the corner from Game Pass, trying not to lose height as wetraverse the upper slope and up some more into a narrow V-squeeze of avalley; twisting and dividing, it takes us to the three Willem shelters,and from the last up the slope again (it hurts again) over the flat topand across down and round and into Christmas Shelter. I have no words,as now begins to be usual.Down now, down the narrow valley, soon broadening, across thestreams, over the lip by Game Pass, down towards the waterfall. A farmatchbox of white deep below is the truck we are heading to. Mostly Ijust look at my feet. The others, more observant and less zonked. seedistant movement on the far slope, beyond and below Game Pass, a goodkilometre away. Big creatures. Eland! Now I have seen them!Nuttall's Shelter KwaZulu-Natal Drakensberg, South Africa coolwith showers threateningWe have permission from the Natal Park's officers to visitremote sites. Just the three of us today, GEOFFREY BLUNDELL & BENSMITH with myself. We leave the truck as for Game Pass and head up themain valley's floor. The first hour is on the ruin of the old farmtrack, the second across the open tussocks of the veld. A great bluffahead splits the valley and its river. A serious stream, tumbling overrocks and little falls, perhaps 6 metres wide, waist and more deep, thewater strong and cold! It's either cross or go back, so cross wedo. Up the right-hand valley, hint of a game-trail path, all on a steepdiagonal slope; under the high tussocks of grass is a scree-slope; myright ankle feels as if it will turn and sometimes it does. KranzesShelter, destination, 3 hours 45 minutes from the truck. A big and deepoverhang; screaming swifts nest on the cliff above; more good paintings;hint of an occupation deposit. Lunch on the rocks; we have to watch thepassing time, for it will be a good walk back. Yesterday's animaldroppings in the shelter were porcupine's; today's arebaboon's.Then up and on to Nuttall's: just past Kranzes, David had said,where there's a little valley to the left, doesn't lookpromising, go up there where a Mr Nuttall once went and there'sNuttall's. So that's what we try - just past Kranzes, a littlevalley to the left, doesn't look promising, up we go andthere's Nuttall's, a thick sliver of a shelter near the top ofthe slope. Great and delicate pictures again: marvellous buck, alongsidethe eland; a good bush-pig in a band of human figures; more human andnot-wholly-human figures. The delicacy of line, which I saw in the Capemostly as ghosts and blurs within Tony's ken and beyond mine, isplain here in the Drakensberg, and the finesse of the brush when itcomes to detail, to the hairs on an eland's neck. In this shelterthere is no good lip to catch material, but in a scrap of occupationdeposit are some well-worked lithics. It is a physical mark of thecommitted rock-art researcher, I hear, to sport a fitting tattoo on hiship: would a bush-pig show a right message? Or an extravagantly malerunning figure? Since a teenager, I have wanted a tattoo, never have hadthe nerve.Time to head back: tussocky tus��sock?n.1. A clump or tuft, as of growing grass.2. A tuft of hair or feathers.[Origin unknown. slopes are as wretched on the ankles asgoing up, stream crossing as cold as ditto, Ben & Geoffrey aspatient as ditto. We meet buck on the veld, much smaller, no hump, moreuniform beige, stiff legs: certainly not eland! I try to show goodattitude by a tidy and rapid closing pace as the truck comes into sight.2 hours 50 minutes down from Nuttall's.Drakensberg art is San Bushman art, but there are no San there today,and the surviving Bushmen are in a far country where they do not paint.Whose heritage is it now become? Who is to own whose heritage in SouthAfrica, a land where the distinctions of race and identity as theydirect power and possession have had such explicit force?District 6 Museum Cape Town, South Africa hot and windyI had felt some spirit of the new South Africa from the first momentI landed in Cape Town and found the immigration immigration,entrance of a person (an alien) into a new country for the purpose of establishing permanent residence. Motives for immigration, like those for migration generally, are often economic, although religious or political factors may be very important. officers strikinglyyoung and so visibly multi-ethnic under the vivid new flag. But how,through knowledge of truth and through impulse of reconciliation, tobring together such long-divided communities, where the taxi-buses arefor one ethnicity, the BMWs for another? (BMW BMWin full Bayerische Motoren Werke AGGerman automaker. Founded as an aircraft engine manufacturer in 1916, the company assumed the name Bayerische Motoren Werke and became known for its high-speed motorcycles in the 1920s. does not stand in SouthAfrica, as it does in south London, for Black Man's Wheels.)District 6 is an inner-city area of Cape Town, close to the docks,historically mixed and mostly non-white in its ethnicity, which wasdeclared White under the 1966 Group Areas Act, and bulldozed. Much ofthe land is still empty, its former people scattered in the Cape Flats.A remarkable museum in a fine high church with a good ironwork balconyoffers this human district's history and existence in materialobjects and - repeatedly - in names: names of people, names of streets,names of places. Central on the floor is a map of District 6; on it, andon a long white sheet, memories are written: by the gazebo, by the rosegarden, 'Big brass bands played on Sundays & Bank Holidays inTrafalgar Park'; 'M. Mazel & Sons, 175 CaledonStreet'; on Marriott Square, '4 families, I Portuguese, 2Moslem, I Christian'; 'Zahier & Awaatief Jacobs';'Johaar Mosaval'; 'Eddie Daniels'; 'Alex LaGuma'; 'Cissie Gool'.On the balcony is a show about District sport - cricket of course,and soccer and swimming, the pigeons of the Cape District Homing Union,scoreboard of the Evergreen Domino Club.Notice how one grasps people, places, things by their given names.Nuttall's Shelter and Game Pass Shelter and Christmas Shelter - ifnot each shelter, then their valleys - surely had its San name; when SanDrakensberg people were made extinct so were the names of the places.Newly nameless, they were named again by the people who took possessionof the land. And naturally the new name of the dominating peak,'Dragon's Mountain', is itself of our language andculture.This is why the 79 enamelled street-signs of District 6 move me so.Retrieved by a foreman who was himself in charge of forced demolitionand donated to the museum, they are the public names of a humantopography.Opryland Hotel alongside the freeway, somewhere beyond the city-edge,Nashville, Tennessee, USA enclosed air-conditioned and dry space,exterior weather unknownOh dear. The Society for American Archaeology The Society for American Archaeology (SAA) is the largest organization of professional archaeologists of the Americas in the world. The Society was founded in 1934 and today has over 7000 members. , of which I am along-loyal member and soon (as I leave ANTIQUITY) the chair of itsPublications Committee, has done it again. They held their enormous andexcellent annual meeting at the Disneyland Hotel in California a fewyears ago: as an applied exercise in anthropology, it was a remarkablestudy in monopoly capitalism, social control and voluntaryinfantilization - the three tied together of course, by the skills ofDisney management. (I remember fondly also an unspeakable joke aboutMichael Jackson and Disneyland, too horrid even to hint at to allude to lightly, indirectly, or cautiously.See also: Hint .) Now the1997 annual meeting is at the Opryland Hotel, an immense artificialconfection con��fec��tionn.A sweetened medicinal compound. Also called electuary. of sub-Southern style invented somewhere north of Nashvilleairport. Its point and inspiration is the 'Grand Ole Opry',home of country music as homogenized and mass-reproduced. (For properbluegrass bluegrass,any species of the large and widely distributed genus Poa, chiefly range and pasture grasses of economic importance in temperate and cool regions. In general, bluegrasses are perennial with fine-leaved foliage that is bluish green in some species. from JAMES KING's band, and the loveliest double-bass,JOHN TERRELL & I went instead to the plain concrete bar on - was it?- 14th Street in the real city.) Opryland was Disneyland again in MiddleAmerica, but with a larger element of monopoly capitalism, to judge bythe prices.It at last dawns on me that this is not an accident. Many Europeanarchaeologists believe - with slight justification - that their Americancolleagues are oddly in thrall to simple models of ecological andfunctional determinism: human behaviour follows in a rather mechanicalway those controlling directions. Not so, and Opryland is proof: awholly artificial make-believe world, complete with Gulf of Mexico Noun 1. Gulf of Mexico - an arm of the Atlantic to the south of the United States and to the east of MexicoGolfo de MexicoAtlantic, Atlantic Ocean - the 2nd largest ocean; separates North and South America on the west from Europe and Africa on the east deltaand snake-free tropical forest, constructed with no regard to theecological and functional constraints of a landscape on thevalley-bottom edge of a tributary of the middle Mississippi, and madelogically true only by an idiosyncratic id��i��o��syn��cra��sy?n. pl. id��i��o��syn��cra��sies1. A structural or behavioral characteristic peculiar to an individual or group.2. A physiological or temperamental peculiarity.3. and historically arbitraryversion of a free-market economics. A session chair of integrity at theSAA (Systems Application Architecture) A set of interfaces designed to cross all IBM platforms from PC to mainframe. Introduced by IBM in 1987, SAA includes the Common User Access (CUA), the Common Programming Interface for Communications (CPI-C) and Common Communications , faced with papers on the baffling baf��fle?tr.v. baf��fled, baf��fling, baf��fles1. To frustrate or check (a person) as by confusing or perplexing; stymie.2. To impede the force or movement of.n.1. eccentricities of advanced statesocieties - say THOMAS H. CHARLTON & DEBORAH L. NICHOLS offering'Results from continuing investigations of Late Aztec Otumba in thenortheastern Basin of Mexico' or RAFAEL COBOS with 'AncientMaya causeways: new views on their intrasite role' - would haveabandoned that academic programme and instead led their colleagues toroam the hotel in a hands-on experience of such fuller expression ofsocial complexity and its specialized aberrations: they could havestarted with the ingenious items of material culture displayed at theDomino's Pizza franchisees' show down the hall from thearchaeologists in the tangle of meeting rooms. Those into the perennialSAA topic of Maya collapse- like RHAN-JU SONG'S 'Childhooddental health of Altun Ha Maya from Preclassic to Postclassic:implications for the Maya collapse' - could have got to goodexperimental work: strategies of whatever kind that caused Opryland tocollapse would make a practical study in applied archaeology and,surely, provide also some broad public benefit.Writing-on-Stone Milk River, Alberta Milk River is a town in the province of Alberta, Canada, located on and named after the Milk River, which flows immediately to its south. It is km (mi) south of Lethbridge, and km (mi) from the Canada-U.S. border. , Canada cold (-10 [degrees] C),lying snow, windyIn the field again, though briefly, thank goodness, and where otherthan in the field would anyone want to be, south Canadian spring weatherand all? Rock-art again, because that's what I mostly work on (andisn't Writing-on-Stone one of the best archaeological site names?It's nearly as good as Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, also insouthern Alberta and not many miles west along the US border.) Datingthe figures there - some fine paintings, mostly fine engravings - is thekey research issue, as it is in the Cape and in the Drakensberg. It ishard to do good archaeology on stuff until you have some kind of a date.Fine work by MICHAEL KLASSEN & JAMES KEYSER ties petroglyph pet��ro��glyph?n.A carving or line drawing on rock, especially one made by prehistoric people.pet stylesthere into ethnohistorical records of the ledger-books, painted hiderobes, and coup counts: plain pictures of horses and guns were the firstdefining clue, as they often are in those regions where the rock-arttraditions fortunately extend into an era of European contact. JACKBRINK, archaeologist for the province, recognizes the potential here tobroaden the study of the figures out and into a fuller exploration oftheir biogeochemicogeomorphologicogeological context; for the historyand potential antiquity of the figures depends on the history andpotential antiquity of the surfaces which bear them. And goodconservation measures depend on and demand a good knowledge of whathappens in and on the rock-surface.Across the Milk River - proving colder even than the Drakensbergstream when I clumsily half-fall into its meltwater melt��wa��ter?n.Water that comes from melting snow or ice.meltwaterNounmelted snow or iceNoun 1. (either I went in orthe camera did) - proudly ochre in its own shelter is the Thunderbird;this emblem, as thrilling as the transforming eland, perhaps even has anequal potential to show the real meaning of these icons. The ThunderbirdShelter, facing downslope n. 1. a downward slope.Noun 1. downslope - a downward slope or benddeclivity, declination, declension, fall, decline, descentdownhill - the downward slope of a hill to the river, is - one imagines just the spotfor the vision quest vision questsupernatural experience in which an individual interacts with a guardian spirit to obtain advice or protection. Of particular importance to indigenous North and South American peoples, these rituals varied from tribe to tribe. . The question haunts, as it does in the Cape and inthe Drakensberg: what and how much is held in common between the visionof the researcher and the vision of the artist?Noticeboard noticeboardnotice (Brit) n → Anschlagbrett ntIndex to ANTIQUITYBesides the indexes to each volume, there are three printed indexesto the journal, each a separate book: for volumes 1-25 (1927-51), 2650(1952-76), and 51-65 (1977-91). Now all three are combined into a singleindex together with the individual indexes since volume 65. Thiscomplete comprehensive index is available at Antiquity's page onthe Internet: http//:intarch.ac.uk/antiquity.Since it is an edited collation COLLATION, descents. A term used in the laws of Louisiana. Collation -of goods is the supposed or real return to the mass of the succession, which an heir makes of the property he received in advance of his share or otherwise, in order that such property may be divided, together with the , we warn users: 'The index hasbeen collated from individual indexes for the separate numbers, whichwere done at various times by various hands. Names of contributors andof authors of books reviewed should be right. Coverage of subjects isvery variable; since early indexes were more thorough in coveringsubjects, the entries may be mostly or only for older volumes - and muchmore recent coverage will not be indexed.'Conference3-6 September 1998Following the excellent Alta Conference on Rock Art (proceedingswarmly reviewed in ANTIQUITY recently), a second conference - ACRA II -with emphases on the theory of interpretation of rock art and oncuration; also to be held at Alta in north Norway.Knut Helskog (Tromso Museum); FAX (47)-77-64-55-20; e-mailknut@imv.uit.no