The Rock Art of Namibia Gallery presents images taken during the international colloquium on rock art held in Namibia in April 2017 organised by Neville Agnew of the Getty Conservation Institute, Los Angeles. The colloquium, based on the publication ‘Rock Art: A cultural treasure at risk: How we can protect the valuable and vulnerable heritage of rock art’ by Neville Agnew, Janette Deacon, Nicholas Hall, Terry Little, Sharon Sullivan and Paul Taçon, aimed to explore a spectrum of ways whereby rock art can be raised to a higher level of public awareness in the public and political domain with potential bearing on its preservation, promotion, and uses.

The two field trips during the colloquium took us to rock art sites in the Brandberg and in the World Heritage Site of /Ui- //aes, also known as Twyfelfontein. Both sites form a coherent, extensive and high-quality record of ritual practices relating to hunter-gatherer communities in this part of southern Africa over at least 2,000 years, linking the ritual and economic practices of hunter-gatherers.

Moreover, the Gallery emphasizes the importance of the rock art within the landscape. Exploring the rock art sites of the Brandberg and Twyfelfontein involved trekking through the landscape, allowing the group to begin to understand and appreciate how the sites were integral to the art. This could be experienced both on a large scale – how the sites lay in the land, often in association with significant natural features - and on a small scale – which particular stone panels and rock shelters had been selected, and how they were located in relation to each other.

This reminds us that these markings or decorations on the rocks of southern Africa – and around the world – are here for a very specific purpose; we need to respect that as the way in which ancestral people cared for the land, lived within it and respected it in turn.

→ Discover more about the Rock Art of Namibia
→ Discover more about the Rock Art of Africa
→ The White Lady of Brandberg / Daureb Mountain
→ Rock Art Network Colloquium - Namibia 2017
→ The Rock Art of Twyfelfontein /Ui- //aes, Namibia
→ The Damara People
→ Reflecting Back: 40 Years Since ‘A Survey of the Rock Art in the Natal Drakensberg’ Project (1978-1981)
→ Animals in Rock Art
→ Bradshaw Foundation
→ Rock Art Network