Rock art: the first stencil figures known in southern Africa discovered in Mpumalanga

Rock art already very rich

Southern Africa has one of the most detailed and elaborate rock art collections in the world. It includes herds of antelope in full flight, dancing men, and humanoid beings sometimes equipped with wings, hooves or horns. These images are generally painted with fine brushes or directly with fingers, in a style associated with the hunter-gatherers who inhabited these landscapes for millennia.

What was missing until now was the stencil. This process involves applying color around an object placed against the rock, leaving a silhouette in negative once the object is removed. It is known throughout the world, from painted hands in China or Palaeolithic Europe to everyday objects such as boomerangs, axes and cassowary claws used in the Austronesian area. Its absence from the South African corpus was therefore an anomaly.

A long-documented shelter, an overlooked detail

The researchers discovered the stencils in La Rochelle shelter, on the highlands of Mpumalanga. According to the study, the region contains many cliffs and shallow shelters, very few of which preserve paintings, as these have often been erased by sun, wind and rain. La Rochelle shelter is an exception: it is relatively large for the area, its floor is cemented, and it is sometimes used for religious services, with wooden benches and an improvised pulpit.

Anna Steyn had recorded the site in 1995, and Mdudusi Maseko documented it again in 2020. Yet an unusual splash of paint had gone unnoticed, according to the authors. The two figures, painted in red, blend in among the many representations of hartebeest, eland and humanoid beings that adorn the walls. For David Pearce, the eye must learn to recognize these forms: "They gradually emerged clearly, a bit like optical illusions."

How were these figures made?

To obtain these silhouettes, one had to sit, make a template, perhaps of beeswax, clay or wood, press it against the wall, then blow or spray paint over its surface. These humanoid figures are only 9 cm high, which attests to meticulous work. According to David Pearce, a rock art researcher at the University of the Witwatersrand, specially designed stencils are rare, which makes this one unique not only in southern Africa but on a global scale.

The authors stress that no local tradition, precedent or ethnographic data can explain these figures. Their age, their makers and their meaning remain unknown. Kiah Johnson, an archaeologist at Cambridge, sees in them a fragmentary image of innovation, but also of a shared space and a common outlook, without being able to determine whether it was a single group returning several times to the site.

Stencils that have disappeared?

Given the state of preservation of many paintings in the region, other stencils may have existed and then vanished over the years of rain. David Pearce notes that research carried out in the area has so far yielded few other examples, without ruling out that more still exist, simply undiscovered.

Another hypothesis is raised: these motifs were perhaps not intended for rock walls. They may have decorated bodies, clothing or stone constructions, supports of which nothing survives today. The stencil could then have been a widespread practice that left no trace on the shelters.

A discovery that enriches regional diversity

For David Pearce, this discovery adds to an already very rich and complex heritage, and it broadens the diversity of local traditions. Kiah Johnson, for his part, recalls that Africa remains a continent where poorly understood elements survive, some of which may never be fully understood, and that it would be wrong to believe everything has already been discovered.

The researchers now hope that other sites will yield comparable stencils, in order to better grasp the meaning and chronology of these images. For visitors, South African rock art remains accessible in several parks and protected sites in the region, where these painted assemblages can be observed on location.