Matatiele Archaeology and Rock Art Research Programme
Dr Sam Challis
Sam Challis D.Phil. (Oxon)
Principal Investigator, MARA programme
Senior Researcher, Rock Art Research Institute, Johannesburg
Sam received a doctorate (D.Phil.) in archaeology from Oxford University in January 2009, focusing on the rock art of the colonial era in southern Africa, and supervised by Professor Peter Mitchell. In March 2009 he took up a postdoctoral fellowship at the Rock Art Research Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand to co-write a book with David Lewis-Williams entitled ‘Deciphering ancient minds: the mystery of San Bushman rock art’ published by Thames and Hudson in April 2011. The book unpacks the logic behind nineteenth-century San statements given in response to paintings. Sam's main focus, however, continues to be the interaction between hunters and farmers as evinced in 'contact' rock art - especially the images that display signs of processes of creolization on African frontiers.
Since submitting the book, he was appointed Lecturer in Rock Art Studies from 2011 to 2013, teaching ‘Southern African Rock Art’, ‘World Rock Art’ and 'World Hunter-Gatherers'. He also directs field schools. In 2014 Sam was appointed Senior Researcher in the Rock Art Research Institute.
Sam follows Peter Mitchell in his view that material culture and rock art are inseparable and that researchers cannot fully understand one without the other: rock art provides a window onto the minds of the people whose artefacts we excavate. His current research interests in the historical era mean that engagement with written sources is unavoidable. That much of what we know about southern African hunter-gatherers comes from historical sources, ethno-historic sources and from both nineteenth-century and modern ethnographic work is clear. How we use this material and how we teach with it are the challenges that interest me.
In his doctoral thesis he showed that a set of culturally coherent beliefs developed between hunter-gatherers, herders and farmers prior to European contact which enabled people from diverse backgrounds to come together in the face of the colonial frontier and form small bands of raiders with new identities. In the case of one particular group that moved into the Maloti-Drakensberg with horses and cattle, they were able to creolise around the symbol of the baboon, which was the manifestation of the powers of protection associated with the medicinal roots it used. In this study, the evidence from rock art, history, ethno-history and ethnography combined in equal measure to ‘crack the code’ of much of southern Africa’s contact art.
