WOMEN, HOUSES AND LIMINALITY: A STUDY ON THE REPRESENTATIONS OF WOMEN IN THE 19TH CENTURY ROCK ENGRAVINGS AT GROOTFONTEIN FARM, NORTHERN CAPE, SOUTH AFRICA.

There is a long-held, and unchallenged, view that KhoeSan beliefs and cosmologies had died out or been replaced by the end of the 19th century. This has prompted the empirically unproven assumption that there is little or no connection between 19th century rock art and KhoeSan beliefs. Here, we discuss rock engravings depicting women in houses, found on Grootfontein farmin the Northern Cape province, to argue that this is not the case. These images are discussed with reference to KhoeSan ethnographic evidence relating to girls' puberty rites during which the seclusion of the 'hokmeisie' is a core theme. We elaborate this idea through comparison with 19th century painted images from the Cederberg. We suggest that there is an active reimagining of the hokmeisie tradition which used the 19th century material world as a setting, but was largely aspirational given the intensifying social and economic marginalisation of KhoeSan descendents at this time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]