Rock Art of Uganda

A public lecture by Catherine Namono

as part of the Public Lecture Series Rock Art & Symbolic Expression. A Southern Africa – France Dialogue

Thursday 26 July 2018

18.00 for 18.30 | Origins Centre Museum

Wits University, West Campus, Corner of Yale Road &, Enoch Sontonga Ave, Johannesburg

Catherine Namono is a researcher at the Rock Art Research Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Her focus is on developing an understanding of the complex symbolism of rock art in Africa based on the worldview, indigenous values and life rituals of the people who made the rock art. Dr Namono’s research in South Africa mainly focuses on farmer rock art of the Northern Sotho. Here she has demonstrated a link between girls’ initiation and particular motifs in the rock art. She is also investigating more broadly, depictions of colonial material culture and their probable symbolism in the rock art. Catherine is also engaged in a heritage tourism project with a Northern Sotho community on the Makgabeng, Limpopo Province, South Africa.

Her research in Uganda offered an interpretation of the geometric rock art of Uganda using a contextual interpretive approach based on Pygmy ethnographies. This study unlocked our understanding of how Pygmy groups experienced their cosmos. Her recent work on the naturalistic rock art of Uganda argues for symbolism associated with secret society spirit mediums in Karamoja.

Catherine is interested in extending these understandings of rock art to consider how present communities provide new symbolism and meaning to the rock art in Uganda and South Africa, through the use of approaches that include perceptions of landscape of past and present communities. Dr Namono is passionate about heritage management and conservation, community heritage tourism, the public and the heritagization of rock art, heritage and development as well as the inclusion of local indigenous voices in archaeological knowledge.

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