ANR COSMO-ART (2022-2026)
The Cosmopolitan Approach as a New Paradigm for Rock Art Heritage Management in Southern Africa
In short
The ANR COSMO-ART (Cosmopolitan Approach as a New Paradigm for Rock Art Heritage Management in Southern Africa) is a five-year research programme funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR), coordinated by Mélanie Duval (CNRS, UMR 5204 Edytem), and supported by IFAS-Recherche. It aims to develop a new approach to rock art management in Southern Africa, focusing on the Erongo Mountains and the Spitzkoppe area in Namibia and the Kimberley region in South Africa.
What?
The starting point of the project is the realization that the accepted categories of heritage values (aesthetic, historic, scientific, social or spiritual) whilst supposedly universal, arise from a dominantly Western perception. In Southern Africa, heritage practices tend to remain Western-inspired and, as a result, heritage policies rarely take into account local perspectives on objects, places and knowledge to which people may attach symbolic or identity value.
This project aims to address a number of questions: Who are the users of the sites and to what scale? What values are attributed to rock art and by whom? How are these values used, possibly adapted, and communicated through dissemination activities (from education to tourism development)? What value systems are drawn upon and legitimised by the construction of Heritage Authorised Discourses? What are the perceptions of the vulnerabilities of these sites? How do Western-inspired conservation measures and traditional systems of custodianship work together? A generation after the end of Apartheid, what does “rock art heritage” mean to all stakeholders?
Drawing on surveys conducted during a previous research project “Sustainability of Rock Art Tourism (2019-2020)“, this programme chose a cosmopolitan approach, which relies on the Cosmopolitan Theory. It seeks out cross-cultural common interest points in the use and perception of rock art that are recognised as relevant to a broad range of users (e.g. local populations, scientists, institutional stakeholders)—moving beyond the traditional binaries of ‘us’ and ‘them’, ‘white’ and ‘black’, ‘managers’ and ‘communities’. The goal is to reconcile perceptions and development policies to better achieve sustainability and to design management plans a consensus on objectives conceived of and from the perspective of southern Africans.
Moreover, the fundamental critique of heritage-making processes at the core of COSMO-ART requires of us a reflexive and emic approach. Researchers are indeed also stakeholders in the phenomena they study and are likely to influence them. This critical and reflexive stance on our own practices and positioning as researcher’s filters through the entire project.
Where?
The proposed approach is applied to two region accumulating rock art management and development issues with different research histories and socio-economic contexts:
- In Namibia: the Erongo Mountains and Spitzkoppe area (≠Gaingu Conservancy), with the rock art sites of Etemba, Omandumba Farm and Spitzkoppe.
- In South Africa: the Kimberley area (Northern Cape), with the rock art sites of Driekopseiland, Nooitgedacht, Wildebeest Kuil and Wonderwerk Cave;
This comparative approach will make it possible to test the robustness of the method and whether it is transferable to other study areas, and can be applied to different kinds of heritage.
How?
The cosmopolitan approach combines systemic, diachronic and interdisciplinary methodologies and has been elaborated by consortium members in the Maloti-Drakensberg World Heritage Site (South Africa-
Lesotho). There are 3 different but interdependent themes:
- Present uses and values attributed to rock art sites;
- Tourist activities and public presentation;
- Vulnerabilities and mitigation strategies.
To implement a cosmopolitan approach and carry out interdisciplinary research, COSMO-ART deals with a large body of data, originating from (i) corpus analysis, (ii) field observations, (iii) interviews with the users of rock art sites, (iv) in situ assessment of site conservation, and (v) physico-chemical analyses of pigments and rock alterations. The combined analysis of these data is supported by a Geographic Information System (GIS) especially developed for the project. The aim of this GIS is threefold: (a) integrated with the Data Management Plan (DMP), jointly elaborated by all the partners since the initial phase, it contributes to the organisation and management of the collected data; (b) with entry fields appropriately designed for the collected data, it is used to put into perspective data of different natures and visualise how the uses/practices, perceived values, vulnerabilities and management strategies interact; (c) integrating data at various scales, it generates thematic maps which are relevant media for discussion, cooperation and participatory actions aimed at visualising, specifying and validating the various levels of values shared between all the stakeholders.
Several fieldwork sessions were carried out jointly by members of the consortium, in a co-creation process involving the various users of rock art sites. In addition to data collection, fieldwork served for co-creation and feedback sessions with all stakeholders. Indeed, it is through such strong engagement with civil society that research can achieve its transformative role. These informal exchanges are complemented by regional workshops to collectively discuss participants’ different standpoints on rock art sites.
Who?
To achieve these goals, COSMO-ART gathered a team of researchers from various scientific fields bringing expertise from archaeology, history, museology, human and social geography, cultural anthropology, geomorphology, geology and materials science. COSMO-ART brings together more than 35 researchers and students from 17 scientific institutions in France, South Africa, Namibia and Australia.
© COSMO-ART programme
Results
The programme diversified the types of deliverables to better demonstrate the interest and efficiency of the project, both to academics and heritage practitioners, aiming at a high local input.
The list of publications and conference papers is available on the programme’s website.
COSMO-ART organised an international colloquium from November 30 to 5 December 2025 at Sol Plaatjie University (Kimberley, South Africa), with the objective to raise awareness of the complexity of rock art heritage management by comparing case studies in various cultural contexts. Open to the entire scientific community, this colloquium also offered an opportunity for the COSMO-ART members to present their first results.
In addition to traditional scientific production, COSMO-ART researchers have been disseminating their results to local communities and authorities thanks to public events such as exhibitions and conferences about rock art heritage, organised in Namibia, South Africa and France.
More on COMSO-ART
Website of the ANR COSMO-ART project.