Prehistoric Art as a Boundary Object: Technology and Temporality of South African Petroglyphs
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Prehistoric Art as a Boundary Object: Technology and Temporality of South African Petroglyphs Silvia Tomášková 1 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Decades ago I argued for the limited analytic purchase of the term “art.” I was then primarily concerned with the relatively recent invention of the present day category; the lack of local and archaeological specificity when “art” was discussed in broad classificatory lumps; and the minimal reflection on the geopolitical ground of archaeological practice. While I continue to find little analytic value in the term “art” when used to describe a broad range of prehistoric materials, I offer a defense of its transactional nature. I embrace the term “art” to show some of the classificatory work the term has done and the potential it may have if decoupled from certainty. I will show that the category “prehistoric art” has been historically controlled through networks of materials, archives, and scholars. As a contrasting point of reference, the concept of a boundary object, a productive term in science studies, might allow for a far greater flexibility and inclusion of different communities to participate in the conversation about “art.” To illustrate my point, I discuss technologies and temporalities of art at Wildebeest Kuil, Northern Cape, South Africa. Keywords Boundary object . Prehistoric art . Petroglyphs . South Africa
Because we are all members of more than one community of practice and thus many networks, at the moment of action we draw together repertoires mixed from different worlds. Among other things, we create metaphors – bridges between those different worlds. Power is about whose metaphor brings worlds together, and holds them there…” (Star 1991:52)
* Silvia Tomášková [email protected]
1
Department of Anthropology, Department of Women’s and Gender Studies, UNC Chapel Hill, 204 Smith Bldg. CB#3135, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3135, USA
Tomášková
Introduction During my training and early work as an anthropologist and archaeologist, I never thought of “prehistoric art” as my specialty. Rather, I focused on stone tools, far more ubiquitous in the archaeological deposits dated to remote prehistory in most parts of the world, and seemingly straightforward in their utilitarian nature and materiality, even if they do not garner the public or popular attention that figurines or rock art from the same time period do. It was through attention to the history and politics of archaeological knowledge production that I found myself questioning assumptions about “art” and “stone tools” as settled, legitimate, and separate categories. One, classification “prehistoric art” does not quite function as a recognized professional specialty, particularly in the American academic context; we do not see advertising of jobs or student training in “prehistoric art” unlike, for example, in bioarchaeology or lithic analysis. By contrast the other, “stone tools,” is fully legible to the profession and can secure a specialized training, a thesis topi
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