Hammond-Tooke, Manhire & Domestic animals

Hammond-Tooke’s question

• Flips Jolly’s question on how bantu-speakers influenced San art and asks how shamanism influenced Nguni divination practices

Hammond-Tooke Main argument

• The Nguni borrowed the ecstatic trance dance from the San — finding it specifically attractive because of Nguni women's extreme patriarchal marginalisation.

Distinctive features of Nguni divination

• Nguni diviners were dramatically called by ancestral illness (thwasa), underwent trance-inducing dance with clapping audiences, and the vast majority were women

Why did the San Trance dance fir the Nguni?

• Nguni women were the most 'peripheral' of all Southern

• The ecstatic trance dance provided a socially sanctioned outlet for deep psychological tensions, offering women legitimate autonomy and authority

Manhire et al (1986)

• Paintings of domestic animals are not passive migration markers but integral to the shamanistic cognitive system.

• Their distribution reflects social stress from contact with immigrant groups — intensified ritual activity and therefore more painting

North-South divide in Drakensberg

• The northern Drakensberg has fewer than 50 cattle and no horses. The

• Southern Drakensberg has close to 1,000 horses and cattle

Explanation for north-south divide

• Farmer-San relationship in the north was considerably less disruptive than the violent colonial encounter in the south where shamans assumed greater prominence under acute stress.

Sheep distribution

• Widely distributed but always a small minority; only 11 confirmed sites in SW Cape, all in mountains.

Cattle distribution

• 75% fall in an eastern block centred on the Drakensberg/Lesotho.

Horse distribution

• Concentrated in southern Drakensberg

• Around 1,000 paintings attributable to just 40 years (c.1840–1880), reflecting the explosive violence of colonial encounter.