Trance, Ritual, and Fun: Identifying Dance in South African Rock Art
- Feb 26
- 10 min read
Recent Study Identifies Trance, Female and Male Initiation, and Entertainment Dances in South African Rock Art
Rock art provides a valuable insight into the past; it can provide information on people’s beliefs, changes in cultural practice, encounters with foreign people, document local flora and fauna, and much more. South Africa has a particularly rich rock art tradition painted by the San over thousands of years. Among the most common motifs depicted are dance scenes. However, a dance is not just a dance, and there are different dance types, including trance dance, initiation dance, and dances simply for entertainment, but how do you categorize these different types of dances?
In an effort to categorize the dances depicted in South African rock art, Dr. Joshua Kumbani and Dr. Margarita Díaz-Andreu drew on ethnographic sources, published studies, and the comprehensive SARADA database to identify dance scenes. So, what did they find? A rare male initiation ritual, female first menstruation initiation dances, dances for fun, and dances for healing, with shamans and women dancing and transforming into various animals. So let’s get into it.
The San
Before we get into their rock art, how about I tell you about the San? The San are the oldest inhabitants of Southern Africa, living as hunter-gatherers subsisting off the plants and animals in their surroundings. Their bow and arrow technology was not really developed to shoot and kill with impact, but rather, slowly poison the animal. Once shot, the shaft falls off, but the poisoned head remains. The San, are actually a diverse group of various hunter-gatherers, including the Ju/’hoansi, G/wi, !Kung, and Khwe, amongst many others. They have no collective name that they have given themselves, though they are usually referred to collectively as the ‘San’, or older terms such as ‘Bushman’ or ‘Basarwa’ in Botswana.
Around 2000 years ago, pastoralist groups known as the Khoikhoi began migrating into parts of southern Africa, historically home to the San. They differentiated themselves from the San primarily by their domestication of animals, though they did not practice agriculture; instead, they gathered wild plants. The livestock they brought with them included sheep and goats. Soon after, in the eastern parts of southern Africa, another migration was underway, this time led by the Bantu-speaking agriculturalists, who brought with them cattle and sheep, as well as the concept of planting crops and settled life. Their interactions with the San are recorded in their languages, which began adopting the clicks native to the San language group and denoted by symbols such as ! or /. Additionally, the rock art of the San began depicting cattle and sheep, as well as people with spears and shields.
In many instances, the San were driven from their historical ranges by the incoming Bantu, though peaceful interactions also occurred. By the time of European colonization, South Africa was inhabited by three major groups: the Khoikhoi, the Bantu, and the San. The arrival of the Europeans was recorded in the rock art with depictions of guns, ships, wagons, and European attire. Violent interactions continued, and eventually many San groups went extinct. Those that persisted often found their hunting grounds devastated by large herds of cattle belonging to both black and white farmers. Many became farm laborers or intermarried with black farming communities, though a few San communities persist to this day.
The rock art tradition that persisted for centuries is no longer practiced; thus, to understand it, researchers need to examine the art itself and ethnographic accounts to trace its significance, meaning, and the ways the San may have interacted with it.
The study by Dr. Kumbani and Dr. Díaz-Andreu compiles and compares dancing scenes depicted in South African rock art. Many of these scenes have been published before, but in separate articles; many are compiled and categorised.
The Art of Dance
Dancing is difficult to reconstruct in archaeology; the primary source for understanding how these dances were organised and what cultural practices, beliefs, and traditions were part of them is rock art, supplemented by historical and ethnographic accounts from San communities in Namibia, Botswana, and South Africa.
Dances were central to San life; for example, the trance or medicine dance was a key healing ritual in which men typically served as dancers and healers, while women provided musical support through singing and clapping. Other than trance dances, dances may also be performed for gender-specific initiation rituals or simply for fun.
But how do you identify dance in rock art? There are specific postures and paraphernalia to look out for, for example, dancing sticks, bending at the hips, and bleeding from the nose (don’t worry, I will explain why in a bit). Additionally, these dance scenes are sometimes accompanied by musical instruments, such as leg rattles. Now there are many, many pieces of rock art discussed in this study, so I will only highlight a few. Let us begin with the most commonly depicted, the trance dance.
The trance dance is a ritual dance typically occurring at night that lasts a few hours or until dawn. During the dance, women sit in a circle where they sing and clap rhythmically while male ‘shamans’ dance around in a circle. While dancing, the men harness a supernatural essence known as n/om, which is said to travel up their spines and burst from their heads or the backs of their necks, enabling them to enter a trance. Basically, they dance themselves into a hallucinogenic state, collapsing only from exhaustion or from achieving said state. Once in trance, the shaman is believed to be able to ward off spirits of the dead, heal the sick, commune with other shamans, and enter the spirit world. Due to the physical exertion of the dance, dancers may experience nosebleeds, stomach pain, or gabesi (hence the bending forward at the hips), hair standing on end, buzzing in their ears, and flashes of light in their vision.
One such dance is depicted in the Free State site of Namahali. The site is a bit unusual. Why? Well, remember how I just said that these dances are typically carried out by men? Here, both men and women are depicted dancing, though likely forming two groups with one being linked more with girls’ initiation and the other perhaps more with trance. The rock panel depicts two or three clusters of dancing figures; seven of them are women, bending forward with arms flexed.
Meanwhile, six therianthropes (part human, part animal) figures, seemingly male, dance in a second cluster, one of them is seen holding a person. Therianthropes are another common image seen in trance dances, as the dancers believe they transform into animals as they enter trance, sometimes wholly, sometimes partially, growing horns or gaining animal feet. Here, six of the figures have animal heads with human bodies, four have tails, and four have animal feet.
Interestingly, five of them are holding digging sticks. These were sticks with weighted stones attached to them, typically associated with women who use them to dig for roots. However, bored stones are also believed to have a deeper meaning. According to the |Xam, women could use bored stones to heat the ground to ask for rain. The act of holding up another person is also relevant, as it is said to be associated with healing. Thus, the dance scenes carry various aspects associated with trance.
Dr. Kumbani elaborates, ‘The dancing scene at Namahali is dynamic and appears to feature two distinct groups. The first comprises women bending forward, likely depicting a ritual dance, possibly an eland dance, in which women often participate without back aprons, suggesting a link to girls’ initiation ceremonies.The second group carries implements identified as digging sticks. According to the Bleek and Lloyd (1911) transcripts, such sticks were used by women in rainmaking dances and were also essential for gathering tubers.’
Other trance scenes were found across all provinces studied, including the Free State, KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), the Eastern Cape, and the Western Cape, making them the most commonly depicted dance type in South African rock art.
The Dance of First Blood and Dance of the Man
But the trance dance was not the only dance depicted; the researchers also noted a number of girls’ initiation dances, which I just really want to call ‘the dance of first blood’ for dramatic effect, but which is more typically referred to as the ‘eland dance’. Such dances were recorded in KZN, the Eastern Cape, Limpopo, and the Western Cape, though they were notably absent from the Free State.
The eland dance is performed upon a girl’s first menstruation, whereupon she is immediately isolated in a small hut, covered in a blanket, and forbidden from touching the ground or being touched by someone else. Her blood is not considered unclean but rather incredibly strong in n/om, thus making her potentially dangerous to those around her or possibly negatively affecting the male hunters’ hunting success. While in the hut, the community performs a dance in which the elders may hold eland horns above their heads while singing eland songs. The girl remains in the hut for a few days, during which it is said she will at some point transform into an eland herself. This is not a physical transformation but a spiritual one.
One of the rock art scenes identified as an eland dance is located in KZN at Fulton’s Rock. The scene depicts 19 individuals dancing and bending forward. Most dancers are women, while the gender of the others is unclear. At the center of the scene is a figure possibly covered in a kaross, a type of cloak made from animal hide; the figure is likely the girl for whom the eland dance is being held. Three individuals surround her while clapping. To the left are some men also dancing, though it is unclear whether they are linked to the eland dance.
Just as girls have an initiation dance, so too do boys. Though unlike the girls’ initiation dance, only a single boy’s initiation dance was recorded in the rock art. Located in Sevilla 5 in the Cederberg mountains, the scene depicts 52 male figures in two lines. In boys’ initiation rituals, known as Tshoma, boys (typically between 10 and 15 years old) dance the whole night through as they receive n/om. The initiates, or boys, are directed by the initiate’s men, who are often seen dancing behind them. At Sevilla, the initiated are interpreted as the male dancers wearing cloaks, while those dancing naked are thought to be the uninitiated boys. It is likely the site itself served as a place where such initiation rituals once took place.
But why are boys’ initiation ritual dances depicted so rarely in the rock art?
‘We are not entirely sure why this is the case, though several explanations are possible. One is that men may have deliberately kept male initiation ceremonies secret,’ explained Dr. Kumbani.
This reminded me of my Prof. telling me to look under ledges and behind small nooks for rock art deliberately hidden. When I asked about it, he told me sometimes the art was only meant for certain eyes. My favorite discovery was a depiction of a detailed eland, the size of a thumbnail.
Dancing Just For Fun
And finally, we come to the last type of dance depicted. Found in KZN, the Free State, and the Western Cape, these dances were, well, for fun. One such piece of rock art is located at G3, KZN. Several male dancers are depicted; eight men are seen wearing a single feather on their heads, while four have double feathers. One even has antennae-like structures on its head. Feathers are typically associated with dances as opposed to random daily decoration. An unknown semicircle is also present with a line through it.
Three women are seen clapping for the men scattered throughout the crowd. The men are seen in various postures as they crouch, hold sticks behind their necks, and one has his knee lifted. A reclining figure is depicted bending backwards with a knobbed stick, and another is seen holding what looks like a rattle. The presence of a rattle is interesting as only a few other items depict instruments, including flutes and a musical bowstring. Though debate still revolves around whether the inclusion of instruments marks a dance as ritual or entertainment.
Rock art is one of the few ways in which we can understand the meaning and significance of these dances. Painted by the San, they capture moments of healing, coming of age, and simple joy that may not always be recorded in the ethnography. By systematically cataloguing and categorizing these dance scenes, Dr. Kumbani and Dr. Díaz-Andreu have shown that dance was woven into every aspect of San life, and that, through careful analysis of rock art combined with ethnographic knowledge, we can reconstruct these cultural practices in a way that other forms of archaeology may not be able to.
In a recent study, Dr. Joshua Kumbani and Dr. Margarita Díaz-Andreu systematically compiled and categorized dance scenes from South African rock art across four provinces. The study revealed the most commonly depicted dance was the trance dance, followed by girls’ initiation rituals, then entertainment, and finally a single male initiation ritual. The work demonstrates that rock art can serve as an invaluable archive for understanding the San’s cultural practices, capturing aspects of their spiritual, social, and everyday lives that may not be reflected in the bones and tools they left behind.
What dance scene intrigued you the most, and why do you think there is only a single male initiation dance depicted in the rock art?
Originally Published on Medium
References
Keeney, B., & Keeney, H. (2013). Reentry into First Creation: a contextual frame for the Ju/’hoan Bushman performance of puberty rites, storytelling, and healing dance. Journal of Anthropological Research, 69(1), 65–86.
Kumbani, J., & Díaz-Andreu, M. (2025). Exploring Dance Scenes in South African Rock Art: From Kwazulu-Natal to the Western Cape (Open Access). Telestes: an international journal of archaeomusicology and archaeology of sound: V, 2025, 13–42. https://doi.org/10.19272/202514701002
Paterson, A. FIRST AND SECOND CREATION. DIFFUSION OF INNOVATION.
San hunter-gatherer society in the Later Stone Age | South African History Online. (2019). Sahistory.org.za. https://sahistory.org.za/article/san-hunter-gatherer-society-later-stone-age
Siyabona Africa. (2022). San — Bushmen — Kalahari, South Africa… Www.krugerpark.co.za. https://www.krugerpark.co.za/africa_bushmen.html
Awesome blog. What an interesting read.