In the cover of the kaross: the initiation of San hunter-gatherers and the role of dressing the part, with examples from rock paintings in the Western Cape, South Africa

Abstract

In the Kalahari San ethnographies of the 20th century, the kaross has often been associated with adult women and their work as mothers and gatherers. From around the 1970s the large skin cloak, made from the full skin of a big game antelope, was noticed to be of significance in many South African rock paintings that are associated with the Southern San of the past. The kaross has since become a point of reference in interpretations of imagery associated with shamanic experiences evoked by trance and altered states of consciousness as well as the possible representations of communal initiation rites of young hunters. In this paper we discuss a set of images from a rock shelter in the Western Cape that we suggest are renderings of the latter and we support the argument by outlining the cultural complexity and various uses of the kaross within traditional San hunter-gatherer communities. The kaross, understood to overcome the apparent separation between male and female spheres in ritual and daily life, imbued many meanings to different people—a realization that should be of consequence also when we aim to interpret its presence on the rock face.