[CPProt.net] The Ancient Art of Africa, at Risk

[Ellie Bruggeman]

  The Ancient Art of Africa, at Risk

By MARC LACEY 
<http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=MARC%20LACEY&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=MARC%20LACEY&inline=nyt-per>

KAKAPEL, Kenya 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/kenya/index.html?inline=nyt-geo> 
- There are two markedly different manmade etchings on a rock face here, 
and it is hard to decide which is the more jaw-dropping.

One, dating back thousands of years and featuring the outline of an 
elephant, is a sign that this hilltop in western Kenya was a special 
gathering place for early Africans. The other, no more than a few years 
old, featuring the names "DENNIS" and "PATRICK," is a sign that Africa's 
rock art is under threat.

Whoever carved those names seems to have disregarded the site's status 
as a cultural treasure. Authorities responded to the defacement by 
erecting warning signs and metal fencing around the rock face and 
declaring it a monument. But that has not stopped numerous copycats from 
slipping under the bars and scrawling their names into posterity.

Rock art has been discovered - and defaced - the world over. In the 
United States 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/unitedstates/index.html?inline=nyt-geo>, 
a man was arrested in Utah 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/national/usstatesterritoriesandpossessions/utah/index.html?inline=nyt-geo> 
last year for writing "I love you, Wendy" on a sandstone wall bearing 
ancient American Indian drawings. In another case, three stolen pieces 
of Indian rock art were recovered in 2003 from the front yard of a 
Nevada 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/national/usstatesterritoriesandpossessions/nevada/index.html?inline=nyt-geo> 
home, after being taken there in violation of the federal Archaeological 
Resources Protection Act.

But in Africa, there is a lack of oversight at many of the rock art 
sites, leading experts to offer a grim prognosis for their future. "It's 
very endangered," said David Coulson, the founder and chairman of the 
Trust for African Rock Art, a preservation group that sponsored a 
conference on the problem in Nairobi last fall. "Populations are rising 
so fast, and sites that were in wild, uninhabited areas have development 
growing around them. So you have graffiti, the single biggest threat."

Experts have long traced or photographed rock art images so they will at 
least be remembered once they are gone. The rock art trust has built a 
digital photographic archive of many of the fast-fading images, said Mr. 
Coulson, a photographer who has documented rock art in more than 20 
African nations.

And lasers are being used to record rock engravings in three dimensions. 
The trust will sponsor an expedition early next year to record the 
"Fighting Cats" in southern Libya 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/libya/index.html?inline=nyt-geo>, 
a spectacular site that has existed for thousands of years but is in 
danger of crumbling into the surrounding sand.

Efforts are also under way to educate people who live among the ancient 
art about the value of the sites. Last year, the trust organized a 
well-received exhibition of rock art at the Nairobi National Museum that 
ran from November to February. The display, featuring photographs of 
rock art from throughout Africa and a simulated rock shelter, later 
traveled to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/tanzania/index.html?inline=nyt-geo>, 
and went on view Sept. 15 for a three-month run at the Uganda 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/uganda/index.html?inline=nyt-geo> 
Museum in Kampala.

Most rock art, however, is seen in the field. The rock art sites across 
Africa may number in the hundreds of thousands, experts say; their 
paintings and engravings, some 10,000 years old and perhaps much older, 
are spread over vast areas, often in inhospitable terrain.

The most striking sites in the Sahara and in southern Africa, once known 
only to locals, are now being discovered by outsiders. For example, 
getting to a little-known site in Kenya, a place not normally associated 
with rock art, requires a boat trip to Mfangano Island, one of the tiny 
isles in sprawling Lake Victoria.

A long hike up a rocky hillside eventually leads to a cornfield. Beyond 
that is some rocky terrain; off to the left, behind a makeshift gate put 
up by locals to protect the art, is a hidden shelf of rock bearing odd, 
circular symbols.

"If this goes, it means our culture is gone," said Jack Obonyo, director 
of the island's museum. "We would lose our identity. I would still be 
Jack, but I am also an Abasuba, a descendant of my ancestors who painted 
this." Mr. Obonyo, whose efforts to protect Kenya's rock art received 
help recently from a $29,500 American State Department grant, spins a 
colorful tale of what Mfangano Island residents believe the concentric 
circles, spirals and sunbursts mean.

He recounts a long-ago battle between the Abasuba people and rivals from 
another island. As the rival Wasaki moved in, the Abasuba women stood at 
the hilltop rock shelter at Kwitone dressed as men, frightening away the 
advancing warriors. The symbols were painted in celebration.

Unlike the rock art buried deep in caves in southern Europe, African art 
was painted and etched on rock faces far more exposed to the elements - 
and the public. Looting of the treasures also seems more commonplace. 
Early explorers of Africa chipped away the rock paintings and carted 
them off to museums.

Such looting still occurs, carried out by private collectors and their 
middlemen. Niger 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/niger/index.html?inline=nyt-geo> 
has dispatched guards on camels to patrol its farflung desert sites, but 
the area is so vast that they cannot possibly keep a close eye on the 
art. Morocco 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/morocco/index.html?inline=nyt-geo> 
is another nation where vandalism has been fierce.

"The most barbaric thing we've ever seen was in Morocco, where thousands 
and thousands of 5,000-year-old engravings are bashed and broken off and 
taken out of the country," Mr. Coulson said. "It's an organized trade."

He said he had heard of galleries in London and New York selling illegal 
rock art at astronomical prices, with a small piece fetching $10,000 or 
more.

"For us, these sites have a spiritual, almost religious feel to them," 
Mr. Coulson said. "It's almost sacrilege to deface them."

Rock art enthusiasts do not want the sites completely fenced off from 
the public. When a gate was removed recently from the well-known White 
Lady of Brandberg site in Namibia 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/namibia/index.html?inline=nyt-geo>, 
experts generally approved. The site is so known because early explorers 
mistook the male figure for a white woman and speculated that Africa's 
rock art was the product of foreigners. Careful scrutiny of the heavily 
faded image shows that it is a local bushman, however, experts say. Now, 
the 30,000 tourists who visit the site annually are kept back by a 
railing, and guides monitor the crowds.

The African rock sites often still play a role in local communities. 
Experts have found food offerings outside painted sites in Zimbabwe 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/zimbabwe/index.html?inline=nyt-geo> 
and learned of church services and traditional circumcision ceremonies 
at sites in Kenya and Tanzania.

In the Air Mountains of Niger, thousand-year-old life-size engravings 
have been retouched by locals in recent years, something that experts 
tend not to regard as typical defacement. One theory is that the 
engravings, on a still-used caravan route, were recolored to reactivate 
the power of the original images and protect modern-day caravans.

Of course, even those who no longer believe in the spiritual powers of 
the images may treasure them.

"I don't worship the pictures like my ancestors did, but I give them 
respect," said Mr. Obonyo, admiring the rock symbols on Mfangano Island 
at close range one recent day but taking care not to touch them. "It 
makes me proud of who I am."

http://www.nytimes.com