'Big Pictures': Insights into Southern African San Rock Paintings of Ostriches

Abstract

The paintings at Long March Shelter in the Klein Swartberg, Western Cape Province, are 'big'in two senses. They are themselves remarkably large and detailed, but they are also 'big' in terms of the novel insights they offer. Unlike San art in the Drakensberg, where human.: antelope combinations are the most common conflation, the Long March artists based their visual metaphors of fused, human.: animal spirit power upon a species from a quite dafferent taxon-the ostrich. The Long March paintings a/so draw on other uncommon metaphors and symbolr that are identified and discussed here for the first time.