Periodic Reporting for period 1 - CRESO (Cognition and Representation of Self and the Other in North African Rock Art)
Période du rapport: 2017-01-01 au 2018-12-31
Substantial differences could be seen between the rock art of hunter-gatherers and the rock art of pastoralist groups. The most important results are:
- Group scenes are important in the rock art of both hunter-gatherer groups and pastoralist groups. But human groups are generally larger in hunter-gatherer rock art compared to pastoralist rock art.
- Hunter-gatherers did depict a larger range of activities compared to pastoralist groups. Pastoralists did depict mostly pastoral activities.
- In the pastoralist rock art, the animal figure (bovines mostly, but also caprines) is more important than the human figure.
- In the hunter-gatherer rock art, the expression of individual differences depends on the activity performed by the group more than on the size of the group.
- In the hunter-gatherer rock art, individualisation is the most expressed in scenes linked with domestic activities, and the least expressed in scenes linked with ritual, dance, music and the supernatural: the hypothesis can be made that this is because social cohesion is more important in these activities.
- The expression of equality or inequality is depending more on the social agenda of the group than on a ""global"" level of equality or inequality.
In general, the marked evolution from a small number of large rock art sites for hunter-gatherers to a large number of small rock art sites for pastoralists may also reflect a change in practices, or even an evolution of social structures.
Besides, time has been devoted to case studies focused on a small collection of rock art sites having provided important sets of images. For example, two book chapters ensuing from the project are based on the case study of WG52 (Wadi Sura II) rock art site, Gilf el-Kebir, Egypt, where I have myself done some fieldwork.
Exploitation and dissemination of these results was done through:
- The organisation of the international Paris-Cambridge seminar with 19 speakers
- The Evans-Pritchard lectures that I have delivered in Oxford, All Souls College, May 2018, mostly based on the results of CRESO project
- My teaching experience at the University of Cambridge and at the Université de Lyon, with lectures on rock art
- My involvement as a Research Associate at St John's College, Cambridge
- The congresses in my field to which I have taken part during the project: SAfA Toronto, UISPP Paris, PANAf Rabbat + the workshop ""dualisms in Prehistory"" in Rennes, France
- The other lectures or dissemination events to which I have taken part: MAE Nanterre, Postdoc forum Cambridge, McDonald Seminar Series
- Three interviews I have given to Live Science
- The publications I have achieved, most of which are due out in the forthcoming months: Editing a thematic issue of Quaternary International on Symbolic territories, 1 paper in Quaternary International, 1 chapter in the edited book Social inequality before farming, 1 chapter in the edited book Sharing: the Archaeology and Anthropology of Hunter-Gatherers, 1 book in preparation"