Gjerde & Arntzen/Perspectives, 15. Birds and Blurred Boundaries

Regional differences in southern African San rock art have long been noted, but defining them has met with little success. The interpretative approach that has dominated research in the last four decades has focused on similarities across space and through time, rather than emphasising differences. This paper considers the question of regionality in rock art, and explores how the concepts of communities and constellations of practice can be used to reconceptualise regional differences. These two concepts are applied to motifs of flight and transformation in three areas of San rock art.