Pam Guhrs -Carr

ANIMALS

TAR & LIME

TRADE ROUTES

FUNKY LANDSCAPES

CULTURAL OVERLAYS

ROCK ART & INITIATION

The research for Guhrs’ Masters thesis included initiation images made by the Kunda women in the rituals for the girls’ coming of age ceremony. The similarity between the initiation symbols and rock art in eastern Zambia was immediately evident to her. Although others’ research had previously established a link between the rock art and the womens’ initiation symbols, there had been no in depth study clearly explaining the meanings of the ancient rock paintings and linking them to the girls’ initiation.

Guhrs took the women initiation teachers on an expedition to the rock paintings after showing them pictures from Philipson (1977) in The Prehistory of Eastern Zambia who described many of these sites. The women from the Luangwa Valley recognised all of the images in the book and subsequently on the rock and sang and danced their way through each one. Attached to each symbol is a story, a song, a dance and a mime which reveals the meaning and lesson behind it.

For instance the symbol called Kanga Jowe denotes joyful rebirth. Their childhood is over, the intermediary stage of suffering is over and they are reborn as adult women in the society. When the girls have finished the long ordeal of their initiation they are taken to the river and bathed, festooned in beads and dance on a specially constructed high platform indicating their new status in the society. The tar and lime paintings reflect this idea of regeneration.

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The following three photographs show the leopard clay initiation image in action, during a ritual. The second one shows the same image as a rock painting. The third image is done by Eneria Njovu an elderly initiation teacher who remembered being taught the drawings as a child. She did these on a piece of canvas.

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Please note that some of these initiation teachings are secret and this secrecy has been upheld.

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ANIMALS TAR & LIME TRADE ROUTES FUNKY LANDSCAPES CULTURAL OVERLAYS ROCK ART & INITIATION