People of the Eland (Collector's Edition)

Signed & numbered, Collector's Edition, number 60 of an edition of 100, People of the Eland, Rock Paintings of the Drakensberg Bushmen as a reflection of their life and thoughts, university of natal press , pietermaritzburg, 1976, gilt lettering on brown boards, extensive B & W and colour photographs, colour plates, maps, appendices , official manuscript, bibliography, index, 220 x 275mm, dust-jacket has edgeware and tear on spine, condition of dust-jacket:fair, condition of book:very good.

In 1972 the author published, in the periodical Africa, the seminal article Myth, motive and selection in Southern African Rock Art, launching a new paradigm for the understanding of Rock Art in South Africa. She began to link San Ethnography and Rock Art. Her emphasis was on the Eland antelope, which, as her numerical analyses confirmed, was the most frequently painted subject and the one on which the artists expended most care. These efforts and all her quantitative work and insights came together in the 1976 book People of the Eland: Rock Paintings of the Drakensberg Bushmen as a reflection of their life and thought. The University of Natal Press published it and the University of Cambridge awarded her a doctoral degree. This book , People of the Eland began a resurgence of interest in Southern African Rock Art Research and includes 200 of her extraordinary tracings, reproductions and photographs. Her illustrations in People of the Eland are curated at the Natal Museum in Pietermaritzburg. (Deacon 2003; Lewis-Williams 2003).

Patricia Vinnicombe died suddenly on March 30 2003 in Western Australia, while attending a meeting about the management of Aboriginal sites.