Antiquarian Auctions

Auction #128 begins on 15 Jan 2026

Lewis-Williams (J.D.)

BELIEVING AND SEEING

Symbolic meanings in southern San rock paintings

Published: Academic Press, London, 1981

Edition: First Edition

Reserve: $200

Approximately:

Estimate: $250/300

Bidding opens: 15 Jan 16:30 GMT

Bidding closes: 22 Jan 16:30 GMT

Ships from: South Africa

Lot 103 preview

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151 pages, 2 maps, 40 illustrations from photographs and drawings of rock paintings, yellow cloth, a very good copy in the dust jacket which has slight insect damage at the fold of the front flap.

'Dr Lewis-Williams began his work with the San rock paintings in 1959. He has made a special study of every example in the Giant's Castle and Barkly East areas of southern Africa, some 3,600 in all, and has submitted his inventory to numerical analysis.  He has combined an exhaustive study of published and unpublished material with his own field work amongst the !Kung of Botswana and South West Africa. This has enabled him to identify important and persistent values and beliefs and to show how these have been translated into the graphic symbols of the art. He suggests that the paintings were neither mere exercises in primitive aesthetics nor purely evocations of sympathetic magic for the control of hunting. Rather, they are associated with the whole fabric of ritual and the activities of the medicine men who exorcised sickness, made rain and controlled the movements of game.' Editor's note.

  • Overall Condition: Very good
  • Size: Oblong 4to (230 x 305 mm)


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