Rock Art Trail
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Skau in flower at the waters edge of the Jan Dissels River. Skau is an indigenous plant, significant to the San hunter gatherers.
On the Warmhoek rock art trail visitors, together with our trained guides, explore the paintings as a journey across the landscape, visiting places painted by pre-colonial hunters and gatherers. The images are not only aesthetically beautiful, not only technically very skillfully made, but also steeped in meaning.
The satellite image at left shows the Warmhoek topography and the Jan Dissels River, source of the Clanwilliam water supply. On the right is a computer generated map of the same landscape with archeological and rock art sites indicated by the red and blue dots. The Warmhoek trail is one aspect of the Living Landscape's job creation effort.
Because the painters are no longer alive to explain the motifs, the compositions and meanings, we seek assistance from some of their relatives, the expressive culture of the Ju/'hoansi of the Kalahari and the writings of their recent ancestors the /Xam of the nearby Karoo. Collectively these people are the San or Bushmen. At each site some of the paintings are described and interpreted with the help of Ju/'hoansi or /Xam texts or stories.
The view into Procession Shelter showing kaross-clad figures, a must-visit shelter to visit on the trail.
While most of the art is the work of pre-colonial hunters and gatherers, some images were painted by the herders, farmers and colonists who gradually replaced hunters across the subcontinent. Fine examples of these "finger paintings" can be viewed at Historic Shelter during the course of the trail.
Colonial figures stand side by side with fine-line images in Historic Shelter, one of the sites to visit on the Warmhoek Trail.
Another place of interest on the trail is the now ruined stone farmhouse on the Jan Dissels River. This "langhuis" was built some time betwen 1915 and 1935, although settlement in the area began in the middle of the eighteenth century and the town of Clanwilliam was founded in the early nineteenth century. Several routes set out across the Cederberg mountains, and one of them, the Krakadouw Pass, is still known. Interestingly a "douw" is the modern translation of the old Quena word "doub" which mean path.
On the Warmhoek trail there are six possible sites to visit, all within a five kilometer radius. Visitors can select their route depending on their fitness and available time. This can be decided when making a booking.
CLLP trainees
standing in what was the threshing floor adjacent to the ruined farmhouse
on the Jan Dissels River, one of several sites to visit on the guided tour
of the Warmhoek trail.
We
see the rock art, the fossils, the place names, the plant and animal
communities, the rock record and the ruined buildings as traces of the
past, reflections of what was, and practical opportunities to re-learn,
re-claim and re-habilitate.
Both the natural and
built landscapes are the basis for building training schemes for landscape
interpretation and environment evaluation.
A tall "stick" figure, probably a woman carrying a digging stick, which can be viewed at River Shelter on the Warmhoek Trail.