Productions
Outputs of COSMO-ART include scientific communications and publications and also productions aimed at a larger audience
The objective of COSMO-ART is to renew the way of understanding the management issues of rock art sites, by taking into account the diversity of uses and values attributed to them. The implementation of a cosmopolitical approach calls for a broader consideration of the different stakeholders. In order to be consistent with the project’s objectives, the research group is keen to disseminate the results obtained to the various stakeholders interested in the management of rock art sites, which will be done by means of communications in different formats.
2022
Les enjeux de préservation et de valorisation des sites d’art rupestre en Afrique australe
Lancement du projet de recherche COSMO-ART
« Financé pour une durée de quatre ans par l’ANR (2022-2025), le projet COSMO-ART rassemble une trentaine de chercheurs de quatre pays (Afrique du Sud, Australie, France, Namibie) autour de la thématique suivante : analyser les enjeux de préservation et de valorisation des sites d’art rupestre en Afrique australe. Plus précisément, l’objectif est de transférer tout en approfondissant les méthodes d’observations et d’analyses développées à partir des sites d’art rupestre dans le massif du Drakensberg en Afrique du Sud en direction de deux nouvelles régions : celle de Kimberley, dans la province du Cap-Nord en Afrique du Sud et le massif de l’Erongo, comprenant l’aire de gestion des ressources environnementales de ≠Gaingu et Spizkoppe, en Namibie ……… »
Duval, M. (2022) Les enjeux de préservation et de valorisation des sites d’art rupestre en Afrique australe – Lancement du projet de recherche COSMO-ART, Lesedi #25, pp.48-54.
2024
In the framework of a cosmopolitical approach, what does a photovoice project bring to research on heritage-making dynamics?
Mélanie Duval & Lourenço Pinto
On 12 February 2024, Mélanie Duval and Lourenço Pinto presented the research conducted as part of the COSMO-ART project with the !Xun and Khwe of Platfontein, and more specifically the Places in Me project. This presentation was part of a round table organised by IFAS-Recherche entitled Academia and Communities: Experiments and Challenges in (re)Constituting, (re)Imagining and (re)Presenting Heritage in a Research Context.
This round table brought to an end an international meeting organised by IFAS-Culture on Reimagining Heritage, Archives and Museums: Today/Tomorrow (13 to 15 February in Cape Town). Following on from the discussions held in Cape Town, IFAS-Research wanted to extend the debates by organising a meeting between practitioners and researchers from different disciplines involved in heritage issues and the management of heritage issues.
The participants in this round table were:
In turn, questions of heritage in a context that is both multicultural and postcolonial were addressed, with the focus on how to deal with different points of view in a South African context that is strongly marked by the history of Apartheid.
In their presentation entitled In the framework of a cosmopolitical approach, what does a photovoice project bring to research on heritage-making dynamics?, Mélanie Duval and Lourenço Pinto began by presenting the challenges of the ANR COSMO-ART project (study sites, consortium, areas of work, methodologies implemented). Emphasis was then placed on the participatory photography process put in place during Leïla Baracchini’s post-doctorate (2022-2023) and on the Places in Me exhibition that resulted from it. The presentation concluded with a discussion of the challenges and difficulties associated with this type of participatory approach.
Academia and Communities: Experiments and Challenges in (re)Constituting, (re)Imagining and (re)Presenting Heritage in a Research Context, IFAS-Recherche, Johannesburg (South Africa), 12 February 2024
2022
Partager des images, repenser le patrimoine rupestre : un projet de photographie participative avec des populations san d’Afrique du Sud
Il est devenu ces dernières années de plus en plus fréquent d’engager des chercheurs en sciences sociales dans des programmes d’étude, de gestion et de protection de patrimoines archéologiques. Ce type de collaboration vise souvent à répondre aux demandes internes et/ou institutionnelles d’implication des communautés locales dans la gestion des sites archéologiques dans le but notamment de diminuer les frictions qui peuvent émerger de la cohabitation avec des biens patrimoniaux (benefice-sharing, empowerment). C’est dans une telle perspective qu’a été initiée l’ANR Cosmo-art : The Cosmopolitan approach as a new paradigm for rock art heritage management in Southern Africa, un projet de recherche interdisciplinaire avec pour objectif de favoriser la mise en œuvre d’une gestion intégrée et durable des sites rupestres à partir d’une étude croisée des valeurs associées au site par l’ensemble des stakeholders.
Pour répondre à ces objectifs, un projet de photographie participative (photovoice) et d’exposition en collaboration avec les communautés san, !Xun et Khwe, de Platfontein (Northern Cape, Afrique du Sud) a été mis en place. Originaires d’Angola et de Namibie, ces populations ont été relocalisées en Afrique du Sud à la fin de la guerre d’Indépendance en Namibie et sont devenues en 1997 propriétaires du site d’art rupestre de Wildebeest Kuil. Elles ont ensuite été associées au projet de développement du site et `a son ouverture au public en 2000. Vingt ans plus tard, toutefois, l’idéal initial d’implication des communautés dans la gestion et les bénéfices de Wildebeest Kuil ne semble avoir que très partiellement abouti, le rapport des deux communautés au site étant aujourd’hui des plus distants.
Cette contribution reviendra sur les diverses étapes de collaboration et de négociation menées autour des projets de photographie et d’exposition avec les participants à l’étude, deux ONGs locales ainsi que plusieurs institutions culturelles et universitaires de la région. Il s’agira notamment de réfléchir aux intérêts croisés qui motivent ce type de projet et de discuter des apports, des effets et des limites d’une telle approche pour saisir, rendre visible et questionner le rapport au patrimoine et au territoire dans un contexte marqué par des enjeux de relocalisation, d’autochtonie et de très fortes inégalités sociales et économiques. Je montrerai en quoi cette démarche participative modifie le rapport entre chercheur et participants à l’étude, crée de nouvelles alliances et amène à mettre en débat une certaine conception du patrimoine. Enfin, si la photographie participative est souvent mise en avant comme une méthode favorisant l’engagement, l’échange, l’action politique et la restitution, cette contribution montrera comment les acteurs et les dynamiques institutionnelles en jeu dans le processus de recherche peuvent à la fois renforcer et mettre à l’épreuve ces idéaux méthodologiques.
1st Young Researcher’s Day Participative Cultural Research, Particip-Arc, Paris (France), 16 November 2022
« Giving » voice, sharing pictures and rethinking heritage
A photovoice project with displaced San communities (Kimberley, South Africa)
In recent years, it has become increasingly frequent to involve social sciences in programmes for the study, management and protection of archaeological heritage. This type of collaboration often aims to respond to internal and/or institutional demands for local communities involvement in cultural heritage management with the aim notably to analyse the dissonances at play in the management of heritage and to explore the possibilities of dialogical negociations and consultations within power-charged relationships. It is in this perspective that the ANR COSMO-ART: The Cosmopolitan approach as a new paradigm for rock art heritage management in Southern Africa was initiated. Based on a cross-study of the values associated with rock art sites by all stakeholders, this interdisciplinary project eventually seeks to develop an integrated and sustainable management approach.
To meet these objectives, a participatory approach (photovoice) and an exhibition project was initiated in collaboration with the two San communities, !Xun and Khwe, who own today the rock art site of Wildbeest Kuil (Northern Cape, South Africa). Drawing on this experience, this contribution will focus on the values, effects and limits of using a photovoice approach to capture and make visible the relationship to heritage and territory in a context marked by issues of relocation, autochthony and strong social and economic inequalities. I will show how this participatory approach modifies the relationship between the researchers and the participants in the study, creates new alliances with private and public organisations (such as museum, NGOs and foundations) and puts into debate conceptions and knowledge on heritage. Finally, if Photovoice is often put forward as a method favouring engagement, exchange, political action and restitution, this contribution will show how the actors and institutional dynamics at play in the research process may both reinforce and challenge these methodological ideals.
Annual Meetings of the Swiss Anthropological Association (SAA), “Give and Take – Anthropology as Exchange”, Neuchâtel (Switzerland), November 10-12, 2022
The tourism development of a rock art site in the Kimberley region (South Africa): genesis, issues and limits of a community-based approach
The communication is entitled « The tourism development of a rock art site in the Kimberley region (South Africa): genesis, issues and limits of a community-based approach ». It examines the relations between two San communities (!Xun and Khwe of Platfontein) and the public institutions on which the development of tourism and the management of a rock art site in South Africa depend. Based on semi-structured interviews, questionnaires and two and a half months of observation, this communication describes 1) the circumstances of the failure of a rock art tourism project, 2) the contemporary politico-cultural issues surrounding rock art and 3) the struggle for visibility in a post-apartheid context.
7e Rencontre des études africaines (REAF), Toulouse (France), 28 June – 1 July 2022.
De réfugiés à propriétaires de site archéologique
Quelle relation au patrimoine rupestre pour les !Xun et les Khwe de Platfontein (Kimberley, Afrique du Sud)?
La relation entre art rupestre et populations san s’est imposée ces dernières années comme une évidence en Afrique du Sud. Comment alors comprendre lorsque cette relation ne se fait pas et comment venir explorer et mettre en mot cette absence ? À partir d’une étude menée au près des !Xun et Khwe de Platefontein, cette contribution discutera de l’intérêt d’une approche par photoélicitation pour appréhender les paysages du quotidien, saisir les enjeux qui leur sont associés et rendre visible d’autres narratifs autour du patrimoine rupestre.
7e Rencontre des études africaines (REAF), Toulouse (France), 28 June – 1 July 2022.
Les apports de l’approche géographique dans l’analyse du processus de patrimonialisation des sites d’art rupestre en Afrique australe
Enseignements à parir des sites d’art rupestre dans le massif du Drakensberg
Cette contribution vise à discuter des apports de la géographie humaine dans l’analyse des dynamiques patrimoniales. En m’appuyant sur les sites d’art rupestre situés dans le massif du Drakensberg, l’objectif sera de présenter les données et les méthodes utilisées, et in fine, de discuter de la pertinence de cette entrée disciplinaire pour 1/ comprendre les dynamiques socio-spatiales par lesquelles des lieux deviennent du patrimoine, 2/ appréhender des jeux d’acteurs et 3/analyser les choix inhérents à tout processus de patrimonialisation.
7e Rencontre des études africaines (REAF), Toulouse (France), 28 June – 1 July 2022.
Challenges to Rock art Heritage Management in the Southern African Mountains: the Maloti-Drakensberg World Heritage Site, Lesotho/South Africa.
Mélanie Duval & Stéphane Hœrlé
This paper focuses on the cultural dimension of the mountains of southern Africa, and questions the issues of valorisation and sustainable management of emblematic archaeological sites: the rock art sites. In the same way as the discovery of landscapes, fauna and flora, the rock art sites constitute resources for tourism in the mountains of southern Africa, capable of generating forms of local development. These sites bear witness to the dynamics of settlement and appropriation of the massif by different socio-cultural groups (Khoisan- and Bantu-speaking people), and are today marked by differentiated uses, combining domestic, traditional and spiritual uses, and tourist uses with different forms of development. This diversity of uses is matched by a diversity of values attributed by the different stakeholders. Consequently, one of the main challenges for the managers in charge of the tourism development of these sites is to think of a global and integrated approach, making it possible to take into account the variety of uses present and the values attributed while guaranteeing the preservation of rock art sites over time.
Focusing on the Maloti-Drakensberg mountains, this paper proposes, according to both a diachronic and synchronic approach, to analyse (i) the way in which rock art sites are put into tourism in the massif and (ii) to what extent their management plans take into account the diversity of their uses. In the third part, the analysis will focus on the issues and limits identified, with a methodological reflection on the interest of the cosmopolitan approach to think about sustainable tourism of rock art sites in the Southern African mountains.
To this end, this paper will draw on the results of research undertaken in the Drakensberg since 2009 (see below for a list of publications relating to this case study) with a cross-sectional analysis of data collected over the last ten years: field observations, interviews with institutional actors, tourism stakeholders and local populations, analysis of reports and management plans. The discussion on the interest of the cosmopolitan approach will present the main lines of the COSMO-ART research project, funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR) from 2022 to 2025, whose main objective is to advance on a methodological level in order to think of sustainable management methods for rock art sites in Southern Africa. The COSMO-ART research project involves several partners in France (EDYTEM, MNHN, PACEA, TRACES, IFAS), South-Africa (RARI, Origins Centre, SARADA, Sol Plaatje University & McGregor Museum, SANParks), Namibia (University of Namibia, National Heritage Council, National Museum of Namibia) and Australia (Centre for Rock Art Research + Management, University of Western Australia).
Southern African Mountain Conference (SAMC), Champagne Sports Resort (Champagne Valley, South Africa), 4 – 17 March 2022.
2023
2023
2023
Conservation of Wonderwerk Cave Paintings (Northern Cape, South Africa).
This dissertation presents the research Anaïs carried out to obtain her Master 2 degree in Archaeology & Science for Archaeology, specialty in Prehistory Geoarchaeology and Archaeozoology, at the University of Bordeaux.
Conservation of Wonderwerk Cave Paintings (Northern Cape, South Africa).
This work addresses the conservation of Wonderwerk Cave’s paintings (Northern Cape Province, South Africa). Very few studies focused on this point, yet a conservation study is essential to ensure the rock art durability, and is an essential prerequisite to eventually get meaning out of the art.
We thus made a condition assessment of the paintings, by identifying and recording the different weathering forms and their relations to the rock art. To do so, we studied the rock art area in its entirety, from its geological setting to the wall facies. We identified the different weathering forms impacting the rock art, using chemical analysis when necessary. The relations between the weathering forms and the rock art were recorded in detail in two chosen study zones. In parallel, we monitored the weathering factors in the cave, in order to understand and quantify their impact on the walls.
This work enabled us to calculate a dangerousness index, and to make recommendations regarding conservation measures and future monitoring of the cave.
Heritage as translation. Past and present perspectives on the making of rock heritage in Namibia.
This is the outcome of Hugo’s research project carried during Master 2 degree Géospheres, at the University of Savoie Mont Blanc
Heritage as translation. Past and present perspectives on the making of rock art heritage in Namibia.
Based on six weeks of fieldwork, this dissertation aims to provide an account of the close links between heritage experience and the heritage-making process. The first part of this work examines how the notion of « heritage » encodes different conceptualizations, each reflecting singular experiences of the world. Emphasizing the importance of communication and conceptual expertise in the construction of heritage experience, we suggest studying the acts of translation that precede heritage-making. This perspective is illustrated by two geographical case studies. The first draws on an extensive archival collection to trace in detail the context of the first inscriptions of rock art sites in Namibia between 1950 and 1954. The second study is based on interviews and observations to examine in detail the context of the current inscription process for rock art sites in Namibia’s Erongo Massif. Throughout the dissertation, the act of translating heritage experience is interrogated, either explicitly through a conceptual examination of the elements that influence it, or implicitly through an analysis of the contexts in which heritage processes take place. Ultimately, this dissertation, situated at the crossroads of disciplinary fields, offers a new space of exploration for apprehending some of the issues at stake in heritage studies.
2022
Gazes on heritagity. The tourism construction of a rock art site in the Kimberley region (South Africa): genesis, issues and limits of a community-based approach to management and reflections on the socio-political issues of archaeology.
This dissertation is the outcome of Hugo’s research project carried out for obtaining his Master 1 degree in Geography & Mountains, at the University of Savoie Mont Blanc.
Gazes on heritagity. The tourism construction of a rock art site in the Kimberley region (South Africa): genesis, issues and limits of a community-based approach to management and reflections on the socio-political issues of archaeology.
This research, which follows three months of fieldwork, is articulated on the basis of an observation – the Wildebeest Kuil rock art site (Northern Cape, South Africa) is rarely visited – and on the question: what contemporary issues revolve around the site? The construction of an interpretive centre on the edge of Wildebeest Kuil in 2001 was undertaken to provide economic and cultural support to two San communities displaced and resettled at the same time near the site. Supported by new South African heritage management rules in 1999 and with a view to integrating the Xun and Khwe communities into the management of the rock art site, the Wildebeest Kuil Rock Art Centre is an example of community-based tourism of archaeological heritage. However, the lack of tourism has not led to the establishment of sustainability at Wildebeest Kuil. The author analyses at length the multiple causes of this marginality despite the good tourist numbers and the interest in cultural heritage in the destination where the site is located (Kimberley). Throughout the dissertation, the community-based approach is questioned either directly, by analysing in depth the failure of this mode of management at Wildebeest Kuil, or by proposing to shift the focus to the contemporary issues of the communities on the site and to the cultural and political perspectives benefiting from the development of tourism at the site. Therefore, this research proposes to observe the complexities surrounding the development of tourism by proposing a progressive conceptualisation and generalisation of the example of Wildebeest Kuil in the management of archaeological sites in South Africa. On the basis of a study of various expectations on the site and mainly from qualitative data, this work proposes in fine to underline the fundamentally social issues of archaeology in South Africa by using and adapting a methodology inherited from critical heritage studies.