CREAP > Sites étudiés

     The Ennedi Highlands are a mountain area on the southern outskirts of the Sahara, being located in the remote east of Tchad. First thorough research in this area by Gérard Bailloud in the 1950s could for a long period not be continued due to political unrest in the region. In the period between 2003 and 2005 conditions calmed down to allow further exploration of the inner parts of the highlands (while Bailloud had stayed at the western margin) by the ACAIA program of the University of Cologne.

       

     Besides investigating the Holocene climate history of the area, the program also aimed at acquiring basic archaeological knowledge into the settlement history and rock art of the central and eastern parts of this highland. It could thus be established that after very scattered settlement activities of hunter-gatherers cattle herders started to settle the Ennedi in the 4th millennium BCE. With them came an intense activity of rock art production that continued ever since. One of the marked features of the highlands of the cattle period is a clear homogeneity in material cultural remains such as pottery whereas in rock art one can discern a very strong, small scale regionalization. Through this small landscape sections are defined as areas where apparently a particular identity was communicated in specific motifs and styles of rock art (paintings and engravings). The development of the herder art shows that from an initial stage, where cattle do not seem to have had a peculiar status except being the presumably main means of production, it turned more and more into an art that focused on cattle as symbolic capital. Single animals were celebrated by either applying very peculiar patterns of the hide to them or by depicting them in almost life size with many specific details. With the climate turning more arid until it reached its present aridity at around 2000 years ago, new domesticated animals reached the Ennedi, horses and camels. While horses could possibly have been the exlcusive attribute of a special warrior "class" restricted to few areas of the highlands, camels are ubiquitous. But despite their importance for subsistence they do not receive the same attention and embellishment as cattle did before them, which can be expressed in terms of diminished aesthetic elaboration.

     In more general terms and in comparison to the pure hunter-gatherer art of Namibia it can be stated that the herder art did too have the component of signaling identity. However, it did not function on the level of leading a discourse for the society as a whole, but instead it was a means of individuals to signal their personal or their specific group's status and wealth in (at least symbolic) capital.

       

       

       

     Click to enlarge.