jump to the content
  •  

Kondoa Rock-Art Sites

Brief Description

On the eastern slopes of the Masai escarpment bordering the Great Rift Valley are natural rock shelters, overhanging slabs of sedimentary rocks fragmented by rift faults, whose vertical planes have been used for rock paintings for at least two millennia. The spectacular collection of images from over 150 shelters over 2,336 km2 , many with high artistic value, displays sequences that provide a unique testimony to the changing socio-economic base of the area from hunter-gatherer to agro-pastoralist, and the beliefs and ideas associated with the different societies. Some of the shelters are still considered to have ritual associations with the people who live nearby, reflecting their beliefs, rituals and cosmological traditions.

Dodoma Region © UNESCO More pictures ...

Statement of Significance

Criterion (iii): The rock art sites at Kondoa are an exceptional testimony to the lives of hunter-gathers and agriculturalists who have lived in the area over several millennia, and reflect a unique variation of hunter-gather art from southern and central Africa and a unique form of agro-pastoralist paintings.

Criterion (vi): Some of the rock art sites are still used actively by local communities for a variety of ritual activities such as rainmaking, divining and healing. These strong intangible relationships between the paintings and living practices reinforce the links with those societies that created the paintings, and demonstrate a crucial cultural continuum.

Historical Description

The existence of rock paintings in the area was first reported in 1908 by missionaries working near Bukoba. The first published account appeared in 1929 when T.A.M. Nash published an article in the Royal Anthropological Institute Journal. Louis Leakey explored the site in the 1930s and in 1936 put forward an attempt at stylistic classification in his book Stone Age in Africa. The first survey and recording programme was undertaken by H. Fosbrooke in the late 1940s, which resulted in a publication in the Tanganyika Notes and Records Special Publication series. Louis Leakey continued his interest in the site and developed a theoretical scheme of styles, suggesting the art was of great antiquity. Few scholars agreed with these dates and others considered the paintings to be of ethnographic rather than archaeological significance.

Excavations were undertaken by West in 1964 and then by Masao in the late 1970s. More recently Mapunda and Kessy have excavated several sites at Pahi and Baura where remains of Iron Age smelting furnaces, tuiyeres, slag and pottery were recovered.

The site was brought to public attention through the publication of Mary Leakey's book Africa's Vanishing Art: The Rock Paintings of Tanzania in 1983. This was based on tracings of some of the images.

The most recent work has been carried out by Fidelis Masao in 1979 and 1980, and by Emmanuel Anati in 1980 and 1981.

Unfortunately the records of all these interventions are scattered and the information gained from them is not easily accessible. The dossier acknowledges the ‘need for the Department of Antiquities to create a database for all the documentation done so far'. Until that is achieved, any overall assessment of the scope and content of the site is possible. The nomination dossier is not even able to say how many sites or images exist on the site, nor how the images in the nominated area relate to rock art in the neighbouring Singida, Iramba and Lake Eyasi area to the west. A survey and statistical analysis are needed to ascertain the scope of the site and the links with, for instance, the Singida area to the west.

Source: Advisory Body Evaluation

News

Links