Special Collectors Edition.
1970.

Limited to two hundred copies.
No 86.

Signed by the Authors, D.N Lee and H.C Woodhouse.

Drawings by Marion Didcott.

The book contains 245 illustrations, mostly full-color photographic images, in addition to the drawings by Marion Didcott.

225mm x 295mm

R1,500

This volume is Art on the Rocks of Southern Africa, written by D. Neil Lee and H. C. (Bert) Woodhouse, with field drawings by Marion Didcott and a foreword by renowned anthropologist Professor Raymond A. Dart. Published in 1970 by Purnell & Sons in Cape Town, it is a foundational work in 20th-century Southern African rock art documentation.

1. Deluxe "Special Collector's Edition" (Limited to 200 Copies)

As shown on the limitation page, this copy (No. 86) is from the Special Collector's Edition, strictly limited to 200 copies.

• Hand-Signed by the Authors: It features the original signatures of both D. N. Lee and H. C. Woodhouse.

• Unlike the standard trade release, the collector's copies were specially bound in premium quarter-leather or full leather with gilt lettering, intended for Africana bibliophiles and research institutions.

2. Pioneering Color Photography Over Tracings

Before the late 1960s, most rock art studies relied almost exclusively on hand-traced line drawings or black-and-white photos (such as those by Abbé Henri Breuil). Lee and Woodhouse were among the first researchers in Southern Africa to systematically use 35mm high-resolution color photography in the field.

• This allowed them to capture the subtle natural ochres, kaolin whites, and charcoal pigments directly on sandstone and granite rock faces without making destructive physical contact.

3. Exhaustive Survey of 137 Sites Across Southern Africa

The book compiles field documentation gathered across 137 individual rock art sites extending over hundreds of miles—covering South Africa, Lesotho, and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).

• It provided one of the earliest comparative surveys of regional painting styles, depicting scenes of hunting, shamanic trance rituals, animal spoor, conflict, and indigenous clothing over an estimated 3,000-year timescale.

4. Foreword by Raymond Dart

The book features an introductory foreword by Professor Raymond A. Dart (1893–1988), the world-famous anatomist and anthropologist who discovered the Taung Child fossil (Australopithecus africanus) in 1924. Dart’s endorsement lent substantial scientific credibility to Lee and Woodhouse's amateur field studies, helping bridge the gap between citizen science and academic archaeology in South Africa.

5. Transition to Shamanic Interpretations

Published in 1970, Art on the Rocks captured a pivotal moment in African archaeology:

• At the time, rock art was still largely viewed by Western observers as simple "narrative hunting scenes" or decorative narrative art.

• However, the detailed photographic evidence recorded by Lee and Woodhouse—such as therianthropes (human-animal hybrid figures), bending dancers, and bleeding elands—helped lay the groundwork for later archaeologists like David Lewis-Williams to establish the now widely accepted shamanic / trance theory of San rock art.