The Rock Art of Chinamwali and Its Sacred Landscape

Abstract

Realization that rock art around the globe has a strong association to the religious and spiritual life of people has prompted an important transformation about the prevalent misconceptions that past societies were simplistic. This recognition allows an approach to rock art from an anthropological perspective and also frames our questions with the full understanding that, no matter the reasons why various populations had the impulse to create rock art, such material culture was embedded in a completely different knowledge system from ours. Following the line of discussion presented in this book, this chapter focuses on a rock art tradition that based on archaeological evidence and oral tradition was still in use until the middle of the last century, thus making it fairly recent. Its strong association to the Cheŵa matrilineal society of south-central Africa allows a rich analysis for its possible interpretation and function. Even though rock art no longer plays a part in Cheŵa ritual life, strong evidence suggests that it had a crucial role in the past in one of their most important ceremonies: Chinamwali, the girls’ initiation. The ceremony can be as ancient as the arrival of matrilineal groups, the ancestors of the Cheŵa, in the central Malawi region, ca. eighth A.D. but it is uncertain whether these people introduced initiation ceremonies. Chinamwali ceremonies have been recorded, however, since the end of the nineteenth century, and oral tradition attests that these have been part of Cheŵa society for many centuries before that. Chinamwali is still an event of great importance in many villages. No doubt Chinamwali has followed its own development and is likely to have changed to meet up with the political and economical circumstances, thus this work acknowledges its continuing process. However, I posit that the core of the teachings given through the ceremony have remained focused on certain main issues. In such ceremonies a girl is prepared for her adult life so that she can become an important member of the economic, social, and spiritual part of her family, the village, and the Cheŵa community as a whole. It is through this understanding that I suggest that the specific set of white rock paintings that I discuss throughout this paper, is connected to the religious notions of the Cheŵa people. Religious beliefs are reflected in the way the Cheŵa perceive and make use of the landscape for their rituals, and particularly in this case, I argue that rock art was involved in such a connection.