David Lewis-Williams
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David Lewis-Williams SCOB FRSSAf |
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| Native name | David Lewis-Williams |
| Born | 1934 (age 82–83) Cape Town, South Africa |
| Fields | Rock art, Archaeology |
| Institutions | University of the Witwatersrand |
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| Thesis | Believing and Seeing: Symbolic meanings in southern San rock paintings |
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James David Lewis-Williams (born in 1934 in Cape Town) is a South African archaeologist. He is best known for his research on southern African San (Bushmen) rock art, of which it can be said that he found a 'Rosetta Stone'. He is the founder and previous director of the Rock Art Research Institute and is currently professor emeritus of cognitive archaeology at the University of the Witwatersrand (WITS). Lewis-Williams is recognised by the National Research Foundation (NRF) of South Africa as a leading international researcher, with an A1 rating.
Lewis-Williams was exposed to social anthropology as an undergraduate at UCT. During this time he received lectures from renowned social anthropologist A. R. Radcliffe-Brown (who started the department of social anthropology at UCT in 1920 but later returned as a visiting lecturer) and Monica Wilson, a student of Bronislaw Malinowski. Malinowski’s ideas specifically concerning the association of ritual with social products meant that Lewis-Williams could eventually challenge the idea that San rock art was merely a narrative of everyday life. Thus, from the start of his career and in contrast to most scholars of the period, Lewis-Williams was looking at San rock art from a social anthropological perspective.
Following proofs of an article by South African scholar Patricia Vinnicombe, shown to him in 1966 by Professor Ray Inskeep (then editor of the South African Archaeological Bulletin), Lewis-Williams used a quantitative method for the analysis of rock art images in the Drakensberg. Overall he recorded some 4000 images for his doctoral thesis research. His PhD, finished in 1977 and later published in 1981 as Believing and Seeing: Symbolic meanings in southern San rock paintings., is regarded as a seminal text in rock art research globally.
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