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partners in the Makgabeng area. This is further explained by Castells’s
notion of identity as a “shared experience” 184 because as the Makgabeng
trading partners shared the same experience of trading among themselves,
new identities were being created. That is why other processes such as
“intermixture” occurred as a result of interaction among those groups.
With regard to rock art, in contrast to the San who emphasised animal and
human figures, the Khoikhoi art in Makgabeng mainly consisted of
geometric forms such as circles, rayed circle, concentric circles, circle-and–
dot motifs, circle-and-cross motifs, rows of finger lines, rows and clusters of
finger dots or microdots, and handprints. These are most commonly painted
in red pigment, sometimes in red and white, and occasionally only in white.
In contrast to the fine-line brushwork of the San, the geometrics were
applied by finger. The San’s rock art tells much about their ways of life and
their identity. In contrast to that, the geometric forms of the Khoikhoi are
very difficult to interpret with regard to their ways of life and up to now, there
is uncertainty about the meanings of these paintings.
Just like with the San, the whereabouts of the Khoikhoi has been a subject
of debate. Again, like the San the Khoikhoi had been assimilated by the
dominant Bantu-speaking communities who appeared after the Khoikhoi.
184 M. Castells, “Globalisation, Identity…, p. 7.
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