Soaring spirits: rock art, initiation and the Sor secret society of spirit mediums of Karamoja, Uganda

Abstract

This paper challenges two ideas in understanding the naturalistic rock art of Karamoja, Uganda, namely: 1) that its authors were probably the Iworopom or Later Stone Age (LSA) hunter-gatherers; and 2) that it depicts warriors holding bows and shields. In the absence of any knowledge of the meaning and authors of the rock art amongst present communities some suggestions are drawn from an analysis of the images depicted. A new rock art site at Kanamuget provides the opportunity to draw on an ethnographically contextualised approach to propose a probable Sor (Tepeth) authorship for it and to suggest that its symbolism was associated with secret society spirit mediums.