| Summary: | Bibliography: leaves 158-171. === The handprints of the western Cape of South Africa are a common phenomenon, yet remain one of the most unexplored and intriguing features within the rock art of this country. Known to occur mainly in the western Cape of South Africa. they represent a different style, class, and hence meaning of rock art. This dissertation is an approach to answer questions concerning the emergence and meaning of handprint-making in the western Cape. Through experiments, statistical analysis and hypotheses testing in the field on the original handprints. a different approach towards recording rock art, and in particular handprints, was investigated. One of the main aims is to examine whether we can distinguish between individual handprlnts and therefore individual people, and between groups of peopie and clusters of handprints of the same person. This examination will hopefully provide us with the opportunity to answer questions concerning the authorship of the handprints, as well as questions concerning the relationship between archaeological deposits and the rock art of the same sites. We might see whether the conceptions of previous researchers in the interpretation of their data were correct, and what remains indeterminable. To achieve this goal and truly understand the meaning and the reasons behind the making of the handprints, a methodology and technique needed to be established which allowed for highly accurate recording and later assessment of the measurements of archaeological handprints. For this reason, I chose to digitally obtain the data with close-range photogrammetry. This technique offered a fast and efficient way of creating sets of measurable data for further analysis.
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