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CNRS/NRF International Research Network
STAR "Science, Technologies, Art Rupestre"
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The “Science, technologies, rock art” international research group (GDRI-STAR) aims at fostering collaboration between France and South Africa in the field of rock art research, focusing on recording, material micro-analysis and dating, conservation and public rock art. An original feature of the GDRI-STAR is to include from its start facilities providing state-of-the-art techniques for material micro-analysis, dating and 3-d imaging. They will contribute directly to the archaeological research on rock art materials and its contextual environment.
The actions fostered by GDRI-STAR fall into the following larger and inter-related categories: International Trainings, Research and Networking Activities, Public Rock Art and Knowledge Dissemination.
GDRI-STAR has launched a program of international training courses at the start of the project to foster the development of new bilateral scientific cooperation. A strong mobility of individual researchers from participating institutions is sought to facilitate exchanges between teams and co-publication of the results. The international research group will then contribute to a better visibility of the on-going rock art research in the participating countries at an international level.
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 | | | Funders of GDRI-STAR
A bit of history
France and South Africa are two regions of primary importance in the field of Prehistoric art and since 1929, several major scientific exchanges have taken place that associated French and South-African rock art research teams. Unfortunately, these in-depth interactions were stopped during the Apartheid period and over the past years, very complementary approaches developed in the two countries. In South Africa, ethnological evidences based on indigenous knowledge led to impressive results regarding rock art interpretation. In France, where such evidences are forever lost, early developments included archaeological excavations and material analyses of the figures themselves. Over the past ten years, following the end of the Apartheid regime, teams from the two countries started new joint projects and members of all the participating institutions have worked together at various occasions in the process, paving the way for a new fruitful Franco- South-African collaboration era. | | | | |  |
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