The theme for this year’s Heritage Month is celebrating cultural diversity in a democratic South Africa.
In light of this, the Lydenburg Museum is involved in a variety of heritage activities, including some rockart research, cultural exhibits at the museum and the introduction of a third local language to the existing museum exhibitions.
Between September 4 and 8, students from the Wits School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies visited the renowned Boomplaats Rock Art outside Lydenburg.
This is part of their annual fieldtraining. It also serves to continue ongoing documentation, mapping and interpretation of the rock art images that are now synonymous with the local heritage landscape.
The site was also proclaimed as a National Heritage Site in November 2022, and remains a significant source of engraved rock art among researchers.
Students under the mentorship of doctors Alex Schoeman and David Pearce made accurate tracings of the rock art.
This serves to record them in detail. They will be digitally scanned as part of an extensive recording project and also to make them available for a larger audience of researchers and heritage enthusiasts. In this way, the rock art is also preserved for future interpretation.
The students also physically mapped some of the engraved rocks by very detailed measurements making use of a highly accurate GPS system.
Combined with specialised software, this enables them to create a three dimensional model of the engraved rocks. Digital preservation of the rock art eventually forms part of the museum and university’s culturally diverse collections.
A recent and exciting addition to the Lydenburg Museum’s exhibition is the translation of all the text in the exhibition to SePedi.
This makes the exhibition more inclusive and serves to address the cultural diverse identity of Thaba Chweu.
School learners and visitors can now experience our local history in their mother tongue.
The museum encourages the Community to visit during the celebration of Heritage Month and also to experience an additional exhibition in which some informative posters and traditional items will be ob display.
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