Challenges in preparing a serial transnational nomination for geometric rock art sites in the Lake Victoria region of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda

Abstract

Lake Victoria’s proposed rock art nomination represents an extensive collection of rock paintings. These include large geometric finger-painted shapes that bear an exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition that started over four millennia ago in connection with fertility and potency among the Pygmy hunter-gatherers, whose spirits are still in contact with generations living around the sites today (Namono, 2010a). For instance, the entrance to the Nyero 2 site in Uganda is shaped like a cervix (Figure 1) and it is indeed possible that at that time this area was used for fertility rituals.