User:Axxter99/Janette Deacon

Janette Deacon (birth 1939) graduated from UCT with a BA (1960), MA (1969) and PhD (1982). Her award-winning work contributed significantly to the Bleek and Lloyd archive at UCT, which achieved recognition by UNESCO as a site of the Memory of the World. Her scholarship on the Later Stone Age in South Africa, rock art research and conservation has largely been carried out at the intersection of scholarship and public life. This has helped to facilitate new understandings of the indigenous past, shape legislation for the protection of archaeological sites and visual heritage of the San, and profile South African archaeology and rock art research in a global context.

From 1976 to 1993 Deacon edited the premier South African archaeological journal, the South African Archaeological Bulletin and played a major role in shaping its character. In the 1990s she published, along with her husband, Human beginnings in South Africa, drawing on their work of the past 30 years. It was described as “a masterful synthesis of the longest archaeological record and provides an effective introduction to modern scientific method and theory … It remains an indispensable text for Africanists and for any course on African archaeology.”

“Theory is part of the romance of archaeology and is vital as we want to breathe some life into the snippets of information drawn from stone and other artefacts,” says Deacon.

She is regularly invited all over the world to discuss South Africa rock art, its management and its relationship to both archival sources and archaeology. Her commitment to the preservation of the rock art of the San – a vulnerable pre-colonial archive – finds expression in a project that trains local people and amateur enthusiasts to record, document and clean rock art sites.

Deacon says, “The reason why much of Stone Age history has remained a secret for so long is not that it may not be told or that it has not been told in other books, but rather that it has to be individually discovered. Because we are remote from the past, we have to find it and immerse ourselves in it, if we wish to understand it and unlock its secrets. Pursuing the past is rewarding, and we hope it is a challenge more will follow.”

Awards and honours
In 2016 Janatte was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Cape Town for his more than 30 years teaching at UCT’s.

Books

 * Deacon, H.J. & Deacon, J (1999) Human Beginnings in South Africa: Uncovering the Secrets of the Stone Age. ISBN 978-0761990864
 * Dowson, T. & Deacon, J (1995) Voices from the Past: Xam Bushmen and the Bleek and Lloyd Collection. Wits University Press ISBN 978-1868142477