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Songo and surroundings: Other sites in the vicinity of Songo Additional rock art sites are located near Songo beyond the area enclosed by the three rock outcrops. These sites are usually associated with the remains of deserted villages, including the stone foundations of houses, stone alignments, upstanding stone slabs, circular stone structures, work areas, iron smelting areas and others. Judging from local oral traditions and archaeological finds, these villages date to the mid- to late second millennium AD. At the edge of the old village of Tilé, the supposed place of origin of the Yanogué family, is a rock art site said to be the original circumcision site of the Yanogué family before they moved to Songo.
No memory is claimed concerning the function of rock art sites at Panko, a deserted village in the immediate vicinity of Songo. Most of the rock art sites are small shelters with monochrome red paintings often resembling older motifs at Songo Kolo and Kondi Pegue.
Motifs at the largest of these sites, Nonli ('the place'), are somewhat different, however. They include hand prints and painted hand-like forms. The motifs at Nonli are in monochrome red, but this does not necessarily rule out the idea that they, like those at other rock art sites, were once polychrome. As can be seen at Songo Kolo, the paints used in polychrome motifs deteriorate at different rates. Often it is the reds that last longest, while whites and blacks wash off, fade or flake more rapidly.
In the Songo region today all living memory regarding the function of rock art sites and the practice of painting on rock surfaces pertains to the circumcision ritual. Griaule's (1938) work on Dogon masks, however, indicates that rock art in the Bandiagara region was also created in other contexts, for example in places where masks were stored and in other shelters connected with ceremonies for the dead. | |
