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Roese, Herbert

Herbert E. Roese born in 1935, originally trained as a mechanical engineer. After a two-year foundation course, he studied full-time at the Technical University of Cologne, gaining the degree of Dipl.Ing.. Between 1959 and 1973 he was active as an engineer in Cape Town, Chicago, London and Stuttgart. During this period he persued his interest in archaeology, especially prehistory like a visit to see the cave paintings at Lascaux/France before they were closed to the public. While in Africa, he visited such places as Louis Leakey's palaeolithic site at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania and the Great Zimbabwe Ruins, as well as the cave paintings in the Matopas Hills in Zimbabwe. During the years in London he visited many prehistoric sites in Britain and Denmark. By then, the time was ripe for a change and he took up an undergraduate course at the Archaeology Department of the University of Wales Cardiff, finishing with a B.Sc.(Hons) in 1975. Thereafter, he continued as a postgraduate student at UCC researching for his doctoral thesis. In 1979 he gained his Ph.D. in Archaeology on the fieldmonuments of the Neolithic and Bronze Age in Wales and wrote a number of papers for archaeological journals. Throughout his career he also had a keen interest in the sculptural arts and crafts of Africa, as well as in the contemporary visual arts in Wales.

Content Posted by Roese, Herbert

The Indigenous Sculptural Arts of South Africa in Perspective

IN COMPARISON with west and central Africa, the southern part of the African continent is noted for the paucity of its indigenous sculptural art. It is taken for granted by most art historians that this has always been the case. The well-documented pastoral and hunter-gatherer way of life of the country’s historic people, has hitherto been regarded as responsible for the lack of this art form. It is therefore no wonder that there still seems to be only one comprehensive, published study available on the sculptural arts in southern Africa.



Interpreting African Sculpture

A few years ago the English translation of an unusual French-language book from Africa was published. It is a theoretical work on African dance, the first of its kind written by an African. Alphonse Tiérou is a Francophile of the Quenon people in Cote d'Ivoir (Ivory Coast). Even though the publication deals with the laws of African dance, it is of considerable interest to the study of African sculpture, especially the figurine. Its importance lies in the fact that, for the first time, a study of this kind reveals the close link between African sculpture and traditional African dance.

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