Patricia Vinnicombe

[5] However, contact with the paleoanatomists Raymond Dart and Philip Tobias at WITS led her to concentrate on the study of rock paintings in the Drakensberg region.

The credibility of Vinnicombe's method provided her with the opportunity to return to South Africa and trace rock paintings in the Drakensberg.

[5][6] She was profoundly influenced by anthropological theory and encouraged by the anthropologists Edmund Leach and Isaac Schapera and by archaeologist Peter Ucko.

This led her to explore records of San history, life and belief and during this time she worked closely with John Wright and corresponded with David Lewis-Williams.

[5] In 1978, Vinnicombe emigrated with her son to Australia where she was employed by the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies (AIA) in Canberra and the National Parks and Wildlife Service in New South Wales.

She also spent time in Sydney surveying aboriginal sites in the North Hawkesbury Archaeological Project, prior to construction of a dam in the area.

The project ended in 1980 and Vinnicombe's report on this work, entitled Predeliction and Prediction: a study of Aboriginal sites in the Gosford-Wyong region, was never published.

The research was then expanded beyond rockshelters and led to a concept called Potential Archaeological Deposits - sites that showed the characteristics of having been previously inhabited and could contain artefacts.

[4][5] In the 1990s Vinnicombe became involved in an environmental lobby action in the Burrup Peninsula, Western Australia where aboriginal engraving were threatened by chemical emissions from the gas industry located there.

[5][8] Vinnicombe returned to South Africa for 3-month-long periods in 2001 and 2002 to work at the Rock Art Research Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand.