James David Lewis-Williams (born 1934, Cape Town) is a South African scholar. He is professor emeritus of cognitive archaeology at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.
David Lewis-Williams, as he is known to his friends and colleagues, is regarded as an eminent specialist in the San or Bushmen culture, specifically their art and beliefs.[1] His fieldwork studying the Drakensberg rock art, together with a close analysis of the Wilhelm Bleek & Lucy Lloyd Collection, in the 1970s led to his seminal and highly sought after book Believing and Seeing: Symbolic Meaning in Southern San Rock Paintings (published by Academic Press in 1981). This work has fundamentally changed the way many researchers understand San rock art in southern Africa.
