Bronze Age Rock Art in Northern Europe: Contexts and Interpretations

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joakim Goldhahn ◽  
Johan Ling
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Rock Art ◽  
Northern Europe

North European Rock Art

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joakim Goldhahn
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Rock Art ◽  
Northern Europe ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Migration Period ◽  
Farming Communities ◽  
And Migration ◽  
The Bronze Age

This chapter offers a long-term perspective on rock art in northern Europe. It first provides an overview of research on the rock art traditions of northern Europe before discussing the societies and cultures that created such traditions. It then considers examples of rock art made by hunter-gatherer societies in northern Europe, focusing on the first rock art boom related to Neolithization. It also examines the second rock art boom, which was associated with social and religious changes within farming communities that took place around 1600–1400 bc. The chapter concludes by analysing the breakdown of long-distance networks in the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age and its consequences for the making of rock art within the southern traditions, as well as the use of rock art sites during the Pre-Roman Iron Age, Roman Iron Age, and Migration Period.

scholarly journals Engraved Biographies: Rock Art and the Life-Histories of Bronze Age Objects

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-136
Author(s):  
Joakim Goldhahn
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Life Histories ◽  
Rock Art ◽  
Northern Europe ◽  
Cultural Biography ◽  
The Social ◽  
Third Spaces

This article deals with engravings depicting some­ times life­sized Bronze Age metal objects from “closed” burial contexts and “open­air” sites in northern Europe. These rock art images have mainly been used for comparative dating with the purpose of establishing rock art chronologies, or interpreted as a poor man’s” substitute for real ob­ jects that were sacrificed to immaterial gods and goddesses. In this article, these rock art images are pictured from a perspective that highlights the mu­ tual cultural biography of humans and objects. It is argued that the rare engravings of bronze ob­ jects at scale 1:1 are best explained as famous ani­ mated objects that could act as secondary agents, which sometimes allowed them to be depicted and remembered. Moreover, two different social set­ tings are distinguished for such memory practice: maritime nodes or third spaces where Bronze Age Argonauts met before, during or after their jour­ neys, e.g. places where novel technological and/or famous objects entered and re­entered the social realms, and burial contexts where animated objects sometimes was buried at the end of their life­course

scholarly journals The Relational Life of Trees. Ontological Aspects of “Tree-Ness” in the Early Bronze Age of Northern Europe

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 373-385 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fredrik Fahlander
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Rock Art ◽  
Northern Europe ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
The Real ◽  
Ontological Shift

AbstractDuring the Early Bronze Age in northern Europe, tree-like features appear in henges, burials, and rock art in ways that differ from earlier periods. Rather than investigating this phenomenon in symbolic or metaphorical terms, a concept of tree-ness is explored that focuses on the real constitution of trees and what trees actually do. It is suggested that the accentuation of tree-ness in Early Bronze Age ritual contexts can be related to an ontological shift in conjunction with emerging bronze technology in which different entities can merge or take advantage of each other’s generative properties.

scholarly journals Interpretations of Footprints in the Bronze Age Rock Art of South Scandinavia

2017 ◽  
Vol 83 ◽  
pp. 289-303 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Skoglund ◽  
Courtney Nimura ◽  
Richard Bradley
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Rock Art ◽  
Northern Europe ◽  
The Sun ◽  
The Bronze Age ◽  
Different Parts

The Scandinavian landscape is littered with postglacial outcrops, many of which carry engraved motifs. Although drawings of ships are most often discussed, this paper focuses on representations of feet. In Northern Europe ship motifs are often associated with cosmologies based on the movement of the sun. This paper investigates whether drawings of feet could have been associated with the same worldview. A number of interpretations are offered of the images at two sites in different parts of Sweden: Järrestad 13:1 and Boglösa 138:1.

scholarly journals Artificial Intelligence, 3D Documentation, and Rock Art—Approaching and Reflecting on the Automation of Identification and Classification of Rock Art Images

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Horn ◽  
Oscar Ivarsson ◽  
Cecilia Lindhé ◽  
Rich Potter ◽  
Ashely Green ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Data Augmentation ◽  
Rock Art ◽  
Training Data ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Rock Surface ◽  
Southern Scandinavia ◽  
Bounding Boxes

AbstractRock art carvings, which are best described as petroglyphs, were produced by removing parts of the rock surface to create a negative relief. This tradition was particularly strong during the Nordic Bronze Age (1700–550 BC) in southern Scandinavia with over 20,000 boats and thousands of humans, animals, wagons, etc. This vivid and highly engaging material provides quantitative data of high potential to understand Bronze Age social structures and ideologies. The ability to provide the technically best possible documentation and to automate identification and classification of images would help to take full advantage of the research potential of petroglyphs in southern Scandinavia and elsewhere. We, therefore, attempted to train a model that locates and classifies image objects using faster region-based convolutional neural network (Faster-RCNN) based on data produced by a novel method to improve visualizing the content of 3D documentations. A newly created layer of 3D rock art documentation provides the best data currently available and has reduced inscribed bias compared to older methods. Several models were trained based on input images annotated with bounding boxes produced with different parameters to find the best solution. The data included 4305 individual images in 408 scans of rock art sites. To enhance the models and enrich the training data, we used data augmentation and transfer learning. The successful models perform exceptionally well on boats and circles, as well as with human figures and wheels. This work was an interdisciplinary undertaking which led to important reflections about archaeology, digital humanities, and artificial intelligence. The reflections and the success represented by the trained models open novel avenues for future research on rock art.

Representations of oxhide ingots in Scandinavian rock art: the sketchbook of a Bronze Age traveller?

Antiquity ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 89 (343) ◽  
pp. 191-209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johan Ling ◽  
Zofia Stos-Gale
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Rock Art ◽  
Image Position

Abstract

Are Catalans ignoring archaeology?

Antiquity ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 83 (321) ◽  
pp. 844-848 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. James
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Balearic Islands ◽  
Northern Europe ◽  
Late Prehistoric ◽  
Culture Area ◽  
Iberian Culture

So declares the new introduction to the Museum of Archaeology of Catalonia (MAC), in Barcelona. It is too modest. The collection is big. It concentrates on Catalonia and its culture area but there are finds from further afield, notably Bronze Age Argaric material. Extensive space is devoted to the late prehistory of the Balearic Islands, a magnificent collection from the Greek and Roman site of Empúries (Ampurias, ancient Emporium, Emporiae), and to the late prehistoric 'Iberian' culture, including the Tivissa treasure. There is also a good collection of Visigothic material. To the visitor from northern Europe, the museum is a reminder of how much there is to find in a country for so long heavily populated.

scholarly journals Dogs accompanied humans during the Neolithic expansion into Europe

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (10) ◽  
pp. 20180286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Morgane Ollivier ◽  
Anne Tresset ◽  
Laurent A. F. Frantz ◽  
Stéphanie Bréhard ◽  
Adrian Bălăşescu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Dna Sequences ◽  
Near East ◽  
Northern Europe ◽  
Southeastern Europe ◽  
Mitochondrial Lineage ◽  
Domestic Species ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Neolithic Expansion ◽  
The Bronze Age

Near Eastern Neolithic farmers introduced several species of domestic plants and animals as they dispersed into Europe. Dogs were the only domestic species present in both Europe and the Near East prior to the Neolithic. Here, we assessed whether early Near Eastern dogs possessed a unique mitochondrial lineage that differentiated them from Mesolithic European populations. We then analysed mitochondrial DNA sequences from 99 ancient European and Near Eastern dogs spanning the Upper Palaeolithic to the Bronze Age to assess if incoming farmers brought Near Eastern dogs with them, or instead primarily adopted indigenous European dogs after they arrived. Our results show that European pre-Neolithic dogs all possessed the mitochondrial haplogroup C, and that the Neolithic and Post-Neolithic dogs associated with farmers from Southeastern Europe mainly possessed haplogroup D. Thus, the appearance of haplogroup D most probably resulted from the dissemination of dogs from the Near East into Europe. In Western and Northern Europe, the turnover is incomplete and haplogroup C persists well into the Chalcolithic at least. These results suggest that dogs were an integral component of the Neolithic farming package and a mitochondrial lineage associated with the Near East was introduced into Europe alongside pigs, cows, sheep and goats. It got diluted into the native dog population when reaching the Western and Northern margins of Europe.

scholarly journals Rock art and the prehistoric landscape of Galicia: the results of field survey 1992–1994

1995 ◽  
Vol 61 ◽  
pp. 347-370 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Bradley ◽  
Felipe Criado Boado ◽  
Ramón Fábregas Valcarce
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Field Survey ◽  
Rock Art ◽  
Outer Edge ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Copper Age ◽  
North West ◽  
Abrupt Changes ◽  
Ground Conditions ◽  
The Relationship

This paper discusses the relationship between the earlier prehistoric pattern of settlement in Atlantic Europe and the creation of rock art. It investigates the organisation of the Copper Age and Early Bronze Age landscape of north-west Spain using the evidence provided by the distribution, siting, and composition of rock carvings. It presents the results of field survey in three sample areas extending from the centre to the outer edge of their distribution. Although these drawings cannot be interpreted as illustrations of daily life, they may have helped to define rights to particular resources in an area which experienced abrupt changes of ground conditions over the course of the year.

scholarly journals Beyond Transgressive Lands and Forgotten Seas: Towards a Maritime Understanding of Rock Art in Bohuslän

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-140
Author(s):  
Johan Ling
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Clay Soil ◽  
Rock Art ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Bronze Age

Since the beginning of the 20th century rock art in Bohuslän has traditionally been interpreted, on the basis of its adjacent location to the clay-soil plains, as an indicator ofpermanent pastoral or agrarian settlement units. However, recent results ofthe first substantial and extensive shoreline study, covering the whole of Bohuslän, have shown that, during the entire Bronze Age, many of these lower, clay- soil plains were in fact sea bottoms in shallow bays. On the basis of these results new measurement of the rock art panels and the surrounding terrain were made. The study showed that many rock carvings had been placed on or near the contemporary shore during the Bronze Age. It therefore seemed essential to present new questions about the social and ritual behaviour, as manifested by the rock art in these particular areas. It is here suggested that the rock art in the investigated area may be a materialised reflection of seasonal maritime interactions during the Bronze Age.

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