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This major new study by one of Europe's leading prehistorians
presents and discusses a series of rock art engravings from a
Bronze Age barrow in Ljungarum parish, Joenkoeping Lan, situated in
the central part of southern Sweden. Sagaholm contains the largest
group of rock engravings discovered in a burial context in northern
Europe. Joachim Goldhahn addresses a number of aspects of the use
of rock engravings in burial rituals during the Middle Bronze Age
(c. 1600-1100 BC), combining the antiquarian and scientific history
of this extraordinary find. In order to understand the meaning and
significance of the rock art in the barrow, the author presents a
theoretical argument that the art is meaningfully composed and can
been seen as the result of an active symbolic praxis which mirrors
a metaphorical way of thinking. Special concern is given to the
frequent horse motifs at Sagaholm, and it is argued that they, and
the morphology of this particular barrow, can be seen as a metaphor
for a new and exotic cosmology that reached southern Scandinavia
during the Middle Bronze Age. It is further suggested that this
extraordinary find points to a (re)interpretation of Scandinavian
Bronze Age rock art as an important part of burial ritual, linked
to certain beliefs about the regeneration of life.
Focusing on stunning paintings and engravings from around the
world, Powerful Pictures interrogates the driving forces behind
global rock art research. Many of the rock art motifs featured in
the 16 chapters of this book were created by indigenous
hunter-gatherer groups, and it sheds new light on non-Western
rituals and worldviews, many of which are threatened or on the
point of extinction. Stemming from a conference in Val Camonica in
northern Italy, the book is arranged by continent, although it
tackles how early research in some countries (e.g., Sweden, France,
Spain, the USA, Canada, South Africa) influenced the trajectory of
archaeological investigations in others (e.g., Australia, India,
Mexico, Germany, Mongolia, Russia). All of the contributing authors
have vast experience working with rock art and Indigenous
communities, many of them holding posts in prestigious university
departments around the world. The book will be of particular
interest to professional historians, archaeologists, and
anthropologists, and indeed anyone who is interested in art,
symbolism, and the past.
Derived from a session at the European Association of
Archaeologists 4th annual meeting at Gothenburg in 1998. These
eight papers address the various and varied theoretical
perspectives on social representation in rock art. Existing
theories are challenged and new ideas presented in this study of
contemporary rock art research.
This volume derives from a workshop held at the University of
Kalmar (now Linnaeus University), Sweden between the 20-24 of
October 2008. The aim of this gathering was to provide a forum for
rock art researchers from different parts of northern Europe to
discuss traditional as well as current interpretative trends within
rock art research. Changing Pictures aims to return to traditional
interpretative notions regarding the meaning and significance of
rock art to investigate if and why any information had been left
behind to recover and rethink. During the last decades, there has
been an immense global interest among archaeologists and
anthropologists in studying rock art. Research in northern Europe,
as elsewhere, has intensely explored a manifold of methodological
and theoretical perspectives. Most of these studies however, have
been published in languages that seldom reach beyond the native
speakers of Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish, Russian or Finnish.
Therefore an important motivation for this volume is to try to
apprise some of the current movements within this field of research
and present it for an international audience. These papers explore
the relevance of older ideas, such as notions about prehistoric
religion, ritual performance, sympathetic magic, animism and
totemism, the mindscapes of landscapes etc., as well as the present
"state of the art" in order to develop a broader understanding of
the phenomenon we call rock art. This aspiration can be seen as a
common thread linking the different chapters in this book. Saying
that, some, if not all, of the articles presented in this volume
challenge the notion "rock art" itself, arguing that sometimes the
rock, the "canvas" and rather intangible but equally important
sensual encounters, such as sound, echoes, touch and temporal
phenomenological changes and the perception of decorated rock art
panels, should be regarded, at least, as important as the "art"
itself. By reassessing traditional approaches to Scandinavian rock
art and creatively reworking these ideas, whilst also addressing
significant new concepts such as the agency of rock and the
performativity of rock art, this anthology of papers offers not
only a snapshot of current debates, but also reflects pivotal
changes in the study of rock art.
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