Cosmological ‘Think-Tanks’ in Prehistoric Fennoscandia: The role of rock art palimpsests in changing ideas of the world (original) (raw)

Abstract

During the 4th to 2nd Millennium BC, hunter-gatherer-fisher groups of northern Sweden, Norway, Finland, and western Russia lived in a changing world. Varying environments and sea levels, diversifying conditions of extensive contact networks and transforming ideas of people and the world all contributed to the appearance of new hunting traditions, new forms of material culture and new ways of moving through and acting within the landscape. Though we know that many significant developments occurred in Fennoscandia at this time, it is often difficult to see how the various elements worked together to manifest such changes. This paper discusses the role rock art plays in the changing ideas of hunter-gatherer-fisher groups in Fennoscandia. I argue that the rock art palimpsests of northern Sweden, Norway and Russia, and the rock art landscapes of Finland served as ‘think-tanks’, where cosmologies are not only expressed, but discovered, challenged and transformed. To demonstrate this possibility, I discuss the rock art palimpsest of Nämforsen in northern Sweden and Zalavruga in western Russia. Using reconstructions of the rock art landscapes and compositional analyses with GIS it is possible to examine how new forms of composition develop through time. These compositions often reference their predecessors and use old images in new ways to express and test new forms of cosmological thinking. Through working with images, prehistoric people developed and tested new ideas which were entangled in the successes and failures of other forms of material culture and affected by the changing Fennoscandian landscape. By placing the rock art palimpsests as a central component in how ideas and actions change in Fennoscandia, new ways of binding various threads of evidence are possible. This follows the understanding that changing practices seen in prehistory always involve changing conceptions of people and the world.

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