Tracing the carvers on the rocks

Abstract

Rock Art has been used as evidence to discuss ideas about ideology, religion, long distance trade, warfare, landscapes, and social organization. However, very little focus has been paid to the rock art carvers themselves and the study of rock art has been hampered by the fact that the process of producing the art itself is hardly ever explained. Currently, the knowledge about carving techniques is limited. This means, we lack information that could help us to forward theories about the social roles, technical skills and scientific knowledge of carvers in Bronze Age society. Consequently, the main objective with this project (VR 2020-03817) is to enhance our knowledge about the Bronze Age carvers. The project employs a variety of strands and methods, including training AI algorithms to recognize and quantify motifs and style variations, superimpositions, and granite rock and grain structures; however, this study will focus on the techniques and choice of bedrock used to create the rock art in the World Heritage of Tanum. Note that we use the concepts “carve, carving “ or “carvers” instead of pecking or peckers, a concept criticised by earlier attempts and scholars (Goldhahn & Ling 2013; Lødøen 2015). However, we hold that this concept is relevant to the observations we have made within this study, and we will discuss this more in depth in the concluding section of this paper.