Rock art
The topic for this issue's New Book Chronicle is rock art. For each reader, this term will bring a different image to mind, such as: the famous Palaeolithic cave paintings of naturalistic animals; schematic carved animals; simple cup-and-ring marks across large rock panels; spirals and geometric designs on tombs; or engraved images of boats, warriors and weapons, seemingly telling long-lost stories. Rock art is visible in many places around the world, often in plain sight, sometimes hidden, and is an important part of our ancestral landscape.
As this issue's Project Gallery article (https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2024.135) by Andrzej Rozwadowski shows, contemporary artists still consciously use rock art motifs in their work to connect themselves with the land and often to bring back Indigenous values and knowledge. The artists regard rock art in very different ways from the scholars researching rock art—and, even among rock art scholars, research approaches and interpretations of what we see in these images differ widely. The digital age has made rock art even more accessible and comparable and opened many new avenues of enquiry. Yet, many questions remain, and the topic of rock art will still engage much future research.
The four books chosen here look at current ways to study these diverse images of the past. The first book Deep-time images in the age of globalization: rock art in the 21st century delivers an important discussion about how globalisation changed the research of rock art worldwide, considering the good and the bad and what future studies should be mindful of. The prehistoric rock art of Portugal: symbolising animals and things looks at one region that has seen drastic changes in rock art investigations through new discoveries in the past 30 years.
Whereas Ecologies of Bronze Age rock art: organisation, design and articulation of petroglyphs in eastern-central Sweden explores rock art on a regional and local level to detect shifts in practices and it reveals the relationships between the motifs themselves and how they relate to the rock surface as well as to the landscape. The last book Theatres of imagery: a performance theory approach to rock art research considers one particular area, the Wodehouse District in South Africa, and utilises performance theory, a novel approach, to understand rock art as part of the wider cultural performance network of the San people.
Deep-time images in the age of globalization is an OpenAccess book with a hefty collection of 22 international contributions that explore the effect globalisation has had on rock art research and how this allows researchers to incorporate rock art into the deep time histories. The previously dominant Eurocentric approach to interpreting and conserving rock art around the world is challenged by more global thinking, that includes Indigenous lifeways and pasts. The chapters aim to deliver a new framework and multidimensional set of ideas in which to study rock art, as well as alternatives for the management of rock art led by local communities. The main focus is on Palaeolithic rock art, with further examples across time to modern ancestral Indigenous art.
The Introduction by the editors guides the reader into the topic, beginning with the discovery of rock art in the Altamira cave in Spain, during the late nineteenth century, and the enthusiastic uptake by European scholars. The text highlights how this caused the Eurocentric focus of what followed in rock art research during the twentieth century. Rock art in North America, Africa and Australia had been discovered (or rather, noticed) before by Western visitors, but some of these areas still had an enduring practice of rock art by the Indigenous populations. The twentieth-century research and interpretation of rock art was based for the main part on examples found in caves in Spain and France and it was led, or rather overshadowed, by ideas and theories of first Henri Breuil and then André Leroi-Gouhran. The past two decades though have brought on a wide-reaching shift in thought—not only in archaeology—and post-colonialism and decolonisation instigated rethinking of many theories and many new perspectives became visible. Rock art scholarship diversified and more so intensified, and the less treated areas took a more prominent place. Furthermore, new dating methods revealed that rock art in other parts of the world was as old as (or older than) the famous Spanish caves. The possibilities of sharing scientific knowledge via the internet and the many digital rock art projects have further fuelled research engagement since the turn of the millennium. Globalisation thus had a positive effect on rock art scholarship, but the editors warn also about its pitfalls, for example, the still underlying hegemony of western theories and English as lingua franca, that hinder Indigenous interpretation and the sometimes-oppressive dominance of organisations such as UNESCO, that do not allow much local governance or engagement of the sites.
The book is organised in five parts. Part I ‘Recentering rock art’ looks at the shift of rock art scholarship from western parts of the world to new centres, as more sites with Pleistocene art have been discovered (e.g. in UK, Egypt and Southwest Asia). But in many countries, a systematic scientific search is still missing. One of the new centres is in Indonesia, where early dates for Late Pleistocene rock art led to connections to northern Australia. Other chapters take an ontological approach, combining cosmopolitical ideas and mode of existence to investigate Chilean rock art and how climate change impacted rock art in Australia and Europe. In Part II ‘Comparative views on global art’, the contributions search for similarities and differences and they highlight themes such as European cave art versus Indigenous rock art and the effects of globalisation on rock art research, comparing Canada with Patagonia. The colour/material ochre is emphasised as an ‘earth material heritage’ and is researched from multidisciplinary angles that deliver a framework for ochre experiences ‘FOES’ to guide future research. The last chapter illuminates the implications that the drive of the absolute dating of rock art (and other archaeological material) had on the humanities a ‘science made by humans’ and the race for the ‘oldest dates’. The chapters in Part III ‘Interdisciplinary global rock art’ approach rock art from other disciplines, such as the utmost important reconstruction of location and landscape at the time of occupation, and not to study rock art disengaged from its place and period of origin. Another example looks at what neuroscience can add to rock art studies. Part IV is dedicated to ‘Rock art management: tensions of local versus global’ and deals with the different ways in which European and colonial sites are cared for, with examples from Spain, Australia and South Africa. Part V ‘Rock art and the challenges of the global now’ concludes the book with some current trials in research, such as handling the digitalisation and distribution of rock art images; it raises awareness of the losses involved in the process because transforming rock art into other media (e.g. digital copies, replica caves) changes its perception and the ownership—especially important for Indigenous art—but also delivers an imagined past presented today.
This volume is filled with information and thought-provoking ideas and it succeeds in giving a critical reflection of the drastic and rapid changes in research brought about by globalisation and improved scientific methods, and delivers an established theoretical context that incorporates Indigenous knowledge. The publication is an invaluable source for anyone who is interested in rock art and it brings readers up to date on the research history, the change in direction in the past 20 years and the discussions, as well as newly developed frameworks and insightful debates around the management and conservation of these enigmatic sites of images from the deep-time past.
The first book in this article is a global view on rock art whereas in this book the editors George Nash and Sara Garcês brought together a large group of specialists to discuss rock art in Portugal from the Upper Palaeolithic to the Iron Age. The volume is not trying to deliver a complete catalogue of all Portuguese rock art, but rather an accessible introduction to the subject and it highlights different artistic strands that come and go over 35 000 years.
The Introduction by the editors summarises the development of rock art and its research history in Portugal, then places this phenomenon within its Iberian context. The following 15 chapters are, generally, in chronological order—though it is not strictly adhered to because in some regions, such as the Côa valley or Tagus river, art from the whole time span can be found. The main narratives, such as the connection between landscape and art, style developments across time or the difficulties in dating rock art, reappear in different topics throughout the book.
The oldest known rock art in Portugal dates to the Upper Palaeolithic (c. 50–40 000 to c. 10 000 BC) and the first four chapters are dedicated to this period. So far, rock paintings are known only from the cave of Escoural, which was discovered relatively late in the 1960s and Chapter 1 details the research history, the impact on Portuguese scholarship and current and future projects of the site (Silva, Garcês & Carpetudo). Art carved into the rock in open sites is more common for the Upper Palaeolithic and beyond—a prominent example is in the Côa valley in north-east Portugal, again a late discovery in the 1990s. It is one of the largest sites with carved rock art in Europe displaying animals such as bovines, horses and ibex as well as a few human figures. The placing of certain animals in the landscape and their connection is being investigated (Santos). To rescue these rock art panels a planned dam project was abandoned, and a beautiful museum nearby now informs the eager tourist. Research on the Upper Palaeolithic in north-west Portugal and Spanish Galicia was long neglected due to the absence of caves, but since the discovery of the Côa valley rock art panels many sites of different kinds of art—painted/engraved in open air, caves, on mobile objects— have been discovered and are being discussed in terms of their place in nature, their stylistic development and distribution of artistic ideas (Figueiredo et al.). A further chapter focuses on the depiction of horses and uses the example from Ocreza in the Tagus river valley and similar images along the Côa, Douro and Zêzere river valleys to explore their connection with the landscape and potential interpretation of their meaning (Nash & Garcês).
During the Mesolithic period (c. 11 000–5000 BC), changes in climate and cultural-social developments lead slowly to the Neolithic period, and a change from hunter-gatherer lifestyle to one of farming and herding. The styles of art underwent a slow but visible change from naturalistic carved dominant animal figures and paintings to schematic and abstract geometric forms and more human-centred scenes. This transformation is a difficult one to grasp, due to chronological problems, and is studied here and compared in three well-researched regions, the valleys of the Douro, Tagus and Guadiana (Castro Teixeira & de Jesus Sanches). The works of painted schematic art (simplified stick figures and simple geometric forms) date to the Neolithic period, possibly arriving with the first farmers, and Portugal marks the most north-western distribution of this art style in Europe. One chapter details the finds from northern Portugal (Bacelar Alves & Reis) and a further one looks at south and central Portugal (Garcês & Nash). The paintings in or near the Neolithic dolmens and other megalithic sites of the western Iberian Peninsula are discussed separately (Nash).
Two chapters concentrate on Atlantic rock art which is made up of mostly diverse circular motifs—commonly known as cup-and-ring marks—which are difficult to date but are assigned to the Neolithic (c. 5000–2200 BC) and predominately the Bronze Age (c. 2200–800 BC) and can be found along the Atlantic façade. Similarities, differences and evolution of this art style are discussed. One contribution summarises the research history and focuses on sites in north-west Portugal (Cardoso) and the other one compares it with and outlines it against the aforementioned schematic art style (Bettencourt). The various symbols and techniques of Iron Age (c. 800–200 BC) engravings are detailed in the last chronological chapter, many motifs carry over from the Bronze Age and different styles and diverse motif develop (Coimbra).
Further chapters discuss the region over a long time and summarise the outcome of larger projects, such as the Tagus Valley Rock Art Complex (CARVT, Garcês) and the Portuguese part of the Guadiana Rock Art Complex (Giraldo, Arranz & Garcês). Raw materials and pigment production and use in the past are investigated in Chapter 6 (Gomes & Rosina). The final chapter highlights the many uses of GIS analyses in rock art studies (Garcês, Danelatos, Ferreira Anastácio & Nash).
As this short outline shows, an impressive amount of scholarship is combined here but a few flaws are noticeable. To achieve more clarity, most chapters would have benefited from cutting repetitive sections and thorough language editing, because many phrases and meanings are seemingly lost in translation. Many images are very small (at least in the digital version) and it would have been helpful to print the figures in colour, especially when colour is discussed, and to make the rock art clearly visible. Nonetheless, the volume is a valuable source and highlights the impact that the recent discovery of the Côa valley art has had, which led to many new discoveries and changed our perception of prehistoric Portugal. It is fascinating that many of these sites were used as canvases for thousands of years and prehistoric people returned here to carve and paint, albeit with some hiatuses, for different reasons and in varying styles and motifs. The book is a successful introduction into rock art studies, its history, interpretation and current research trends and identifying future research agendas within the Iberian Peninsula.
Frederik Fahlander's new book is the outcome of the project ‘Material images: visual grammar in Bronze Age rock art’ which started in 2016 and centres on the rock art in the region around Lake Mälaren in eastern central Sweden. The book is organised into seven chapters; the first chapter ‘Ecologies of Bronze Age rock art’ introduces the subject matter and explains the methodology used. Examples of rock art from southern Scandinavia are well known and show a diverse but limited range of motifs and figures, cupmarks make up to 90 per cent of the images. Over the past century, these images have been studied and interpretations of the depicted symbols vary widely from social to ritual to practical. The concentrations in the region of Lake Mälaren, with many large clusters of rock art as well as more dispersed ones in the hinterland, allowed researchers to capture smaller changes in rock art traditions. As there are multiple ways in which to study, interpret and understand or perhaps read these rock art practices, Fahlander describes his approach as: “The main tenet of this book is that rock art is not primarily representing or visualising reality, ideology or cosmology, but are physically constituted tools and devices made to do something” (p.3). Where the motifs become more than signs, they become ‘material articulations’, and therefore, not only made for human onlookers but also to interact with other-than-humans, such as animals and natural spirits, and allows to see rock art as visual agents. Since many previous studies were carried out from either a generalising perspective or a particular case view, many nuances and changes were missed. The chapters discuss from the general perspective down to the more detailed view and gather a large quantitative data of rock art material and deliver a systematic analysis on which basis the interpretations are built. Chapter 2 looks at the whole region; rock art is found predominately along the rugged coast and islands in the Mälaren bay, more so on the northern side. More than 7000 sites are known in this region, most of them comprise only cupmarks (around 70 000 single cupmarks), but 611 have also figurative motifs, and some distributions of rock art panels and motifs can be recognised. The figural designs found are mostly boats (465 sites with 2290 boats), and less often feet and circular motifs; there are fewer human figures (55 sites with 221 anthropomorphs) and animals and weapons are rarely depicted (13 sites with 25 weapons). It is important to date the rock art, to identify trends and changes in the millennium of their making. This is a difficult task and a chronology of three phases is introduced, mainly based on the development of the boat motif and on the spatial relation of the rock art and the changing water levels. The rest of the chapter presents the rock art in different areas around the Mälaren bay, and reveals regional patterns across time.
Chapter 3 is concerned with the local aspects of the different motifs, their position in the landscape, on specific areas of the rock, near the water, etc. and how the different motifs are related to each other. The motifs across the region—such as cupmarks, boat motifs, anthropomorphs, etc.—are each discussed in terms of their design and articulation. The rock art motifs are also compared to motifs on ceramic, bronze and other stone material. ‘Modes of articulation’ (Chapter 4) investigates the physical correlation of the rock art and the rock itself, and includes partial motifs, recuts and overworked rock art and large-scale depictions as well as their proximity to, and interplay with, water.
Chapter 5 takes these observations, especially on the physical position and relation of motifs to each other and the water, and their repetition across a large region and interprets them in terms of their function. Rather than being just images of real things used possibly in a ritual or religious context, Fahlander studies them as ‘vitalists devices’. Examples from different periods and places are brought together to explore such a function, and the rock art motifs are discussed under their many possible understandings. The author concludes and suggests the rock art was possibly used as a means to contact the realm of natural spirits to keep them out and to control spirits and animacies along the water's edge. Chapter 6 compares the data to rock art of the wider area of southern Scandinavia and beyond and delivers intriguing connections in rock art and highlights parallels as well as distinctions especially in the interpretations. Chapter 7 delivers a summary of research and conclusive thoughts.
This thorough and exemplary collection of rock art in its original setting delivers a detailed view of this material in the Malären bay. It utilises the meticulous results to find a better way to understand the meaning of the motifs and looks for the motivation behind this by the human makers. Fahlander delivers convincing arguments to lead the interpretation towards rock art motifs being an enacted medium between humans and non-humans such as spirits or animals, though ultimately this is tough to prove. The approach to studying the material in different scales from bottom to top reveals new insights and nuances, and the results gathered here will hopefully inspire further research in the region and further afield.
After the descriptions of global and deep-time as well as regional approaches above, this last book takes performance theory as its approach for the study and interpretation of rock art at local level. It is exemplified by the material from the Wodehouse District in the Stromberg Mountains, South Africa, and it links them with ethnographic knowledge of religious and social practices of the San peoples. The author, David Witelson, has worked on this novel method for years and it was part of his research for his PhD thesis. The book is organised in 14 chapters. The first two chapters position this specific area of rock art in its landscape, highlight its history of research and introduce the performance theory method. Here, the performance of making the images is not the subject of investigation but rather the relationship between images and onlookers, and what the images meant to them. For Witelson “performance theory is a discourse that theorises performances as a feature of behaviour (not necessarily human) that enacts, reproduces and articulates social relations” (p.9). Furthermore, performance theory is defined as part of the field of performance studies and how rock art practices can be included in this method.
The two following chapters present information about San performances, of which image making is only one of many forms of their expressive culture, and how this together with San storytelling can help us to read and interpret the rock art depictions. The different acts of performances, such as healing and storytelling, can be compared to the performances of image making. The anthropological background and description of the state of research on these performances is detailed and, through this, ethnographical practices can be identified and are used to interpret the rock art. The known sources of descriptions of how rock art was painted by San in the past are included, because some of the practices survived into colonial times. Since southern African rock art has been studied for a long time, the different attempts to interpret them through approaches from ethnographical, art-historical, anthropological to archaeological are compared, and then combined and linked into the performance theory method to reveal an interlaced network of performances in the rock art.
Chapter 7 looks at the different styles used in the rock paintings and discusses their sequence and dating: with an older phase marked by shaded polychrome paintings in mute earthen colours of mainly animals; followed by a late shaded polychrome phase of (novel) domestic animals and associated human figure; and the final hard-edged phase in bright colours of domestic animals, tall human figures holding spears or shields as well as ‘European’ items. The shaded-polychrome paintings appear around 3000 years ago in the Stromberg region and the technique was used up to pre-colonial contact. The hard-edged styles can be recognised as more recent through the objects and animals depicted. Therefore, the images do show the change in society and way of living—from hunter-gatherers to herders and the later influence of colonial settlers. The next two chapters look at these changes in rock art, or rather how societal changes influenced the making of the images and how they were adapted for a new audience. Chapters 9 to 11 investigate the change in the colour palette in terms of what kind of pigments and binders were sourced and used, and the meaning and power of different colours, both are connected to the change in lifestyle. The next two chapters look at the integral rain-making rituals and performances of the San peoples and how they are visible in the rock paintings, several case studies of images are discussed intertwining archaeological and ethnographical observations.
The final chapter brings together the various strands and highlights one exceptional rock painting panel to illustrate the use of performance theory on rock art. This smaller, hidden panel is adjacent to two larger panels, and shows human figures, in different scenes or sets, one set is of figures dancing and trancing, another group possibly shows a girl's puberty rites or healing practices, and the last set consists of lines and snakes that are connected with rain rituals. These meanings are partly understandable in the images but in connecting them with other San practices a deeper meaning and narrative becomes accessible. Witelson states that “image-making performance was interconnected with the rest of the San expressive culture” (p.162). Therefore, the rock art images can be meaningfully interpreted only when interlacing them in the network of performances, which also means that there is never only one meaning or a single function for the practices.
The book is well illustrated throughout, and the author is very careful to include all possible angles in his discussion. However, this makes the work harder to read for people who are not familiar with the material, and the weight of the theoretical approach and the often-complex language used mean it is not easily accessible for the non-specialist. Surprisingly, there was hardly any engaging of modern San peoples visible in the research, and an ethnographical interpretation is always ambiguous, especially if the challenging dating of the rock art cannot connect them securely to past San peoples. Nevertheless, Witelson delivers a new approach in applying performance theory and it is compelling in many ways. It will stimulate further discussions as well as instigate a rethinking of previous, more static interpretations.
This list includes all books received between 1 July 2024 and 31 August 2024. Those featuring at the beginning of New Book Chronicle, however, have not been duplicated in this list. The listing of a book here does not preclude its subsequent review in Antiquity.
