This book provides a general self-reflexive review and critical analysis of Scandinavian rock art from the standpoint of Chris Tilley’s research in this area over the last thirty years. It offers a novel alternative theoretical perspective stressing the significance of visual narrative structure and rhythm, using musical analogies, putting particular emphasis on the embodied perception of images in a landscape context.
Part I reviews the major theories and interpretative perspectives put forward to understand the images, in historical perspective, and provides a critique discussing each of the main types of motifs occurring on the rocks. Part II outlines an innovative theoretical and methodological perspective for their study stressing sequence and relationality in bodily movement from rock to rock. Part III is a detailed case study and analysis of a series of rocks from northern Bohuslän in western Sweden. The conclusions reflect on the theoretical and methodological approach being taken in relation to the disciplinary practices involved in rock art research, and its future.
Table of Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
Preface by Joakim Goldhahn
Acknowledgements
Prelude
PART I: ARIAS: MOTIFS AND INTERPRETATIONS
PART II: CABALETTA: LANDSCAPE SETTING AND CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK: THE RHYTHMIC VISUAL ARTS OF NARRATIVE
PART III: FINALE: PERAMBULATING THE ROCKS
Postlude
References
Index
Author(s): Christopher Tilley
Series: Swedish Rock Art Research Series
Publisher: Oxbow Books
Year: 2021
Language: English
Pages: 232
City: Oxford
Cover
Book Title
Copyright
Swedish Rock Art Series
Contents
List of figures
List of tables
Acknowledgements
Preface: thinking images through
Prelude
Theorising the powers of imagery
The structure of the book
PART I Arias: motifs and interpretations
Boats
The development of a ‘maritime’ perspective
Boats and cosmological structures
Boats and exchange
Landscape, value and identity
Wealth and value in Bohuslän: the alternative affluenceof carvings
Boats and death rituals: art for the living, or for the dead?
Boat motifs on the rocks at Brastads-Backa
Humans
Human figures on the rocks at Brastads-Backa
Feet and shoe-soles
Feet and shoe-soles on the rocks at Brastads-Backa
Animals
Animals on the rocks at Brastads-Back
Birds
Carts/wheeled vehicles
Carts on the rocks at Brastads-Backa
Circles/discs, circle crosses and ‘sun’ wheels
‘Sun stands’
Other motifs
Cupmarks
Cupmarks on the rocks at Brastads-Backa
PART II Cabaletta: landscape setting and conceptual framework: the rhythmic visual arts of narrative
The carvings and the surrounding landscape at Brastads-Backa
Overall distribution of the carvings
Cairns, stone settings and burial mounds
Processions, performances, ritual
Narrative
What time are these images?
Narrative structures on the rocks
Rhythmanalysis
A semiotics of embodiment
An animate world
Part III Finale: perambulating the rocks
Brastads-Backa: a brief history of research
The southern series of rocks
Rock 26:1 (Fig. 4.6)
Rock 26:3 (Fig. 4.7)
Rock 26:2 (Fig. 4.8)
Rock 26:6 (Fig. 4.9)
Rock 587 (Figs 4.11 and 2.23)
Rock 18 (Figs 4.12–4.14)
Rock 18:2 (Figs 4.15 and 4.16)
Rock 18.1
Rocks 18:3 and 18:4 (Figs 4.25 and 4.26)
Rocks 22:1 and 22:2 (Fig. 4.27)
Rock 16:1 (Figs 4.29–4.31)
Rock 15:1 (Fig. 4.32)
Rock 14:1 (Fig. 4.33)
The northern series of rocks
Rock 4:1 (Fig. 4.35 and 4.36)
Rock 2:1 (Fig. 4.37)
Rock 1:1
Rock 5:1
Rock 1:2 (Fig. 4.51
Rock 48:1 (Fig. 4.56)
Rock 6:1 (Figs 4.57 and 4.58)
Rock 586 (Fig. 4.59)
The northern sequence summarised
Conclusions: from plot to story to body
The image sequence
The southern series of rocks
The northern series of rocks
Dominant images
Southern series
Northern series
Storyline 1: shadow play and becoming an adult in the society of the crane
Storyline 2: between walking feet and moving carts: life, death and the ancestral dead.
Storyline 3: animism and the spiritual connection between persons, animals and things in everyday life
Storyline 4: materially choreographing embodied experience of presentational forms
Postlude
Reflections
References
Index
Back Cover
