Picturing the Bronze Age by Picturing the Bronze Age (Swedish Rock Art Book 3)

Author:Picturing the Bronze Age (Swedish Rock Art, Book 3) [Retail]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ART / General
ISBN: 9781782978800
Publisher: Oxbow Books
Published: 2015-02-27T16:00:00+00:00

8

The ‘Stranger King’ (bull) and rock art

Johan Ling and Michael Rowlands

In this paper we will argue that Bronze Age rock art could be seen as a fusion of the following social processes: (1) A legacy of the North Scandinavian Rock Art Tradition in terms of the emphasis of animistic feature and the general need to aggregate or interact on a seasonal basis; (2) southern Scandinavia’s entanglement in metals during the Bronze Age which, in fact, triggered the entire process of creating rock art during this epoch; and as an outcome of this process (3) the formation of new maritime institutions and a general need to (4) enter and maintain ‘international’ networks and alliances that inspired the rock art tradition with a pan-European code of warriorhood and cosmology. Of particular interest for us here is the ritual and transformative depictions of bulls and ships in the former ‘seascape’ of Bohuslän.

KEYWORDS: animistic transformations, cosmopolitical codes, entanglement in metals, ‘Stranger King’, maritime institutions

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