Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T13:39:18.028Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Reflections on Bronze Age travels

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2015

Kalle Sognnes*
Affiliation:
Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, Norway

Extract

In the above paper, Johan Ling and Zofia Stos-Gale present results from a project comparing isotopes from Bronze Age artefacts with signatures from known Bronze Age mining localities. The results showed that artefacts found in southern Sweden were made from bronze mined in Cyprus. This is in itself interesting, but the discovery of rock art engravings in Sweden that resemble ‘oxhide’ bronze ingots from Cyprus adds a new dimension to the interpretation of Scandinavian rock art, with its strong focus on boat images. The number of possible oxhide ingots represented in Swedish rock art is low, but if the identification of these images is correct, we have evidence, for the first time, of direct connections between Scandinavia and the eastern Mediterranean, connections that have been supposed, but not evidenced, for more than a century (e.g. Hansen 1909). Here, I focus on some implications this article may have for future Scandinavian Bronze Age studies, with special emphasis on rock art.

Type
Debate
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd., 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bradley, R. 1997. Rock art and the prehistory of Atlantic Europe. Signing the land. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Burenhult, G. 1980. Rock carvings in Götaland (Theses and Papers in North European Archaeology 10). Stockholm: Burenhult.Google Scholar
Fett, E.N. & Fett, P.. 1979. Relations West Norway–Western Europe documented in petroglyphs. Norwegian Archaeological Review 12: 65–92, 103107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hansen, A.M. 1909. Om helleristninger. Foreningen til norske fortidsmindesmærkers bevaring aarsberetning 1908: 162.Google Scholar
Malmer, M.P. 1981. A chorological study of North European rock art (Kungliga Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Akademiens handlingar, Antikvariska serien 32). Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell.Google Scholar