AMS radiocarbon dating has been widely applied in Palaeolithic art research and its value has been proven over the past three decades. Yet it still suffers from issues that need to be discussed and analysed to improve future sampling strategies and strengthen the interpretation of the results. This study presents new AMS dates for the parietal art in Cueva de Las Chimeneas in northern Spain, describes the quality of the samples, and discusses their reliability. The joint assessment of the dates and its comparison with previously obtained dates as well as stratified and dated portable art makes it possible to put forward a hypothesis about the time of creation of the cave's parietal art and the degree of synchrony or diachrony in its production. Consequently, it is proposed that the cave art at Las Chimeneas was created in the lower Magdalenian, between 19,000 and 17,500 cal bp.

In the Bronze Age, warriors are probably the best-known social class. Evidence for warfare and other violent encounters links them to aggression and bloodshed that could be translated into social status. This made warriors a potential two-fold threat to the social cohesion of their communities: not only did they risk threatening the integrity of communities as agents of death but also they could challenge local authority and cause internal conflict. Here, the author presents evidence that suggests that internal conflict was a major concern for Nordic Bronze Age societies, in that warriors constituted an internal social challenge, and proposes that local communities may have mitigated this threat in rituals such as the sacrifice of weapons and the construction of social narratives through rock art.

This article presents the first evidence for cupmarks in the southern Scandinavian Middle Neolithic, in the form of two cupmarked stones recovered during excavations at the Neolithic enclosures of Vasagård on the island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea. Until now, cupmarks, which are frequently found on dolmen capstones, have been associated with the rich and figurative rock art known from the Bronze Age (c. 1700–500 bc). The evidence from Vasagård opens up the possibility that more cupmarks could be Neolithic. The association of the cupmarked stones from Vasagård with ritual gatherings suggests an affinity with contemporary sites, including Orkney, where cupmarks have been linked to architectural transformations.

The rock art of southern Scandinavia is characterized by depictions of watercraft. The majority are close to the coast, and they have been the primary focus of research. Less attention has been paid to similar representations associated with two large inland lakes in southern Sweden. In this article we present the results of fieldwork around Lake Vänern and Lake Vättern and consider the relationship of this rock art to the better-known images on the coast. We explore the practicalities of navigating between the sea and the interior and suggest that there was an important contrast between an early eastern sphere extending to Lake Vättern from the Baltic and a later western sphere connecting Lake Vänern with the Atlantic.

Gender archaeology approaches to Iberian late prehistory have experienced a significant growth in the last two decades. However, much of the work undertaken has focused on specific aspects of the archaeological record (rock art, burial practices), particularly from the Bronze Age and Iron Age periods for which the evidence is more readily available. In addition, it has tended to be regional or local in scope. Here, we attempt an empirically robust multi-proxy approach to the development of early gender inequalities in Neolithic Iberia. Inspired by Gerda Lerner's ideas on the origins of patriarchy and based on a systematic collection of data analysed by means of significance testing, we present the first comprehensive study of gender dissymmetries in Iberian prehistory. Our conclusions suggest that, first, the multi-proxy method used has potential for the systematic study of gender inequalities on the basis of archaeological data and, second, that the Neolithic witnessed emerging gender inequalities that set the basis for male domination in later periods.

Human representations are one of the most important groups of depictions in rock art in southern Scandinavia. These humans have long been discussed as complete, stable, and temporally-fixed images. The results of a new survey challenge this view. Recording rock art with Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) enabled us to discern a possible sequence of production of individual human representations, their bodily features, and associated objects. Figures from a rock art site in Finntorp (Tanum, Sweden) will be used as an example. Differences in the dimensions of the engraved lines, the chronology of the depicted objects, and the placement of body parts suggest that several individuals may have been involved in making human representations on the rocks, and that their appearance as complete figures is the result of repeated transformations. The results presented demonstrate that Scandinavian rock art is not stable in time. We suggest that rock art is best understood as the creation of communities over time, which enables them to engage with the past by transforming the rocks.

This paper discusses the chronology of the Järrestad rock-art site in south-east Sweden. Drawing on recent developments in ship chronology, it argues that images were produced from the very beginning of the Scandinavian Bronze Age, c. 1700 BC, to the earliest Iron Age, c. 200 BC. The images are not randomly spread, however, but cluster in two phases: c. 1700–1100 BC and c. 900–200 BC, each with its different characteristics. It is argued that the later phase should be viewed against the background of central and western European Hallstatt cultures which affected not only the iconography of the Järrestad panel but also the organization of the surrounding cultural landscape.

South-west Britain—Cornwall, Devon and west Somerset—has featured little in discussions of British rock art. However, although it lacks the complex motifs found in northern Britain or the rich ornamentation of the Irish passage graves, it has a growing number of sites with simple cup-marks and stands at a pivotal location in the wider distribution of this form of rock art within north-west Europe. This paper considers the cup-mark tradition in south-west Britain and its wider European context, drawing attention to comparable traditions in western France, Wales, and south-west Ireland where simple cup-marks occur in analogous contexts. We propose a chronology for cup-marks in the south-west, from suggested Neolithic origins associated with rock outcrops and chambered tombs through to their use in Bronze Age barrows and subsequently roundhouses in the second millennium BC.