Paper short abstract:

The author is currently conducting a Scandinavian-wide comparison of prehistoric rock and portable art, which has not been completed since the mid 19th century. This poster presents background research and current research focusing on the relationship of art, society and environment in Scandinavia from the Mesolithic through to the early Iron Age.

Paper long abstract:

Prehistoric Scandinavia from the Mesolithic through to the Bronze Age was a period of change: environmentally, economically and socially. Mesolithic peoples experienced post-glacial isostatic, eustatic and climatic fluctuations that mutated coastlines and transformed lakes to seas. We are now more capable of scientifically reconstructing these environmental changes, and these contemporary data have sparked a new interest in reviewing existing research within more informed environmental contexts.

It is commonly acknowledged that in different maritime communities, rituals and various social actions were performed close to the shore, and there is no doubt that prehistoric peoples inhabiting the coastal areas of Scandinavia had a tangible connection to the sea. The environmental changes that occurred during the Mesolithic of southern Scandinavia would have had a dramatic effect on how the inhabitants perceived their surroundings. This would have influenced their religious, mythological and cosmological beliefs, their social practices and rituals, and central to all of these, their ‘art’. This poster presents research on a group of ornamented artefacts from Mesolithic Denmark, with some later examples of rock art and portable bronze artefacts. It looks at the distribution of ornamented artefacts, their geographical / environmental contexts, and different ways in which humans are known to have interacted with their surroundings. Though changes in cultural material, economy and settlement patterns can be more empirically assessed, aligning cognitive effects and emotional responses with environmental changes requires a separate methodology. It involves several theoretical approaches drawn from different disciplines.

By investigating art in the light of environmental changes, this research proposes that ‘art making’ as a ritual – a complex weave of context, perception and expression – was a social action characterized by the relationship between prehistoric Scandinavians and critical changes in their environment. Thus Lars Larsson (2003/4) asserts that natural phenomena such as iso-eustatic changes would have affected not only the way Mesolithic peoples perceived their landscape but also their 'world view'.