Elevated Rock Art

Much rock art analysis focuses on the contemplative observer. The more direct activities related to rock art are seldom fully considered. Here, the basic conditions for the production of rock art, social theory and approaches to image, communication, symbolism and social action are discussed and related to palpable social forms of the "reading" of rock art. The general location and content of the Bronze Age remains indicate a tendency towards the maritime realm, which seems to have included both socio-ritual and socio-economic matters of production and consumption and that Bronze Age groups in Bohuslän were highly active and mobile. The numerous configurations of ship images on the rocks could indicate a general transition or drift towards the maritime realm. Marking or manifesting such transitions in some way may have been important and it is tempting to perceive the rock art as traces of such transitions or positions in the landscape. All this points to a maritime understanding of Bronze Age rock art in northern Bohuslän.