Rock Art and the Wild Mind: Visual Imagery in Mesolithic Northern Europe

Cover
Title
Copyright
Contents
Figures
Tables
Acknowledgements
0 Archaic meetings – a prologue
	Rock art and great meetings
	The dynamics of archaic meetings and its imprint in stone
1 Object and objectives
	Sketching the approaches
	The meeting of minds
	Nature and culture – not quite beyond
2 The setting
	Study area
	Settlement
	From extended families to clans
	Evidence of Late Mesolithic meetings and rituals “outside” the context of rock art
	Meetings at the large rock art areas; the example of Nämforsen
	Hunters’ rock art
	Types of landscape locations for rock art
	Location in time
	Absolute and relative chronology of Mesolithic rock art
PART I The structure of Mesolithic hunters’ rock art
	3 Northern European hunters’ rock art – products of the ‘wild mind’ in action
		Introduction
		Encapsulated in nature
		Mind in the wild
		Myths and mythical thinking
		Hunters’ rock art and post-structuralism
		A preliminary defi nition of the moteme
		Art and wild thinking: a chapter epilogue
	4 The ‘key moteme’ and its transformations: visual paths of a Late Mesolithic analogical logic
		Method
		Metaphoric and metonymic animals
		The basic homology: approaching its contents
		Leitmotif and key moteme
		The herd of big game
		Discerning the herd moteme
		Defining motemes through the agency of hunting
			Mediation and confrontation
			Return of the great herds
			Giving back, or going back
			List of motemes
		Defining motemes through visual transformations
		Examples of visual transformation of the key moteme
			Vingen: example of visual transformation of the herd moteme
			From key homology to circles and graphic designs: starting at Kåfjord Upper
			Digression: example of a lost connection
			The origin of graphic design: contraction and simplification of repeated and “accumulated” figures
		A Late Mesolithic ‘motemic geography’
		The meaning of rock art
			Repetitions, transformations and variations over the leitmotif
			Mirror play and chiasms
			Hunters’ rock art and music
	5 Mediating nature and culture, or body design in the eastern Norwegian group of hunters’ rock art
		Introduction: ‘naturalism’ and ‘schematicism’
		Earlier positions on body fill and graphic designs
		‘Nature-to-culture’ in the eastern Norwegian group of rock art
			Åskollen
			Skogerveien
			Geithus
			Ekeberg, Møllerstufossen, Glemmestad and Drotten (Dokkfløy and Eidefossen)
		The structure and origin of graphic design in eastern Norway
		The nature of culture: conclusive remarks
		Appendix to Chapter 5: consequences for the relative chronology
	6 Design patterns as an autonomous system of references
		Introduction: further analogical opportunities
		A reinforcement of connections
		The diamond pattern and its visual associations
		Patterns of association
		The “re-invention” of Mesolithic design patterns
PART II Mesolithic hunters’ rock art as animism and totemism
	7 Approaching rock art through animism and totemism
		Outer versus inner
		Mind and nature: testimonies of rock art
			Early Mesolithic/early Middle Mesolithic Nordland and Trøndelag
			The early Late Mesolithic
			Late Mesolithic and earliest Early Neolithic
			Mind and nature: comments
		From epistemology to ontology
		From animism and totemism – to ‘animic’ and ‘totemic’ rock art
			Animism
			Animism in Scandinavian hunters’ rock art
			Totemism
			Totemism in hunters’ rock art and in the archaeological record of western Norway
			Animism and totemism in Mesolithic and Early Neolithic rock art
			Is animism to totemism as nature is to culture?
			Totemism and animism – a chiasmatic relationship
	8 “Measuring” the totemic impact
		The totemic impact and its temporal placement
		The LM4/LM5 totemic impact
			Measuring totemism
			Calculations
		Commenting on the ‘totemic impact’, or no definite conclusion
		Appendix to Chapter 8: on methodology
	9 The mapping of design patterns, or fragments of a totemic geography
		Background and aims
		The patterns and their geographical distribution
		Defining a totemic geography
		Do ‘clan landscapes’ align with ‘clan territories’?
	10 The Late Mesolithic ‘lines of contact’
		What is a ‘line of contact’?
		‘Lines of contact’
			From Alta to Ausevik
			From Alta to Holtås-Lamtrøa
			From Vingen to Holtås
			From Ausevik-Vingen to Tennes
			From Skogerveien to Vingen
			From Alta to Møllerstufossen
			Alta and Nämforsen
			Alta and Gamnes
		Comments to ‘lines of contact’
PART III Rock art, sexe and the symbolic gift
	11 Late Mesolithic sexe in rock art
		The concept of ‘sexe’
		Sexe in Late Mesolithic rock art: degree of presence and its context
		The male elk as metaphor of society
		Independent women and great men?
		Appendix to Chapter 11: sexual markers in human depictions
	12 Animism and totemism through time, and the introduction of the symbolic gift
		The animic-totemic divide and “animism regained” in the North
		Totemism and the symbolic gift: a hypothesis
References
Index