-gatherers in Alta, Arctic Norway (Figure 10.1).
Figure 10.1. Map of northernmost Europe showing the location of Alta and Zalavruga (at the river Vyg)
During the last few years, my understanding of rock art has changed. The process began when I saw compositions in which bears were the central ‘actors’ (Figure 10.2). These seemed to be illustrations in which the animals moved through space and time. This was a story in which I could recognise some key elements without needing to know the full meaning (Helskog 1999). I realised that the rock surface itself played a much larger part in the composition than I had previously thought. I then understood that my recorded rock art information was incomplete; I lacked detailed knowledge of the surfaces. The thousand photographs taken as part of my documentation have not relieved my uneasiness or made me feel more comfortable. In 19971 asked an artist to draw one of the large panels (Figures 10.2,10.3). The artist found that the changes in perspective that occurred in different parts of the panel made it impossible to make a satisfactory single rendering of the panel, and no (three-dimensional) drawing was made.
Figure 10.2 Bergbukten I. Photograph of part of the panel, taken from a high ladder;
a perspective that was probably never seen in prehistoric times. Water has collected in small pools after a rainstorm.
Tracks lead up to but do not descend into the largest of these pools (bottom right comer).
Clearly, this pool of water formed a part of the story of the panel.
The figures are now painted red so as to be more visible to visitors.
In 1999 I challenged another artist, illustrator and technical drawer to work on the same panel. Part of the result is seen in Figure 10.4. At around the same time I bought a book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (Edwards 1979), with the Norwegian title To Draw is to See (Å Tegne er å Se), because nobody seemed able to give me what I wanted. Reading and practicing drawing made me realise how bound I was to the long-established traditions of seeing and recording, and why I had gone wrong in my redrawing of the rock art. I had focused on the figures themselves as so many before me had done (such as Gjessing 1936; Simonsen 1958; Hallstrom 1960; Maimer 1981). In good Scandinavian tradition, I had traced all of the figures onto plastic sheets, joined them together and then reproduced all within a single redrawing, but without really seeing the surrounding rock or the surfaces between the images. I knew that aspects of the surfaces had to be recorded, but I really did not know which features to record. Traditionally, some fissures and cracks are drawn, especially if they run through engravings, but they are not included in the discussion of meaning. Recently Coles (2000), in his re-analysis of the so-called Dansarm (‘the dancer*) rock engraving panel in southern Sweden, recognised that fissures and cracks subdivide larger panels into smaller units. The point applies to Norway as well. In 2004, my own cooperation with the artist bore fruit — another copy, and with better technical drawing control (Helskog & Hogtun 2004). Also, from 2002 I became involved with a large Scandinavian project Rock Art of Northern Europe — and I introduced high-level technology and video scanning to my recording practices. These methods give an accurate three-dimensional recording of the surface topography, emphasising the spatial interrelationship between the engravings and the surface on which they are located (Helskog 2003). The method is still expensive, but will no doubt become a standard method of documentation in the future.
Figure 10.3 The main part of Bergbukten I. This redrawing shows a common type of rock art documentation in which only the engraved figures are represented.
It Is devoid of ’disturbing’ topographic features and has flattened out an otherwise undulating surface.
Not much can be gained from It concerning any meanings that may be derived from the relationships between the figures and the rock surface.
Figure 10.4 Bergbukten I. A perspective drawin