in time. Panels can expand. The panels discussed in this chapter are all dated to approximately the late 7th and early 6th millennia BP. If engravings added to these panels were intentionally related to those made earlier, then there was an accumulative effect in which the story was continued in some form. If not, then the new composition represents only a later chronological instant in the life of the panel and the story at that point was probably different from earlier stories told on the same panel. Indeed, stories might have changed with changing contexts. If place was a meaning-giving element, environmental changes might have caused changes in the ritual associations between the panel and its landscape. In Arctic Scandinavia in particular, where new land emerged from the sea with shore displacement and climatic changes throughout the Holocene, old associations might have been broken.
Where a landscape remained unchanged, rock art panels would have been more prone to have been engraved in variable manners over a long period of time. For panels where the landscape changed, the rock art would more likely have been made over a shorter period of time and will therefore appear fairly uniform and homogeneous. Examples of both alternatives can be found among the panels at Lake Onega, eastern Karelia, Russia. It is well documented that the panels are all located adjacent to water. There are several cases along rivers and lakes where engravings still arc, or until recently were, overflowed by water (Sawatejev 1970, 1984; Ramqvist ctal 1985; Shumkin 1990; Tilley 1991: 56). Panels appear to have touched water (Bertdsson 1987; Hesjedal et al. 1996; Helskog 1999). In Alta, there is a chronological difference between panels at different heights above sea level: those lower down are younger than those higher up. New panels continued to hug the shoreline as the land rose. This does not necessarily mean that those panels at a higher altitude were discarded, but new engravings seldom appear to have been added to the older surfaces. This is particularly evident in the boat figures (Helskog 1985,1988). Many of the panels at Alta thus do not appear to be extensively chronologically mixed, although there is no method that can guarantee a ‘chronological homogeneity’.
The figures at the panel of Storsteinen were made on the top surface (20.4 m above sea level) of a four- meter high, flat-topped boulder on the steep slope of a glacial frontal deposit. They contain a mixture of manners of depiction, covering a longer time span than at any other panel. The reason for dies is that in front of this boulder there are no lower rock surfaces where new figures could be made as the waterline receded — this boulder is unique in this respect in Alta. Storsteinen appears to have been used and engraved for 1500- 2000 years, as long as the boulder was connected to the shoreline. A radiocarbon date from deposits covering figures 20 m above sea level on the rock surface indicates that a part of the panel was covered by peat when surfaces at 8.5 m-11 m above sea level were engraved. The obvious point here is that a panel which represents a relatively short period of time will provide clearer rock art units and will be easier to tie to other aspects of the prehistoric record than one with figures covering a long period of rime. The bigger question is: are changes in rock art content and manner of depiction over time indicative of changing meanings?
In contrast to the rock engravings, the environment associated with the rock paintings changed less. The painted figures are found on vertical surfaces in dark caves and shelters. Inside the caves, all along the Norwegian coast, the changes were minimal, while the outside environment changed with the shore displacement and climatic changes. In caves and shelters, paintings of human figures dominate numerically (Bjerck 1995); in many caves only images of humans are painted. To the east, in Finland, no engravings have yet been found and the paintings, all on open cliffs above water (Kivikäs 1995), are more diverse th