Johan Ling

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor (Associate) at University of Gothenburg

Provides a multi-scalar synthesis of Nordic Bronze Age economies (1800/1700–500 BCE) that is organized around six sections: an introduction to the Nordic Bronze Age, macro-economic perspectives, defining local communities, economic interaction, conflict and alliances, political formations, and encountering Europe. Despite a unifying material cultur...

Recent research has uncovered new evidence of long-distance interactions between Scandinavia and Iberia during the Late Bronze Age. Advances in various lines of inquiry, such as 3D recording of rock art, iconography, metals and amber sourcing, linguistics, and, to some extent, more indirect indications from human remains, as refl ected by strontium...

The boat stands out as a prominent symbol of the Nordic Bronze Age, depicted at thousands of rock art sites and on several metal objects throughout Scandinavia. Paradoxically, direct evidence of these boats is scarce, and the locations where boats were constructed remain largely elusive. In this paper, we put forth the proposition that many ostensi...

Methods to document rock art in all three dimensions have become a standardized workflow. In this article, we discuss their advantages and disadvantages when compared to older reductive approaches to rock art documentation. Furthermore, some misunderstandings regarding 3D documentation are addressed. As the majority of the problems presented by the...

The archive of rock art documentation maintained by SHFA provides a valuable resource to archaeologists and others who study rock art. The archive includes images of rock art documentation, sites, and the documentation process, from the 17th century to the more recent high resolution 3D recording and visualizations. In the last few years, GRIDH, in...

This article shows the relationship between secret societies and rock art.

This book examines the impact of ancient DNA research and scientific evidence on our understanding of the emergence of Indo-European languages in prehistory. Offering cutting-edge contributions from an international team of scholars, it considers the driving forces behind the Indo-European migrations during the 3rd and 2nd millenia BC. The volume e...

Recent advances with DNA and isotopes have brought mobility back into archaeological explanation, but little attention has been paid to maritime aspects of these movements. The great prehistoric migrations, or phases of mobility, are far too often represented as large arrows spanning vast seas or rivers with no further explanation of how these grou...

This study offers new insights into the local appropriation of warrior ideals in Late Bronze Age Europe. Through the new study of the carvings of Cancho Roano and Arroyo Tamujoso 8, located in Southwest Iberia and their landscape settings with state-of-the-art digital technologies, this paper unpicks some of the key idiosyncrasies of Iberian Late B...

Today, it is widely accepted that typology is a biased and inconsistent attempt to classify archaeological material based on the similarity of a predefined set of features. In this respect, machine learning (ML) works similar to typology. ML approaches are often deployed because it is thought that they reduce biases. However, biases are introduced...

Trade before Civilization explores the role that long-distance exchange played in the establishment and/or maintenance of social complexity, and its role in the transformation of societies from egalitarian to non-egalitarian. Bringing together research by an international and methodologically diverse team of scholars, it analyses the relationship b...

Trade before Civilization explores the role that long-distance exchange played in the establishment and/or maintenance of social complexity, and its role in the transformation of societies from egalitarian to non-egalitarian. Bringing together research by an international and methodologically diverse team of scholars, it analyses the relationship b...

Trade before Civilization explores the role that long-distance exchange played in the establishment and/or maintenance of social complexity, and its role in the transformation of societies from egalitarian to non-egalitarian. Bringing together research by an international and methodologically diverse team of scholars, it analyses the relationship b...

Trade before Civilization explores the role that long-distance exchange played in the establishment and/or maintenance of social complexity, and its role in the transformation of societies from egalitarian to non-egalitarian. Bringing together research by an international and methodologically diverse team of scholars, it analyses the relationship b...

Trade before Civilization explores the role that long-distance exchange played in the establishment and/or maintenance of social complexity, and its role in the transformation of societies from egalitarian to non-egalitarian. Bringing together research by an international and methodologically diverse team of scholars, it analyses the relationship b...

Trade before Civilization explores the role that long-distance exchange played in the establishment and/or maintenance of social complexity, and its role in the transformation of societies from egalitarian to non-egalitarian. Bringing together research by an international and methodologically diverse team of scholars, it analyses the relationship b...

Trade before Civilization explores the role that long-distance exchange played in the establishment and/or maintenance of social complexity, and its role in the transformation of societies from egalitarian to non-egalitarian. Bringing together research by an international and methodologically diverse team of scholars, it analyses the relationship b...

Trade before Civilization explores the role that long-distance exchange played in the establishment and/or maintenance of social complexity, and its role in the transformation of societies from egalitarian to non-egalitarian. Bringing together research by an international and methodologically diverse team of scholars, it analyses the relationship b...

Rock art carvings, which are best described as petroglyphs, were produced by removing parts of the rock surface to create a negative relief. This tradition was particularly strong during the Nordic Bronze Age (1700–550 BC) in southern Scandinavia with over 20,000 boats and thousands of humans, animals, wagons, etc . This vivid and highly engaging m...

With the recent surge of far-reaching mobility perspectives and implementation of 'big-data' modelling to understand patterns of contact, Bronze Age Europe seems more connected and integrated into reigning top-down narratives of the past. Yet, these models under-communicate how local adaptation and bottom-up organization undergird these overarching...

Since the beginning of the 20th century rock art in Bohuslän has traditionally been interpreted, on the basis of its adjacent location to the clay-soil plains, as an indicator ofpermanent pastoral or agrarian settlement units. However, recent results ofthe first substantial and extensive shoreline study, covering the whole of Bohuslän, have shown t...

Brian Hayden. The Power of Ritual in Prehistory: Secret Societies and Origins of Social Complexity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018, 410pp., 64 illustr., hbk, ISBN 978-1-10-857207-1) - Volume 22 Issue 4 - Johan Ling

European Bronze Age swords had high functional and symbolic value, and therefore they are an interesting case for approaching questions of provenance and trade in Bronze Age Europe. It is often assumed that there is a strong affinity between metal supplies and artefact type. However, this study demonstrates that metal supply and sword types are mos...

Rock art documentation, research, and public outreach are tightly interlinked. New methods of documentation spark new research questions and new research ideas drive methodological developments. The introduction and wider use of image-based and range-based 3D modeling techniques in the UNESCO world heritage areas of Valcamonica, Italy, and Tanum, S...

As exemplified by Viking and Bronze Age societies in northern Europe, we model the political dynamics of raiding, trading, and slaving as a maritime mode of production. It includes political strategies to control trade by owning boats and financing excursions, thus permitting chiefs to channel wealth flows and establish decentralized, expansive pol...

This chapter explores the relationship between rock art, secret societies, long distance exchange, and warfare during the Scandinavian Bronze Age. Scandinavian Bronze Age rock art often depicts warriors brandishing metal weapons standing in or near war canoes. The appearance of this motif is concomitant with the participation of the local communiti...

Bronze is the defining metal of the European Bronze Age and has been at the center of archaeological and science-based research for well over a century. Archaeometallurgical studies have largely focused on determining the geological origin of the constituent metals, copper and tin, and their movement from producer to consumer sites. More recently,...

Warfare in Bronze Age Society takes a fresh look at warfare and its role in reshaping Bronze Age society. The Bronze Age represents the global emergence of a militarized society with a martial culture, materialized in a package of new efficient weapons that remained in use for millennia to come. Warfare became institutionalized and professionalized...

Warfare in Bronze Age Society takes a fresh look at warfare and its role in reshaping Bronze Age society. The Bronze Age represents the global emergence of a militarized society with a martial culture, materialized in a package of new efficient weapons that remained in use for millennia to come. Warfare became institutionalized and professionalized...

Southern Scandinavia is Europe’s richest region in terms of figurative rock art. It is imperative to document this cultural heritage for future generations. To achieve this, researchers need to use the most objective recording methods available in order to eliminate human error and bias in the documentation. The ability to collect more data is bett...

Rock art and the sea: the symbols of coastal prehistoric societies and maritime interaction in Europe - see poster

Control over the exchange of metal was crucial for the reproduction of society during the Bronze Age of Eurasia. In order to enter the global metal trade network, Bronze Age societies of temperate Europe exploited differential geographical control over valued products such as amber, tin, copper, and textiles in the development of regional specializ...

Violence and war-related social and ritual traits are common features in the Scandinavian rock art from the Bronze Age. Warriors in staged scenes with weapons in or adjacent to war canoes are a recurrent theme on rocks. The rock art appears at the same time as Scandinavian societies became engaged in long distance trade of metal. Local warriors wou...

In the second millennium cal BC, a new metal conquered Europe: the alloy of copper and tin that improved the quality of tools and weapons. This development, we argue, initiated a framework for a new political economy. We explore how a political economy approach may help understand the European Bronze Age by focussing on regional comparative advanta...

Bronze Age trade networks across Europe and the Mediterranean are well documented; Baltic amber and bronze metalwork were particularly valued commodities. Here it is argued that demand for copper and tin led to changes in Scandinavian trade routes around 1600 BC, which can be linked to the appearance of figurative rock art images in southern Scandi...

It is rare for authors to be able to read comments on their paper by leading colleagues and to have the chance to respond before its publication. We would like to thank the editor of Antiquity for providing this opportunity. The comments express both acceptance of, and doubts about, interconnectedness between the eastern Mediterranean and Scandinav...

The first part of this research published previously proved without doubt that the metals dated to the Nordic Bronze Age found in Sweden were not smelted from the local copper ores. In this second part we present a detailed interpretation of these analytical data with the aim to identify the ore sources from which these metals originated. The inter...

The Bronze Age in Europe has been the subject for some books over the years, including Coles and Harding’s The Bronze Age in Europe and Jacques Briard’s The Bronze Age in Barbarian Europe. This handbook aims to add relevant information about the Bronze Age, and covers Bronze Age Europe outside the Aegean area. It is split into two main parts, which...

The Tanum World Heritage Area, located in northern Bohuslän ca. 150 km north of Gothenburg, Sweden, is a multifaceted land-scape containing remnants of human activity from the Neolithic to Modern Historic times. This area is particularly famous for its well-preserved rock art, with no less than 1,500 recorded localities containing thousands of imag...

The aim of this study is to further the discussion as to whether copper was extracted locally or imported to Sweden during the Bronze Age or if both of these practices could have coexisted. For this purpose, we have carried out lead isotope and chemical analyses of 33 bronze items, dated between 1600BC and 700BC. Among these are the famous Fröslund...

Scandinavian rock art may in general be regarded as idealized depictions of a social world, not a direct description of concrete social matters. Even so, rock art does convey important social information that calls for more thorough comment. This study concerns almost 1700 ship depictions from western Sweden that include human representations. The...

During the major part of the 20th century the rock art in Bohuslän has been seen as a manifestation of an agrarian ‘cultic’ ideology in the landscape. In this context the dominant ship image and the armed humans have been perceived as abstract religious icons, not as active symbols related to real praxis in the landscape. Moreover, some scholars cl...

This paper describes a project in progress dealing with visualization and mediation of archaeological and cultural heritage information by integrating digital tools in a museum exhibition. In the project an interactive, combined digital and physical model representing the Göta river valley in south-western Sweden is developed. The objective is to u...