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Sailing Rock Art Boats
Abstract and Figures
Amongst the thousands of Bronze Age rock art images that are found along the paleogeographic coast lines of southern Scandinavia
the most ubiquitous is the boat. A few are furnished with what look like a mast or sail. These attributes have largely been
ignored or explained away as features or objects other than rig because it is widely accepted that the sail was not used in
Scandinavia until the 8th century AD. But what if after all they really are depictions of rig? Might this suggest that the
sail was not only known but perhaps used here over a 1,000years earlier than previously accepted? Starting from the bases
of the images and the environment in which they are found, this paper asks whether vessels of the types we believe belonged
to the Scandinavian Bronze Age could have been sailed? These evaluations led to a series of sail trials in a canoe undertaken
in the archipelago of the Swedish west coast in the late summer and autumn of 2005. The successful results of these trials
were later transferred to the Tilia, a full-scale reconstruction of the Hjortspring boat, a vessel dated to 350 BC but believed to belong to a long-established
boatbuilding tradition stretching back into the Bronze Age. This is the report of the hypothesis behind these trials as well
as their planning, execution and immediate results.
KeywordsBronze age–Rock art–Boat–Sail–Scandinavia–Experimental archaeology
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... When mentioned it was mainly to point out that these are not convincing and rather depict other figures, such as a sun symbol or a standing figure (Rieck & Crumlin-Pedersen, 1988, p. 52). More recently the brothers Bengtsson have argued in several publications that these depictions do represent vessels employing a sail (Bengtsson, 2017;Bengtsson & Bengtsson, 2007, 2011. The earliest depiction of a vessel with mast and sail, according to Boel Bengtsson, is the Tanum . ...
... 13). In the case of Hjortspring, the possibility of it having been sailed has never been discussed before Bengtsson and Bengtsson (2011), only its paddling capabilities (Rosenberg, 1937, p. 89;Trakadas & Crumlin-Pedersen, 2003). ...
This thesis concerns the discussion regarding the adoption of the sail in Scandinavia. It is the aim of this thesis to assess the prevailing theory that the sail was a late adoption and to provide an overview for others. Firstly the problems regarding the inductive method within archaeology are discussed. Secondly the evidence is presented that is used within the discourse. Aspects that may affect their validity as premises are presented. Thirdly the arguments are presented, discussed and their strength assessed. The assessment of the arguments is based on the validity of the premise and the relevance of the premise for the theory. Since archaeology is mainly a discipline based on interpretation this assessment is unavoidably subjective. A clear methodology is therefore presented for the assessment, for which clearly defined qualitative scales are used. When the author´s own subjective judgement is used then it will be made apparent. It is thus hoped that this thesis will provide an overview of the evidence and make it possible for others to assess the strength of the prevailing theory without having to rely on assumptions made by others.
It is concluded that there has been a lack of discussion regarding the representativeness of the evidence, that the constructional prerequisites for a vessel to carry a sail which have excluded an earlier use are not valid and that there are no reasons to exclude the possibility that the sail was used at an earlier date than currently thought.
... The transition from paddling to rowing represents a revolutionary transformation of boat technology in Scandinavia arguably of equal importance to the introduction of sails. Although it is widely accepted that sails were first used in Scandinavia during the Late Iron Age, most likely in the eighth century AD (Westerdahl 1995(Westerdahl , 2015, there are some who claim a much earlier introduction based on features resembling a mast or sail on Bronze Age rock art boats (Bengtsson and Bengtsson 2011). The introduction of rowing made possible dramatic increases in the size, carrying capacity, speed and seagoing capabilities of boats. ...
This article considers early boats in Scandinavian spanning a timeframe from Early Mesolithic colonization at c. 9500 cal BC up until the beginning of the Late Iron Age around AD 600 from a northern Norwegian perspective. The role of boats in current models of maritime colonization and proxy evidence from carved rock art images of Bronze Age to Early Iron Age boats are evaluated before focusing on newly dated boat remains from bogs in Arctic Norway currently housed at The Arctic University Museum of Norway. These include paddles predating the Iron Age and finds supporting the existence of rowed plank-built vessels in the early Pre-Roman Iron Age (500–0 BC). Rowing evidence includes a boat frame and oar radiocarbon dated to the sixth to fifth century BC and two oars from the later Pre-Roman Iron Age. Consequently, a revision of thinking about early Iron Age boat development is necessary, not only in Arctic Norway but also elsewhere in Scandinavia and Fennoscandia. The context of the earliest plank-built vessel in Scandinavia, the paddled war canoe from Hjortspring, Denmark, dated to c. 350 BC, is reevaluated in light of a probable coexistence with rowed boats.
Archaeological research of the Late Iron Age Åland Islands has traditionally focused on subjects stemming from the agrarian viewpoint of mainland Finland and Sweden. The terrestrial paradigm has left a gap in the knowledge of the Late Iron Age maritime cultural landscape. This thesis presents an alternate point of view, a maritime perspective. The discovery of a large hall farm in 2014 from the municipality of Saltvik has promoted the revaluation of previous views of the region being a political periphery during the Late Iron Age. Due to the renewed interest in the region and the need for maritime archaeological interpretations, this thesis aimed to identify where the landing sites were situated in Saltvik and what functions they were used for during the Late Iron Age?
To answer these research questions, three methods were used. Late Iron Age geography was analysed using GIS-based tools in order to identify high potential areas suitable for landing watercrafts. Boats potentially used at the landing sites were suggested by examining parallels from nearby regions. Material evidence pointing towards landing site activities was catalogued and interpreted to propose the functions for landing sites. As a result, a total of three potential areas with a high possibility of functioning as landing sites were identified in the municipality of Saltvik: Kvarnbo, Borgboda and Sålis. Among other things, their functions are possibly related to the primary activities of waterborne transportation, fishing, and seal hunting. The research concludes with propositions for the high-resolution studies of the suggested landing sites and raises new research questions on the spatial relations between different Late Iron Age sites on the Åland Islands.
The Laja Alta rock shelter paintings (Jimena de la Frontera, Spain) are the clearest existing testimony of sailing vessels from ancient times in the western Mediterranean. The majority opinion of the research has dated the naval scene in the first or the end of the second mill. BC. This article offers new reproductions and data for a better understanding of the figures represented. Based on the results obtained, we propose a different hypothesis. The absolute dates confirm that the rock shelter was used in the IV-III mill. cal. BC., the Late Neolithic and Copper Age. It was a time of important community transformations. Besides, others datas (types of figures, cultural context, pigment analysis by optical reflectance and superposition of figures) do not deviate from the results dates. The topographical distribution indicates that the boats occupy a central position in the rock shelter. Thus, the boats are the main theme of the paintings of Laja Alta and the rest of the motifs are determined by the naval scene. This conclusion has important historical implications for the transfer of technologies, goods and ideas that shaped the societies of the Late Neolithic and Copper Age of the Western Europe and North Africa.
In 1972 Paul Johnstone initiated a project to build and sail a hide-covered boat which would embody the theories of those Norwegian scholars—in particular Professor Sverre Marstrander—who have classified the boats of the Scandinavian Bronze Age with the Eskimo umiak and the Irish curragh. Thanks to the publicity given the experimental model by the BBC ‘Chronicle’ series and the enthusiastic advocacy of Bregger, Marstrander and Johnstone himself (‘Bronze age sea trial’,
Antiquity
, XLVI, 1972), the skin-boat theory has become almost an orthodoxy in Britain and Scandinavia. In fact, however, the reconstructed boat itself clearly demonstrated the awkwardness of translating into the medium of a hidecovered frame the boat designs of the bronze age rock art, which include several features utterly irreconcilable with the requirements and norms of skin-boat construction.
For no type of boat before the age of photography has such a vast corpus of evidence been preserved as for the vessel that served the fishermen, traders and raiding parties of Scandinavia between 1200 and 600 BC (that is, the Bronze Age periods 111, IV and V). The boat is a favoured motif in thousands of rock carvings in southern Norway, Sweden, and the Baltic islands, and on at least 200 late bronze age razors from Denmark and North Germany.
Several archaeological finds of ancient boats in Britain are currently being reconstructed using a variety of methods and standards. This paper discusses some of the general principles that should be observed so that such endeavours will be scholarly valuable. The Dover boat case study (later in this issue) is based on the analysis presented here.© 2006 The Authors
The need for experiments to study physical aspects of craft of the past is stated, as well as the necessity for them to have clear aims and to follow the established principles of scientific enquiry. These principles are discussed in this joint paper by ten maritime archaeologists and others, together with methods and some points of management critical to their application in this field.
L'auteur aborde dans cet article les problemes liees a la methodologie de l'experimentation en archeologie maritime, specialement en ce qui concerne la reconstitution, au moyen des techniques d'origines, des bateaux anciens. Il insiste particulierement sur le caractere pluridisciplinaire de l'experimentation en illustrant son propos par sa propre experience sur plusieurs projets d'elaboration de repliques de bateux