Seeing visual narrative. New methodologies in the study of prehistoric visual depictions

• Published in: Archaeological Dialogues
• Main Author: Janik, Liliana
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge University Press (CUP) 2014
• Subjects: White Sea
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1380203814000129; https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S1380203814000129

Abstract The aim of this paper is to establish how visual narratives can be used in the social context of storytelling, enabling the remembrance of events and those who participated in them in prehistory around the White Sea in the northernmost part of Europe. One of the largest complexes of fisher-gatherer-hunter art is located here, dating from the Neolithic and the Early Bronze Age ( ca 6000–4000 B.P.). A number of methodological strands are brought together to aid in the interpretation of the art, combining Western art-historical and non-Western visual traditions that challenge our modern ways of seeing. The paper proposes an unconventional interpretation of this rock art, in which the prehistoric imagery is ‘translated’ via two short films creating the visual link between past and the present.