John Coles. Shadows of a Northern Past: Rock Carvings of Bohuslan and Ostfold.

John Coles. Shadows of a Northern Past: Rock Carvings of Bohuslan and Ostfold. JOHN COLES. Shadows of a Northern Past: Rock Carvings of Bohuslanand Ostfold. viii+222 pages, 264 illustrations, 16 colour plates. 2005.Oxford: Oxbow; 1-84217-181-X hardback 30 [pounds sterling]. John Coles--doyen now, surely of active British fieldarchaeologists (the library catalogue, knowing no reticence, says'born 1930')--has given us a modestly presented and wonderfulbook. Its topic is not the Somerset Levels The Somerset Levels (or Somerset Levels and Moors as they are less commonly, but more correctly, called) is a sparsely populated wetland area of central Somerset, England, between the Quantock and Mendip hills. , or wetland studies moregenerally, for which he is so known; but the Bronze Age Bronze Age,period in the development of technology when metals were first used regularly in the manufacture of tools and weapons. Pure copper and bronze, an alloy of copper and tin, were used indiscriminately at first; this early period is sometimes called the (broadly)rock-carvings of southern Sweden, where he has also been quietly workingfor 30 years. He presents his journey across the rocks as a solojourney, a journey which at the start repaired his back, damaged by toomuch work in the peatlands. His book is an informed analytical report of sites, small andlarge, in Bohuslan and Ostfold, on the west-facing coast of Sweden.After the text, with its 16 plates and 160 varied images, photographedor drawn, come a set of about 100 site-plans, each drawn in detail at a1:25 scale. Following an introduction setting the conventional themes, analysisbegins with the character of the images, their shape and variation,arranged by identifiable subjects--of which boats are the most numerous.Here a host of sharp-eyed observations are reported: when humans arearranged in lines, then their feet all point in the same direction; ifan even number of humans, they face or move to their right, if odd totheir left. I much enjoyed the analysis of horses as a motif, and ofwhich creatures the other quadrupeds might be. Also the alert andexcellent study in the geometry of complex shapes, in which the variedcomponents of two-wheeled and four-wheeled horse-drawn vehicles aredepicted in such a way that each element is clear, and the rulerespected that no line of the carving can cross another. In a closingsection, Coles reports results from excavation of the land below therocks, their structures and debris hinting at the social contexts fromwhich the images derived. The next scale of analysis is of 'site structure', thearrangements of figures across surfaces. It begins with the commonproblem of defining what a rock-art 'site' is: how distantpanels or figures must be from each other before one site becomes two.Again, there are many acute observations and insights, starting with thefirm signs the figures were intended to be seen from the base of thepanel. At the yet larger scale of analysis, the rock-carvings sites areset in their landscapes, and their 'minor' and'major' catchments explored. The framework here is thelong-established observation that surfaces just above the shore-linewere selected; so the chronology of the sites will reflect the intricatelocal pattern of late postglacial post��gla��cial?adj.Relating to or occurring during the time following a glacial period.postglacial?Relating to or occurring during the time following a glacial period.Adj. 1. shifts in sea-level. In these studies, Coles finds again that rock-art analysis isusefully structured by a nesting scale of physical dimension: it closelyresembles the nesting set of millimetre, centimetre, metre and kilometrescales independently devised by the present writer for studying otherEuropean rock-carvings (Chippindale 2004). So what does all this painstaking field observation tell us, whatdo the regularities mean? A closing and short chapter, tellingly titled'The meaning of it all, or of nothing', intends to be'suitably cautious'. Yet it immediately states withoutreservation a strong social interpretation in four stages: the story orbelief(I) that prompted the symbol was controlled by a griot griotAfrican tribal storyteller. The griot's role was to preserve the genealogies and oral traditions of the tribe. Griots were usually among the oldest men. In places where written language is the prerogative of the few, the place of the griot as cultural guardian is still or elder(2) instructing the artist-craftsperson (3) empowered to mark the rockwith images then revealed (4) to a wider on-looking society. But we aretold nothing of the evidence or analogue this persuasive scheme is basedon. The chapter ends with an awkward fictitious account, a'Traveller's Tale' which supposes a young Northern mantravelling alone in ancient times as far as Egypt and, returning to theNorth, there becoming a wise elder by the truth of his travels. A curious discrepancy has now opened in rock-art research, as wesee in Coles's approach to meaning. His Scandinavian research seemsafflicted by northern glums, with the brief release of an imaginativeand--one hopes--well-based interpretation quashed by the old insistencethat secure interpretation is impossible since there are only opinions;the precarious theory of close linkages to the remote Mediterranean isthen re-stated. Yet the possibility that the society of therock-carvings might have some social continuity in the same region withViking times is dismissed--despite common elements such as theprominence of boats and of men with weapons. Look to research instead inSouth Africa South Africa,Afrikaans Suid-Afrika, officially Republic of South Africa, republic (2005 est. pop. 44,344,000), 471,442 sq mi (1,221,037 sq km), S Africa. and Australia, and we see a confidence that distinctiveelements in the ancient images can be related, with some sufficientreliability, to the social structures and beliefs of later times. If theRainbow Serpent The Rainbow Serpent (also known as the Rainbow Snake) is a major mythological being for Aboriginal people across Australia, although the creation stories associated with it are best known from northern Australia. of modern Aboriginal knowledge can, in northernAustralia The term northern Australia is generally considered to include the States and territories of Australia of Queensland and the Northern Territory. The part of Western Australia (WA) north of latitude 26�� south — a definition widely used in law and State government policy , be traced in the images of the rock through 4000 and moreyears of continuing tradition (and change), as I believe we have done(Tacon et al. 1996), then why is it inconceivable to see congruencesacross the 2000 years between the Bronze Age and early Middle Ages onthe Northern rocks? References CHIPHNDALE, C. 2004. From millimetre up to kilometre: a frameworkof space and of scale for reporting and studying rock-art in itslandscape, in C. Chippindale & G. Nash (ed.) Pictures in place: thefigured landscapes of rock-art: 102-17. Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress Cambridge University Press (known colloquially as CUP) is a publisher given a Royal Charter by Henry VIII in 1534, and one of the two privileged presses (the other being Oxford University Press). . TACON, P.S.C., M. WILSON & C. CHIPPINDALE. 1996. Birth of theRainbow Serpent in Arnhem Land Arnhem Land,37,100 sq mi (96,089 sq km), N Northern Territory, Australia, on a wide peninsula W of the Gulf of Carpentaria. The great majority of the region belongs to the Arnhem Land Aboriginal Reserve, the largest aboriginal reservation in Australia. rock art and oral history. Archaeology inOceania 31: 103-24. CHRISTOPHER CHIPPINDALE Rock Art Research Institute, University of the Witwatersrand Due to the 1959 Extension of University Education Act the school was only allowed to register a small number of black students for most of the apartheid era, even though several notable black anti-apartheid leaders graduated from the university. ,Johannesburg; Cambridge University; Australian National University