GoKawiilRock carving facts
The rock carvings in Tanum are images that were chiselled into the rock during the Bronze Age and the beginning of the Iron Age, from 1,700 to 300 BCE. The term “carving” is actually misleading. The images were hammered into the rock using pounding stones, and the tools are sometimes found during archaeological excavations near the sites. The carvings rarely depict everyday life; instead, the images seem to be related to power, ritual, and warrior ideals.
In the Tanum World Heritage area, there are over 600 known sites with rock carvings. Today, these sites are located a few kilometres inland, but when the carvings were made, many of them were situated directly adjacent to the ancient coastline. Due to post-glacial rebound, these panels are now situated between 9 and 17 meters above sea level. Other rock carvings are located at higher elevations and have never had direct contact with the seashore. An example is Fossum, which is situated at an elevation of over 40 meters above sea level. Ships are a common motif on panels, regardless of whether they were close to the Bronze Age sea or not. Therefore, the maritime connection does not necessarily have a geographic basis; rather, the presence of ships reflects the importance of water travel in many parts of Bronze Age society and culture.
The map shows what the Tanum area looked like during the Early Bronze Age (period II, 1500-1300 BC) and how the rock carvings are located in the landscape of that time. The red line is the boundary of the World Heritage Tanum Rock Carvings. Illustration: Fredrik Dimrå.
What do the rock carvings depict?
Although there are tens of thousands of individual rock carvings, the motifs are relatively few. The most common are the round pits called cup marks, and other recurring images include ships, humans, and animals. Less common motifs include foot soles, circles, wagons, trees, ards (predecessor to the plow), hands, net figures, and weapons. The challenge with rock carvings usually lies not in identifying what they depict but in understanding why the carver made the image. We may never fully comprehend the rock carvings, but by studying the chosen motifs, we can learn a great deal about the world of the Bronze Age people.
Learn more about the rock carvings motifs.
How do we determine the age of the rock carvings?
There are several ways to determine the age of rock carvings. The most common method is to compare images with actual archaeological finds and examine ship depictions engraved on objects from the Bronze Age. The age of objects can be determined through methods such as artifact chronologies or radiocarbon dating (C14 dating). The assumption is that if the depiction and the object appear similar, they are likely from the same era.
There are a few sites where the landscape’s post-glacial rebound can be used to determine the age of the carvings. For example, there is a theory that the carvings at the lower part of the Gerum panel cannot be from the beginning of the Bronze Age because that section of the panel would have been underwater at the time.
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