Most books or articles on Scandin- avian rock art focus on a single country or region. The main innovation of Nimura's volume is that it presents data from Denmark, Sweden and Norw- ay, and covers all rock art, albeit with an emphasis on the Bronze Age, 1700–500 BC. It is based on a doctoral dissertation of 2013 and is dedicated to Richard Bradley, whose writings are cited throughout. The research, however, is heavily dependent on the publications of John Coles and of Scandinavian specialists such as Knut Helskog and, especially, Johan Ling; the latter's recent work on shoreline dating has linked different kinds of ship motifs to retreating shorelines in Uppland, Sweden and elsewhere. The main aim of the book “is to determine whether rock art was affected by environmental changes” (p. 23), principally related to shoreline displacement caused by postglacial land uplift (isostasy). How successful is the book in meeting this aim?
Chapter 1 provides a period-by-period overview of rock art and the different interpretations of it. There is, of course, a major emphasis on those motifs that are traditionally interpreted as ships; this is already an assumption, albeit one accepted by virtually all specialists. But are they real ships, symbolic ships or both? Do they represent trade and travel? Were they carved to ensure safe and fruitful voyages? Or were they symbols of the voyages of the dead? It seems most unlikely that one theory could account for them all.
Chapter 2 takes a closer look at rock art in a maritime landscape, and claims that “rock art was integral to the propagation of Bronze Age worldviews” (p. 22), or cosmologies, and that these heavily involved the environment, especially watery places. Once again, this seems a reasonable assumption, and one that has long been a feature of studies of Scandinavian rock art. In fact, as early as 1868, the great pioneer Carl Georg Brunius observed that the location of shorelines might have played a part in choosing which rocks to carve. One unanswerable question is whether people noticed the slow changes in shoreline and how quickly they might have responded to them. A further chicken-and-egg problem concerns whether the rock art was put there to make the place special or, conversely, because the place was already special.
Chapter 3 explains how Nimura collated her pan-Scandinavian database, and provides a list of regions and of the categories of motifs. But it is the following chapter that constitutes both the bulk and the major contribution of the book, as this is where the results of the data analyses are presented, region by region, with numerous maps and tables. The main themes are the numbers of different motif types and distances to the present coastline. By far the most common motif is the cupmark—there are more than a quarter of a million of them, 82% of the overall total; ‘ships’ are the next most common, numbering more than 19000, but equating to just 6.2%. Denmark has less than 1% of all ship motifs, while Sweden has almost 80%. In relation to distribution, the data tables show that only 16.46% of ship motifs are within one kilometre of the coastline, rising to 23.13% if inland water bodies are included. In contrast, no less than 12.32% are located between 25 and 118km from the coast. Yet the author refers to “a lack of Ships in inland areas” (p. 65) and states that “Across Scandinavia it was observed that the largest percentage of Ship motifs occurred within 1km of the coast” (p. 85); that is true, but 16.46% is not a huge majority! Where circle motifs are concerned, more of them (20.36%) are located between 25 and 118km from the coast than are located less than 1km from the sea (16.5%); while twice as many foot sole/foot motifs are distant from the coast (30.43%) than are close to it (15.34%). There are distinct regional differences in types and quantities of motifs and their relationship to the landscape, but clearly only those motifs located close to water are likely to have been affected by changing land and sea levels.
The last chapter is devoted to ‘agency’ and environmental change, and seeks to explain the “behaviour of rock art”, stating that “rock art may be the ideal subject for an exploration of prehistoric perception and cognition expressed in material culture” (p. 115). Could environmental changes have posed a threat to people's worldviews and to the rock art through which they expressed and promoted their understanding of the world? Theories of material agency are used here, and the main argument is: if rock art has agency, then it is an active entity that can have effects on, and be affected by, society and even possibly elements of the environment.
After a presentation of definitions of perception, cognition, landscape and that dreadful non-word ‘taskscape’, the author turns to “the agency of art” (p. 120). Robb has argued that the concept of agency is now almost redundant, but Nimura believes that it remains essential so as to postulate that rock art was not a passive entity, and that its powerful role in society enabled it to have an effect on and be enacted upon by human agents. This is the volume's core research theme, although it takes up only the last ten pages. Nimura guides the reader via material agency and actor-network theory, drawing inspiration from the work of Alfred Gell, who argued that “art is a system of action, intended to change the world rather than encode symbolic propositions about it” (p. 121); but why can it not be both and many other things besides? Nimura does not explain why she favours this theory or why she considers it better than others.
The final chapter claims that the volume has “evaluated theories that bestow great importance to the effects that environment and material culture could have on humans” (p. 125). But, in fact, there is no evaluation of theories anywhere in this book. Numerous authors and ideas are cited but uncritically; Nimura never indicates which ones might be more plausible than others or—heaven forbid—which ones are useless.
In any case, as the author accepts that the purposes of rock art differed throughout Scandinavia, and as one can assume that these purposes also changed over the course of time (some motifs being re-carved, others created and revisited over generations), why seek a single overarching theory in the first place? The last paragraph asks “would changes to the landscape such as shoreline displacement have affected the purpose and meaning of rock art for the communities that made and used these sites?” (p. 129). I would suggest that the common-sense answer is ‘possibly’, or perhaps even ‘probably’. This question leads to what Nimura calls a second theory—that is, that the purpose of rock art might have been altered to have an effect on the disappearing sea. Here, she is on much thinner ice, as we have absolutely no idea. I do not believe that the application of agency theory here has advanced our understanding of this phenomenon or lessened the enormous uncertainties involved. In short, the major contribution of this volume, for which it can be highly recommended, is the presentation of the pan-Scandinavian rock art data.
