Rock carvings at Alta: Encyclopedia II - Rock carvings at Alta - Cultural and historical background

Rock carvings at Alta - Cultural and historical background

At the time the carvings were created, northern Norway was inhabited by a culture of hunter-gatherers that are thought to be descendants of the Komsa culture, a stone age culture that expanded along the Norwegian coast following receding glaciation during the late ice age around 8000 BC. The period of almost 5000 years over which carvings were created at the site saw many cultural changes, including the adoption of metal tools and advances in areas such as boat building and fishing techniques; therefore, the carvings show a wide variety of mundane imagery and religious symbolism. Rock carvings especially from the earliest period show great similarity with carvings from northwestern Russia, indicating contact between and maybe parallel development of cultures over a wide area of Europe's extreme North.

Connections between the carvers' culture and the Komsa and Sami are somewhat conjectural; in the case of the Komsa, it is interesting to note that according to archaeological evidence, the Komsa economy was almost exclusively based on seal hunting while no known carvings of seals exist in the Alta area. However, since both cultures coexisted in virtually the same geographical area for almost two thousand years, some form of contact between the cultures is highly probable. Connections to Sami culture are easier to establish since it is generally assumed that the cultural identity of the Sami developed in modern-day Finnmark in the timeframe of the most recent Alta carvings and many traditional decorative elements on Sami tools and musical instruments bear a striking resemblance to some of the Alta carvings. In the absence of either DNA records or linguistic evidence, all conjectures about possible relationships between the cultures must remain speculative.

Alta's rock carvings were created using quartzite chisels that were probably driven by hammers made from some harder rocks; probable examples of chisels have been found throughout the area and are on display in Alta's museum. The technique of using rock chisels seems to have been continued even after metal tools came into use in the area.

Due to the effects of post-glacial rebound, the whole of Scandinavia started to rise at a considerable rate out of the ocean after the end of the last ice age. While this effect is still noticeable today (at a speed of about 1 cm per year), it is thought to have been much more rapid and probably even noticeable during the lifetime of individual humans during the time Alta's rock drawings were created. It is thought that most carvings were originally located directly on the shoreline and were gradually lifted to their present-day positions several dozen meters inland.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Cultural and historical background", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki