Perspectives on Differences in Rock Art - Jan Magne Gjerde

Perspectives on Differences in Rock Art - Jan Magne Gjerde

The Mind in the Wild: On ‘Motemic’ Variation in Late Mesolithic Scandinavian Rock Art

Perspectives on Differences in Rock Art - Jan Magne Gjerde

Ingrid Fuglestvedt [+-]
University of Oslo
Ingrid Fuglestvedt holds a PhD from the University of Bergen. She is lecturing at the University of Oslo, and is a scholar of Stone Age archaeology. The technology of the Early Mesolithic and perceptions of remote landscapes in the age of pioneering has been the focus of her research, as well as the study of body and gender in Stone Age and rock art studies. Another strand of interest is Mesolithic ontologies and how they are expressed in rock art. Fuglestvedt has directed the research project Meetings Make History. Rock art and lands of identity in Mesolithic Northern Europe, funded by the Norwegian Research Council.

Description

This chapter presents the concept of the ‘moteme’ as a key to understanding Late Mesolithic rock art on the Scandinavian Peninsula (i.e. today’s Norway and Sweden). Motemes are defined as specific motif types that thematise different stages of the ‘hunting cycle’. Inspired by Claude Lévi-Strauss’s concept of the ‘mytheme’, motemes imbue and express the metaphoric connection – and the ambiguous opposition – between communities of humans and communities of elk (or other large cervids). Motemes have been reproduced and ‘repeated’ throughout the study area, with some variation in composition. Motemes have also been subject to ‘transformations’. Motemic repetitions, variations and transformations are regarded as both devices for, and products of, the intellectuality of the Mesolithic mind. As such, the motifs in question are examples of ‘wild thinking’ – of the ‘free play of thought’ made manifest in rock art.

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Citation

Fuglestvedt, Ingrid. The Mind in the Wild: On ‘Motemic’ Variation in Late Mesolithic Scandinavian Rock Art. Perspectives on Differences in Rock Art. Equinox eBooks Publishing, United Kingdom. p. 163-174 Apr 2021. ISBN 9781781795606. https://www.equinoxpub.com/home/view-chapter/?id=38754. Date accessed: 05 Oct 2024 doi: 10.1558/equinox.38754. Apr 2021

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