From Shapes to Action (SHACT) – The Narrative Turn in Prehistoric Image-Making in Northern Europe

In this three-year project, we shall investigate the emergence of prehistoric pictorial storytelling in northern Europe. Storytelling with pictures did hardly occur in image-making before c. 5,000 BCE.

Art historians and archeologists have been interested in the realism of the cave paintings in southern Europe, seen as a starting point for the development of later art. However, the earliest emergence of picture stories has been neglected.

The first steps of ​combining individual images in order to display narrative scenes arise as early as around 5,000 BCE at different places in Europe.

Clear examples can be found in northern Scandinavia, where rock carvings depict people, animals, and various activities in image sequences.

Later on, full-fledged forms of pictorial storytelling appeared in Mesopotamia and Egypt during the third millennium BCE.The ability to portray life experiences with pictorial storytelling enlarged human communication. What made this innovation possible and what was its socio-cultural relevance?

We will examine some of the earliest picture stories in northern Scandinavia, with a comparative perspective on equivalents in Portugal and Spain. Approaches from cognitive science, narratology, and semiotics will be applied to archaeological material.

We have established an interdisciplinary research group from three universities/research institutes (Kalmar, Lund, Tromsø), having distinct, but mutually enriching research profiles.